Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

Hebrew Voices #200 – Nasrallah and the Samson Option

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Nehemia: Who would have expected this? If you would have told anybody on October 6th that in less than a year, Hassan Nasrallah would be killed by Israel, and the Arabs would be praising Netanyahu… you couldn’t sell this as a Hollywood movie. It would be considered unrealistic. But there it’s happening. I mean, this is God performing miracles.

Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. This is the 200th episode! And I have a really exciting announcement, that Israel has eliminated the arch terrorist Hassan Nasrallah, which I can’t even believe that I’m able to announce this wonderful news, and hopefully more news soon, in the same vein. We’re going to talk about this and how this will lead us into a little bit of a biblical study. And before we get to that… 200th episode of Hebrew Voices.

I just want to share something about… we’re going to talk about how you came to be on Hebrew Voices, Lynell, my wife, but before that, I just want to talk about… and I’ve told this story many times, of why I started Hebrew Voices. I spoke at this church in West Texas, a messianic church, and there were seven people there. Keith was there as well, so seven, not including me and him, so nine altogether. We didn’t even have a minyan, a prayer quorum in Jewish tradition. And at the end, the pastor came to me, and he said, “This was wonderful. If I’d have known this is what you were going to say, I would have told the congregation you were coming.” And he had hidden from the congregation that I was coming, and the only people who knew about it were people who had heard about it from me. And he was afraid to hear what we had to say until he heard it. And it got me thinking, “What are all those Hebrew voices out there that people are afraid to hear?” And we’re going to hear some of those voices. Today we’re going to hear some Arabic voices as well about Hebrew subjects.

Oh, before we get started, Lynell, you have a wonderful story of… it’s not how we met, it’s like, I think maybe our third meeting. Can you tell that story? It was near Houston, Texas. I want to say, Katy, maybe. It’s when I was recording what eventually became one of my Support Team Studies called, “The Great I Am Revealed.”

Lynell: Is that when you stole my coffee?

Nehemia: That’s the story you tell. That’s your reality. So, why don’t you tell that story? And so, the background of this is that when I… and actually, on this particular occasion, I spoke for seven hours with a few breaks. And I told the people that when the coffee ends, so does the teaching. And I said to them, “You guys have to keep bringing me coffee because I’m going to be up on stage.” So, speaking of coffee, tell your story.

Lynell: So, I was traveling in that area. I had to fly in that area anyway. And so, you were speaking, and I was like, “Let’s go.” So, I got there, and… great teaching. It was very interesting. In the middle, when you began to stop, I was like, “I’m headed to Starbucks. I need, I need caffeine to stay attentive.” It’s a lot of material that comes at you when you have that length of teaching. So, I went to Starbucks, hurried up in my car, got in line, got my coffee, didn’t even have a chance to drink it. I picked it up in my hand and I was like sitting in the third row, and you’d already started back. And so, I came in with my coffee and I’m walking to my seat, and all of a sudden Nehemia talks. He points to me, he said, “Is that my coffee?” And I was like, “Yes, that’s your coffee.” So, I came back, and I gave him my coffee. That’s the coffee story.

Nehemia: I first heard the story when we went on our first date, and you said, “You owe me coffee.” I said, “Why do I owe you coffee?” Because I didn’t remember this. Here’s the crazy thing, this is unbelievable; we actually have video footage of this happening.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: Because we recorded that whole seven hours, or as much of it… until the batteries ran out, or the tape ran out, or, you know, video file, like SD cards or whatever. And I asked our editor, Danilo, who is in Serbia, I said, “Do you have the original raw files?” Because what’s been put on the website is edited. I mean, me like, you know, tucking in my pants, that’s not going to be there. Actually, it’s literally one example. So, I was able to get the original raw footage. This is real, guys!

Lynell: Oh, wow.

Nehemia: This is the era we live in, where there’s raw footage of…

Lynell: Of everything. Wow, I can’t believe that’s on video.

Nehemia: Yeah, it’s amazing. So, I’m going to share my screen.

Lynell: Oh, you’re going to show it. Oh, awesome.

Nehemia: I’m going to show it.

Lynell: Oh my gosh, you’re so handsome.

