Samson

Meaning

Samson occurs in a list of Old Testament figures through whom Christ’s saving mystery is said to have been prefigured. The sequence includes Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the brazen serpent, David and Jonah, but does not narrate a particular Samson episode. Its purpose is to justify another bodily and tangible image of the heavenly gift, the earthly Stone. The English retains the name without elaboration. A detailed biographical or alchemical interpretation of Samson would therefore exceed this local evidence: what the passage securely supplies is his place in the author’s typological series.