We are not yet finished with Samson. What was perhaps the most significant victory of his life occurred at the moment of his death in a Philistine temple at Gaza. Questions have been raised about what this temple looked like. To give a possible answer, I would like to move to another Philistine site, that of Tell Qasile, which has a temple and, unlike Gaza, has been excavated.

Tell Qasile, on the north side of the Yarkon River and encompassed by modern Tel Aviv, was not one of the five chief Philistine cities. We do not know its name during the Philistine period, and we do not know which biblical site would correspond to it. The material remains excavated here identify it as a Philistine site. This tell is a small one, encompassing only four acres, and was first settled in the twelfth century B.C. -- the Philistine/judges period. The town was constructed at the mouth of the Yarkon River and was used as an inland port. Archaeologist Benjamin Mazar, excavating here in the late 1940s and 1950s, identified it with the "Sea of Joppa" where the cedarwood from Lebanon for the temples of Solomon and Zerubbabel arrived.

Excavation beginning in 1971 under Amihai Mazar, nephew of Benjamin Mazar, has uncovered three Philistine temples built in succession on top of one another over a time span of approximately 180 years. The first temple was built when the site was first settled in the mid-twelfth century B.C. and was in use into the eleventh century. The second temple, which seems, more precisely, to have been a second phase of the first temple, was built in the eleventh century. The final temple, the most elaborate one, was used from the eleventh century into the tenth and was destroyed by fire in approximately 980 B.C. The destruction of the settlement and this final temple may be attributed to the conquest of Philistia by David, according to both Benjamin Mazar and Amihai Mazar.

Several miles to the south of Qasile lies Gaza, and Gaza is where the captive Samson milled the grain in darkness. We are led to suspect that something is going to happen when the biblical writer states: "But the hair of his head began to grow . . ." (Judg. 16:22).

The third and final temple of Tell Qasile appears to have had a construction similar to the biblical description of the Philistine temple at Gaza, but smaller. Its roof was supported by two cedarwood pillars resting on cylindrical limestone bases. The temple measured approximately forty-seven by twenty-six feet -- not the size of the temple in the Samson story, but remember that this is Tell Qasile and not Gaza. The orientation of the temple was east-west, and the sacred rites were performed at the west end. The entrance from the courtyard on the north side of the temple led into an antechamber that had inside dimensions of nineteen by twelve feet. Next, a ninety-degree turn to the west led into the main hall with its two supporting pillars. This main hall measured twenty-four by nineteen feet. The north and south walls of this room had stepped benches that had been plastered over. The walls of the antechamber also had similar benches. A raised platform approximately three feet high was constructed near the west wall of the main hall. In Hebrew this type of platform is referred to as a bamah. The bamah ran up to the benches on the north wall, and at the south end of the bamah were two steps leading up onto it. The lower of the two steps covered the stone base on which one of the two wooden pillars had rested. The imprint of the pillar had been visible on the stone base so that the excavators could measure its dimensions. The two pillars had been placed on an east-west line in the main hall, with the bamah just to the north and in front of the western pillar (A. Mazar 1990, 322 for drawing). Anyone entering the main hall would have had an unobstructed view of the bamah and the objects that were placed on or by it.

Near the third temple was a courtyard containing a square stone structure four feet by four feet. Due to the numerous animal bones found in the courtyard around the structure, the excavators believe that the temple sacrifices were conducted here. Just west of the temple and abutting its west wall was a small shrine (called temple 300) containing benches, a bamah, and numerous Philistine vessels, including cultic ones. The excavator believes that it was dedicated to a minor god or to the consort of Qasile's god (Shanks 1984, 57-59 with pictures). Also, on the south side of the third temple and abutting its south wall stood a house with two square rooms and a courtyard whose partial roof was supported by wooden pillars with stone bases. Among the numerous artifacts found there were Philistine storage jars, as well as two imported Egyptian ones. The wealth of the finds in these rooms and the proximity of these buildings to the third temple suggest that their use may have been linked to that of the temple and its priests.

It is easy to picture Samson between the two main pillars of a temple like this third one, with the jeering crowd seated both in front of and behind him along the north and south walls. The sacred objects, including Dagon, would have been nearby on the bamah. And since Samson "brought the house down" with his performance, Dagon, all the cultic objects, Samson himself, and the merry crowd both within the temple and on the roof would have been crushed.

In the third and final temple at Tell Qasile, which may have been brought down by David and his men, some beautiful cult objects have been recovered among the heaps of ashes and burnt wooden beams. These cult objects, quite eclectic in nature, have Canaanite, Egyptian, and Aegean origins. Vessels have also been found that are unique to Qasile. For A. Mazar, two pottery motifs indicate the continuation of the Mycenaean traditions of the Philistines (1990, 323-26). The first is the Ashdoda (see p. 102), fragments of which were found during excavation at Qasile. The second depicts a woman mourning, with her hands on or above her head; the representative find at Qasile is a clay figurine. Variations on this mourning-woman motif are seen throughout the museums of Cyprus and Greece that have Mycenaean material on display.

According to its excavators, the architecture of the third temple at Qasile has no close parallels among other temples in Palestine, but it does resemble temples in Mycenae, as well as others on the Aegean island of Melos and at Kition on Cyprus. The similar temples at these three places date to the thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C., and themselves do not have earlier architectural roots elsewhere in the Aegean. These places are linked, however, to the Sea Peoples, and other references will be made to them.

Chronologically, the third temple at Qasile dates to slightly later than the Samson era. Qasile, like Timnah, does not have the Mycenaean IIIC:1b pottery indicative, in my view, of the first wave of the Sea Peoples. Qasile seems to have been settled around the time of the Philistine phase of Timnah (stratum V), approximately 1150 B.C. The two earlier temples at Qasile, underneath the one described in detail above, were considerably smaller and not as elaborate. The earliest one, circa 1150 b.c., was approximately twenty-one by twenty-two feet. The second one was twenty-five by twenty-eight feet. Both of these earlier temples had benches and a raised platform (bamah) for the cult objects, but neither had pillars. These first two temples would have been the ones that belonged to the Samson era.

The final minutes of Samson's life brought to light the only recorded prayer of Samson the Nazirite.

Reckless Samson turned to the Lord and the Lord heard his cry. Note that his family was able to come en masse into Philistia to retrieve the body. There is no hint that Samson's body was violated, a treatment totally different from what King Saul would receive. Samson died honorably doing the task that was prophesied of him in Judges 13:5: "It is he who shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines." The Philistines, I have no doubt, recognized the valor of Samson in spite of their tremendous losses.