Nehemia: So, here is me at this event in Texas. This is the raw footage. So, I believe this is a Q&A, so you really can’t hear the people speaking who are talking to me. I’m listening to what they have to say. And here we go.

(Video): [Inaudible] [00:05:20]

Lynell: You stole my coffee!

Nehemia: Wait, what?

Lynell: I’m like, “Crud! There’s my coffee.” Mine was a caramel macchiato. What was yours?

Nehemia: Oh, I’m sure it was a heavy cream latte. So, it’s hilarious! The other guy’s bringing me coffee at the same moment, and I’m thinking, “That’s my coffee,” but then another coffee comes at me from the other side. And you can’t make this stuff up. There it is. That’s how I stole your coffee.

Lynell: And I had to go the whole rest of the time without coffee. I was sad.

Nehemia: But I’m sure you were thrilled because you were hearing this wonderful teaching.

Lynell: Now, that’s true. That really is true, Nehemia. That’s not a joke. No, it was great! And I don’t think you’ve done that teaching again, have you?

Nehemia: No, not that I can think of…

Lynell: That is an incredible teaching. If you guys haven’t seen that, you should. As a matter of fact, Nehemia, I’d like to watch it again.

Nehemia: “The Great I Am Revealed,” yeah. There’s actually more to it than I was able to present that day, but that’s for a future time. It’s really interesting stuff.

All right, so, we assassinated the arch terrorist, Hassan Nasrallah. And this is a man who was responsible for the death of probably hundreds of Israelis, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Arabs. What happened is, there was a Syrian civil war… it’s still going on. And in the Syrian civil war, Assad, the dictator, was losing, and so he needed foreign fighters to come and wipe out his own people so they wouldn’t overthrow him. And he brought in Nasrallah and his goons, Hezbollah, and they killed thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands…

Lynell: From where?

Nehemia: From Lebanon. So, they’re in Lebanon, and Syria is their neighbor. And then also there’s a sectarian conflict here as part of the story, which is that Hezbollah are Shiites and the people who are opposing Assad, who is the dictator of Syria, are Sunnis. And so, he was slaughtering Sunnis. Now, the complicated thing is that Assad is actually not a Shiite. You know, there’s two main sects in Islam. So, there’s Shiites and Sunnis, and the way you have to think about this is, Catholics and Greek Orthodox. And you’re like, “What about the Protestants in Islam?” I’m not sure there’s an equivalent of Protestants in Islam. I guess you could maybe say that’s the Salafis, or certainly the Salafis would see it that way, but yeah. So, the Shiites and the Sunnis hate each other. Iran is the main Shiite country, and so Iran backed Hezbollah, basically… not just backed, they created Hezbollah. These were Iranian… they call them Iranian proxies, but they’re really Iranian puppets.

Lynell: Is that to destroy the Sunnis? They created Hezbollah…

Nehemia: Originally it was to destroy the Sunnis, and later it was turned against Israel. So, there was a Lebanese civil war, and this was… Nasrallah started out in Amal, which is one of the other terrorist organizations that was fighting against Sunnis and Druze and Christians. So, really the Christians, the Sunnis, and the Druze were his main victims, and then he turns his attention to Israel. So, if he killed thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of Sunnis, of Arabs… many of them Christians, as well… and so, maybe he has hundreds of Israelis on his hands, maybe thousands. I don’t know what the number is. But he’s been doing this for a long time, and Israel finally reached him and killed him.

And there is a famous song that goes back 18 years to what’s called the Second Lebanon War in 2006. What happened is, Hezbollah, Nasrallah, invaded Israel and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers from the border who were on patrol. And Israel responded by launching a war against Lebanon. And Nasrallah later said, “Well, if I knew there was going to be a war, I wouldn’t have done this.” He thought Jewish blood is, is just, you know, free, and you can kill whoever he wants or kidnap whoever he wants.

