Talk:Regina Spektor:Samson

From LyricWiki

This song is based on the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah. Samson was one of the greatest warriors in the days when the Israelites were battling the Philistines for control of the Holy Land. In one battle, he singlehandedly killed 1,000 Philistines with just a piece of donkey jawbone. After he became king of the Israelites, the subdued Philistines plotted for ways to capture and kill him. They found their opportunity when Samson fell in love with a Philistine woman named Delilah. She tricked Samson into revealing the source of his power: his hair. When Samson was born, the Lord had made a covenant with his mother, granting Samson superhuman strength so long as he never cut his hair. When Delilah discovered this, she told the Philistines, who cut his hair while he was sleeping and captured him, gouging out both of his eyes. After Samson had been in prison for awhile, his hair grew back, and he prayed to God to allow him one last feat of strength. When the Philistines brought him to their temple to judge him, he leaned against the temple's columns and toppled them, bringing the entire temple down and killing all of those in attendance, including himself.

It's unclear who is singing this song, but it seems to be an alternate reality in which Samson is not the hero depicted in the Bible ("The Bible didn't mention us"), but rather someone who gave up his strength willingly for the love of the woman who is singing ("I cut his hair myself one night...he told me that I'd done all right"). If that is the case, then Samson's sacrifice seems to make him not only powerless ("We couldn't bring the columns down... no we couldn't destroy a single one") but also so ordinary ("He ate a slice of wonderbread...and went right back to bed") that the woman in the song decides to leave him ("I have to go. I have to go.") Ironically then, Samson becomes the woman's "sweetest downfall," even though she is one who took his hair and his strength.