“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674overtones, evoking the final destruction of Antichrist’s forces as well as stories in
the Book of Judges of a wrathful God taking revenge on his enemies through
Gideon and Jephtha and Samson – analogues that radical Puritans readily applied to
their own times.^143 The violence and wholesale destruction Samson here wreaks on
God’s and Israel’s enemies have been read as evidence of his unregenerate wrath, or
Milton’s wish-fulfillment of obliterating his enemies, or Samson’s or Milton’s con-
cept of an implacable, irrational, and terrifying God.^144 Wrath is an aspect of Milton’s
God as it is also of the biblical deity, and Samson here is its human agent. But this
violence is not a matter of arbitrary, inexplicable divine fury: it is based on reasoned
moral and political principles which Samson, Milton, and Milton’s God share. Yet
for all that, Samson cannot stand in for Christ at the apocalypse, and his victory in
death is very partial.
The chorus, Manoa, and the reader have no direct access to Samson’s final act,
but must make what they can of it from signs and stories. Heightening the dramatic
tension and irony, Manoa’s hopeful plans to rescue Samson are interrupted by deaf-
ening shouts and screams, leading him to conclude that “they have slain my Son,”
and leading the chorus to imagine that Samson’s eyesight has been restored and that
he is destroying his enemies. Then, from a distraught messenger they extract, piece-
meal, what he saw and heard: Samson patiently performing feats of “incredible,
stupendious force” (1,627); Samson resting between the pillars of the theater;
Samson’s last ironic words to his captors – “Now of my own accord such other
tryal / I mean to shew you of my strength, yet greater; / As with amaze shall strike
all who behold” (1,643–5); and then his destruction of the theater and the Philistine
nobility within – though not the less guilty “vulgar” outside its walls (1,650–9).
Significantly, the messenger did not hear Samson pray for private vengence as did
the Samson of Judges 16:28 – “O God, that I may be at once avenged of the
Philistines, for my two eyes” – and that change affords some clue to the spiritual
state of Milton’s hero. But neither messenger nor reader can read the soul from the
external signs: Samson’s head inclined and eyes fast fixed may indicate “one who
prayd, / Or some great matter in his mind revolv’d” (1,636–8) – or both. Milton’s
much-mediated presentation of this scene forces characters and readers to distin-
guish between what is necessarily opaque – Samson’s motives, his spiritual condi-
tion, his regeneration – and what they can know clearly: that God has again enabled
Samson to strike a blow for Israel’s liberation. That is consonant with the way
Milton judges leaders in his political tracts: not whether they are or seem to be
regenerate, but whether they advance liberty.
Milton portrays the complexity and opacity of human motives as Manoa and the
chorus try to explain Samson’s cataclysmic act by appealing to all the usual interpre-
tations. Manoa construes it first as simple revenge and suicide (1,590–1). The cho-
rus speaks of a glorious revenge “dearly-bought,” but denies suicide: Samson was
“self-kill’d / Not willingly, but tangl’d in the fold / Of dire necessity” (1,660–6).
Manoa decides at length that “Samson hath quit himself / Like Samson,” and made