And so, there’s a song. I actually can’t play it because the words are a bit… probably not appropriate for this program, but it has this very catchy tune. And people are now playing it. Jews and Israelis are playing it now all over the world. It says, “Come on O Nasrallah, we will something you, Allah willing.” That’s the part I’m not going to play. “We will return you to Allah with all of Hezbollah.” It’s “da da da da da da”. And it rhymes in Hebrew. “Da da da da da da.” So, guys you can look that up, it’s called Yalla Yalla Nasrallah. Yalla is actually Arabic for… but they use it in Hebrew, too. “Come on, O Nasrallah, we will [something] you, inshallah,” which is “Allah willing.” “We will return you to Allah with all of his…” It’s a really catchy tune. And there’s a bunch of other interesting parts in the song that you could say in a way are prophetic. Or not really, because we saw this coming, I suppose. Well, I don’t know that anybody saw this coming.

The fear was if we ever killed Hezbollah or if we ever killed Nasrallah, Hezbollah would fire 150,000 rockets at us. Well, they’ve been firing rockets at us for 11 months so what did we have to lose? And there’s a really interesting report. I don’t know if this is accurate; we’ll find out in maybe weeks or years to come. But there’s this report claiming that the way they found where Nasrallah was is that he was giving a speech, and during the speech Israel was flying F-15 fighter planes over the capital of Beirut, setting off sonic booms. And they were able to locate him based somehow on the sound pattern of the sonic booms. And the way it was reported in the international media is, Israel is terrorizing the people of Lebanon with the sonic booms and, you know, intimidating them and frightening them. Well, actually, there may have been another reason why we did it.

So… all right, there’s an interesting line there where it says, “You are a dead cockroach. You stink”. Kind of a satirical song. “You are starting to give up,” this all rhymes in Hebrew. And it says, “The IDF,” the Israeli Defense Force, “is searching you out in order to burn you with fire.” Well, how interesting that he was killed in this bombing. And actually, they say he suffocated from poison gas. That when the explosion went off… Israel dropped 80 one ton or so bombs, including bunker busters. So, you have to understand where he was. He was in the equivalent of the command-and-control center in the US. Like, under… I don’t actually know where it is, but somewhere in the US there’s a command-and-control center. And in Israel we have the Kirya, which is the Israeli command and control center. That’s where he was with his commanders and a whole bunch of top leaders. And they were having a meeting about invading the Galilee. And they’re like, “Okay, we have to kill him before he pulls against Israel what Hamas did on October 7th.”

Lynell: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, they dropped 80 bombs, including bunker busters, and there was some kind of… we think at this point, the current reporting is that there was some kind of, you know, smoke or something that he suffocated on. And it’s interesting, because in the song… and this is the part that you could say is not prophetic, it says, “adif she’tisha’er ba’bor ki be’karov ata tamut.” “It’s preferable that you remain in the pit,” meaning the underground command and control center, “because soon you will die.” And that didn’t save him.

Lynell: Wow, it didn’t.

Nehemia: So, he actually stayed, probably underground for years, because he knew Israel wanted to kill him. Israel killed his predecessor in 1992, the former arch terrorist.

Lynell: I saw something, as well, Nehemia, where the person that was going to replace him was killed. The person was going to replace him again, was killed. Went down like three in… three or four in the line, Nehemia.

Nehemia: There’s a cartoon where there’s this woman with a broom, and she’s looking like, bewildered in front of the podium of Hezbollah and saying, “I’m the only one left.”

Lynell: The cleaning woman!

Nehemia: Right, cleaning woman. Right. Isn’t that funny? All right, so, I want to… I want to, I mean, there’s some incredible things coming out of this, because we killed this arch terrorist who terrorized Israel for decades. Literally for decades.

Lynell: He killed how many people?

Nehemia: Well, if you include Arabs that he killed, it’s certainly in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.

Lynell: Can you imagine the amount of blood on that guy’s hands?

Nehemia: A whole lot. Like, this is a little Hitler.

Lynell: Think about what God says in the word, what He says about killing people, about murder.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: Think about the blood…

Nehemia: I mean, this is a really wicked man who killed innocents and gloried in killing innocents. And look, he famously referred to Israel as a spider’s web. And there’s this video going around where Netanyahu said, “Well, spider’s web; I guess we held up pretty well, and you didn’t.” And what he means by a spider’s web is that Israel is weak because it’s a democracy, and democracies don’t have internal strength. And you can just cast them away with your hand like a spider’s web because there’s internal divisions. Whereas Hezbollah is a theocratic dictatorship. And he openly said that the ruler of Hezbollah is the head ayatollah in Iran. It’s like their pope, basically. So, you heard of the ayatollah? So, the ayatollah in Iran, or the grand ayatollah, is the head of Shiism, of the Shiite sect, and he’s essentially their pope. They say he’s basically the ruler on earth for the Mahdi, which is like their messiah that they believe will come in the future.

Alright, so, I want to show some things here about how the Arab world is reacting to this. So, the Jewish world is singing this song that I just hummed to you and read you some of the lines of, this song from 18 years ago. But I was surprised that the Arab world… they’re handing out pieces of baklava, which is what they do when they’re celebrating. And why is that? Because this is a person who killed tens or hundreds of thousands of them. He slaughtered them in mass, innocent civilians, women and children. And they’re celebrating, especially in Syria. And so, there are these videos going around of them handing out baklava, celebrating, and they’ve actually written songs about Netanyahu!

Now, just remember, we’re at war with Hamas in Gaza, and they’ve spread this lie that Israel is committing genocide against Hamas. Which, it’s actually the opposite; they’re using their own civilians as human shields so they’re responsible for any civilian deaths. You know, if you shoot at me, hiding behind a child, and I shoot back to save myself because I’m going to die otherwise, you’re responsible if that child dies. So, they’ve called, you know, Netanyahu, they’ve said he committed genocide and he’s a mass murderer. And now they’re singing songs praising him, thanking him for killing…

Lynell: This bad guy.

Nehemia: This evil person, Hassan Nasrallah. Actually, first I want to show you here, these are… here’s a picture of children in Syria. So, here are the children in Syria, and they’re holding up signs, and it says here, “shukran”, which is thank you, “Netanyahu!” “Thank you, Netanyahu!” And they’re thanking, and it says, “You have made the children of Syria rejoice.” And there’s the baklava that they’re handing out, and you can see, there’s the flag of Syria in the background. So, why are the children of Syria saying, “Thank you, Netanyahu, you have made the children of Syria rejoice”? Because Hassan Nasrallah slaughtered them in their thousands.

Now, do you remember there were all these protests around the world against Nasrallah, blaming him about the genocide in front of the… do you remember that? No, there were none. Nobody cared. Meaning, nobody outside the Arab world cared. Within the Arab world, frankly, they didn’t care anyway, because, you know, he was killing Syrian children. But when a Palestinian child in Gaza stubs his toe, then there’s international outrage. And frankly, now it’s a lot more than that because they’re using them as human shields. But you should be outraged against Hamas for using them as human shields. But nobody cared when he killed… the estimated number is that 400,000 Syrians were killed in the civil war.

Lynell: Wow!

Nehemia: Mostly civilians. Can you imagine that number, 400,000? And there wasn’t a single protest that I’m aware of at Columbia University, at Cornell University. Nobody cared because it was Sunnis killing Shiites. And frankly, these people don’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, most of them. And let’s be honest, a lot of the protests going on right now in the United States are paid for by Iran and organizations like Soros’s… whatever it’s called, his terrorist organization. So, nobody’s paying them to protest, so there are no protests against Syria and against Hezbollah.

So, now I’m going to play you some songs. And it’s a clip from the Israeli Channel 14, which has a montage of three different songs that just came out in the last few days, praising Netanyahu. And then I’ll read you the translation, which is unbelievable. They’re singing the praises of Netanyahu, who they were previously accusing of genocide.

Lynell: I find that so… just shocking. But when I first saw that, I was like, “That can’t be real.”

Nehemia: So, this comes from a TikTok channel “Edition 062”, which I searched on TikTok and couldn’t find, so maybe it’s been banned… I don’t know… Since this came out. But here are the… And look, there’s these pictures of Netanyahu, and you’ll particularly see Netanyahu in a kippah, which is interesting because Netanyahu doesn’t wear a kippah unless he’s visiting a synagogue. He puts on a kippah like Joe Biden puts on a kippah when he visits a synagogue. Which is so interesting. But they’re trying to portray him as, like, the stereotypical Jew. Maybe, in a sense. And by the way, this is Israeli Channel 14. It says, “shidur chai”, “live broadcast”, and in the upper left it says, “Tov lehodot le’Hashem” “It is good to give thanks to Yehovah,” to Hashem, to the name…

Lynell: I love that.

Nehemia: With the Israeli flag. Because they’re celebrating the death of this arch terrorist, Hassan Nasrallah. So, here are these Arab songs praising Netanyahu.

Now, aesthetically, you can say it’s not pleasing, which is, I suppose, a subjective thing. It’s not my style of music, I’ll be honest, but the words there are really interesting. So, the first song says, “Read the announcement and look at it. Sharpen swords. There are crazy men among us who are celebrating like eagles.” Okay, I don’t fully understand that, but sure. Song number two is the most interesting to me. “Commander sir,” they call him; it translates in Hebrew, at least, “Adoni hamefaked.” “Commander, Sir, sitting among your servants, greetings. It is our honor, honorable father.” That’s the one where they show Netanyahu wearing the kippah. And they called Netanyahu “honorable father”. That’s how much they hated Hassan Nasrallah for killing so many Arabs. This is an Arab song. Unbelievable. Song number three. “The smell of gunpowder. The lions have come. Welcome.” And lions, of course, from the lion of Judah.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: Aware of that metaphor. And then they say… and again, this is an Arab song, “Allah puts a crown on your head,” talking about Netanyahu. “Allah gives you guns.” So, they’re saying this actually in religious terms, that their god is using Netanyahu and Israel to defeat their enemies. And they’re… I mean, that’s… who would have expected this? If you would have told anybody on October 6th that in less than a year, Hassan Nasrallah would be killed by Israel and the Arabs would be praising Netanyahu, people… you couldn’t sell this as a Hollywood movie. It would be considered unrealistic. But there, it’s happening. I mean, this is God performing miracles. Of course, they see it in their terms. So, I want to show one last video, and then we’ll get into some Bible study.

Lynell: I just want to say another thing that came out of this, that I saw, was “the Grim Beeper”. They were calling the beeper “the Grim Beeper”.

Nehemia: I didn’t see that one. I love that. So, what Israel did, and Israel worked on developing this project for 15 years. They established actual corporations in Europe. I mean, look, this is conspiracy theory stuff!

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: Israel is making the beepers. The CIA makes telephones, and they’re listening to your phones directly. But it actually is true. Israel… it took them 15 years. They developed actual corporations that made beepers and walkie talkies, and… There are jokes going around where the Hezbollah terrorists are calling up the helpline. They’re on the phone calling up the helpline with the beeper company, and the guy says, “Eh… I will, eh, transfer you to a tech support.” And there’s another one, they’re selling the beepers, and the Israeli who… and like, this is satire, the Israeli is on the phone negotiating the price. And of course, he wants to get a good price because he’s Jewish, and they’re like, “Okay, we’ll only pay you 10 euros.” And he’s like, “Eh, no, I must get, eh, 20 euros for every beeper.” And the guy in the background says, “Just give him the price. We want him to buy the beeper!” “Eh, no, we got to get a good deal.”

Lynell: Oh my gosh!

Nehemia: Because they actually bought the beepers from Israel. This is a…

Lynell: That’s unbelievable.

Nehemia: I mean, yeah, it was an intelligence operation. Fifteen years it took them to do this.

Lynell: They play the long game.

Nehemia: That is the long game. Now, they say, the entire Arab world and Muslim world are throwing away their cell phones and beepers and sourcing everything from China. The funny thing is, these beepers were made in Taiwan, except Taiwan outsourced them to a company based in Hungary, and they were probably made in Israel.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: Who knows where they were made. I don’t really know. Of course, Israel hasn’t taken responsibility for the beeper operation, but we all know it was Israel. Okay. So, all right, I want to show one last clip, which is… it’s unbelievable. It was two days before Nasrallah was killed, and it’s a Lebanese Shiite cleric. So, you know how we talked about how there’s this split between the Shiites and the Sunnis. They’re like the Catholics and the Greek Orthodox, and they hate each other. Well, this is a Shiite guy, and he’s Lebanese. Now, he’s talking on Saudi state television, but it’s two days… so take that with a grain of salt.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: It’s two days before the assassination, or the killing, of this evil terror. The “elimination” is the word they use in Hebrew, chisul. Which is interesting; it’s the same word they use when there’s, like, a sale in Israel. They call it chisul. “Everything must go.”

Lynell: Ah.

Nehemia: It’s “an elimination sale”. Like, I guess we call it a fire sale or something. What do you call that when, like, you’re selling everything in the store?

Lynell: Clearance.

Nehemia: Clearance! So, he was cleared. That’s the term they use when they describe getting rid of a terrorist. There’s another word, hitnakshut, which is “assassination”. It comes from the word… well, anyway, let’s not get into that. Alright. So, okay… So, there’s an interesting video on TikTok by Elon Gilad, who’s a reporter at Haaretz, one of Israel’s national newspapers, and he talks about these terms, chisul. So, we’ll put a link on nehemiaswall.com. We actually have him coming on the program. He’s a fascinating guy, about the history of Hebrew.

Alright. So, am I sharing here? Yes, I am. Alright. And I put… this was up on some Israeli site with Hebrew subtitles. I translated them based on the Hebrew, and also, I can hear a little bit of what he’s saying in the Arabic, so I fixed the translation a bit.

(Video): [Arabic] [00:27:53 – 00:28:48]

Nehemia: So, this is another Shiite who’s saying this. I’m going to read it in English.

Lynell: He just said that Iran sold them out.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: I haven’t seen this.

Nehemia: So, I’m going to read this for those who are listening, who don’t see it. So, he says, “The Israeli army is not deterred.” And this is a guy who’s wearing a turban, which is one of the symbols of a Shiite cleric. And he says, “The Israeli army is not deterred and not afraid.” And then he says, “Be careful for yourself,” meaning Nasrallah, “and don’t think it’s right to let the boys,” he calls the shabab, the boys, meaning Hezbollah, “fight against Israel.” Don’t think it’s right to let the boys fight against Israel. “Because Israel is on its way to you tactically,” whatever that means, “and as they say, what Samson did,” and he actually says, nachnu, what we say. So, “what we say about what Samson did.” And he says about Samson, “He destroyed, he shattered, and he left scorched earth.” He left the ground burned, makhruk. And “Nasrallah, I know how you think,” he says. And then the woman stops him. “Samson the Israelite or Samson…?” Like, who are we talking about? Who’s Samson? And we’ll talk about that in a minute. It’s really interesting. We’ll talk about who Samson is and who Muslims think Samson is.

And I thought at first, he’s nodding his head. But he doesn’t really… he doesn’t… I don’t know that he nods his head. He says, “This is not psychological warfare against you.” In other words, he’s not saying Samson the Israelite, and we’ll understand why in a few minutes. “This is not psychological warfare against you,” he says, “I know what I’m talking about.” And he says, three times, “I know what I’m talking about. I know what I’m talking about. I know what I’m talking about.”

It’s interesting. The Middle Eastern style of speech is repetition. Think about the Tanakh, how it repeats itself all the time, and you’re like, why does it say it three times? Because that’s how people speak in the Middle East. And he says, “I swear by Allah, the Israeli army will enter and invade the territory of Lebanon and will reach you.” This is two days before the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, may his name and memory be blotted out. “And from here I say to you,” the cleric says, and he points to his finger, to his first finger. He says, “gather up your family.” And the second finger, “Wrap up your affairs. Write your will, because those who bought and paid for you,” meaning Iran, “have sold you out today.”

So, what does he mean “they’ve sold you out today?” So, that last part is a little bit Saudi propaganda. This is on Saudi state TV, and he knows his audience. He’s probably in Saudi Arabia in hiding from Hezbollah. I don’t know who this guy is. I wasn’t able to find out his name, but he’s clearly… you can see the way he’s dressed, he’s a Shiite cleric. It reminds me of the joke about the Hasidic rabbi. Hasidic rabbis have a certain way they dress, they have a certain outfit. And the joke is, how do you imposter a Hasidic rabbi? And the answer is: it’s impossible, because if you’re dressed as a Hasidic rabbi, you are one. So, what makes you a Hasidic rabbi? The fact that you dress that way and people think of you as a Hasidic rabbi. So, this guy is obviously some sort of a Shiite cleric, by the way he’s dressed.

So, this is incredible. Two days before the killing of Nasrallah he makes this statement that, “The Israeli army is coming for you, so make your last will and testament.” And what I really love about this, the reason I wanted to share this, the reason I want to want to talk about this whole topic, besides just to praise Yehovah for the death of this evil man…

Lynell: Amen.

Nehemia: “Tov lehodot la’Yehovah.” “It is good to give thanks to Yehovah, to praise Yehovah,” “ki le’olam chasdo,” “for His chesed is forever”, as the Psalms say. The reason I wanted to talk about this is partly because of what he said about Samson. I thought, “This is unbelievable. A Shiite cleric is talking about this arch terrorist, and he’s saying, ‘You know what Samson did.’” And basically, he’s saying, “You know what Jews do. If you mess with them and you poke them too hard, you might think you hurt the Jew,” and they did hurt Samson, “but eventually he’s going to come and he’s going to leave scorched earth and destroy you. So don’t mess with Samson.”

So, I don’t think we’re going to tell over the entire story of Samson, but the story of Samson is that he had a series of bad relationships with Philistine women. Which is really interesting, because when I first saw this, I thought, “Okay, why is he saying Samson? Because there’s a fight with the Palestinians and they identify as Philistines, even though they have nothing to do with Philistines. Historically.” So, is that what it is? But I don’t think so, now that I’ve learned more about what Muslims think about Samson. So, Samson has a series of bad relationships with Philistine women, and one of the things he did is he married this woman… not Delilah, a previous woman, and he went to be with her even though she was living in her father’s house. And he only spent time with her occasionally, apparently. And the father said, “Oh, I’ve given her to somebody else as a wife.” And Samson gets really upset, and it says he captured 300 foxes… Let’s read that.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: Let me open up my little Bible program here, or do you want to read it, please? That’s even better.

Lynell: Where is it at?

Nehemia: Okay. So, the story of Samson is in Judges 13 to 16, and like I said, we’re not going to read the whole story. But the story is, an angel came to his parents and told him he needs to be a Nazarite. Nazarites were usually something… a vow that somebody would take for a period of time. But he was a Nazarite for life, because the angel told his parents, and as a result, he never cut his hair.

Lynell: So, where do you want me to start?

Nehemia: Okay. And we learned later that his strength is in his hair. And the word nazir actually means crown, and it seems to refer to the crown of the hair. The hair is a crown on his head. Alright, on any Nazarite’s head. Okay, let’s see… oh, this is really wonderful. I don’t know if we’re going to read the whole thing. Okay. Let’s read Judges 15, just because there’s several different things in Judges that will be relevant. Let’s read the whole chapter.

Lynell: Okay. I’m going to do the JPS.

Nehemia: Okay.

Lynell: Is that okay?

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Lynell: Alright. “Sometime later in the season of the wheat harvest, Samson came to visit his wife, bringing a kid as a gift. He said, ‘Let me go into the chamber with my wife.’ But her father would not let him go in. ‘I was sure,’ said her father, ‘that you’d taken a dislike to her, so I gave her to your wedding companion. But her younger sister is more beautiful than she. Let her become your wife instead.’ Thereupon Samson declared, ‘Now the Philistines can have no claim against me for the harm I do to them.’ Samson went and caught 300 foxes. He took torches, and, turning the fox’s tail to tail, he placed a torch between each pair of tails. He lit…”

Nehemia: Stop there for a second. So, this cleric, this Lebanese cleric, he is referring to, “You know what Samson did? He destroyed and he left the ground scorched.” So, it seems that this is what it refers to.

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: This exact story. So, let’s read that again. So, it’s Judges 15:4. So, this is incredible. A Lebanese cleric, a Shiite cleric, is referencing the Book of Judges, which is interesting, because it’s not in the Quran. There’s nothing about Samson in the Quran. He’s not even mentioned.

Lynell: “So Samson went and caught 300 foxes, and he took the torches, and, turning the foxes tail to tail, he placed a torch between each pair of tails. He lit the torches and turned the foxes loose among the standing grain of the Philistines, setting fire to the stacked grain, standing grain, vineyards and olive trees. Philistines asked, ‘Who did this?’ and they were told it was Samson, the son-in-law of the Temanite, who took Samson’s wife and gave her to his wedding companion. Thereupon, the Philistines came up and put her and her father to the fire. Samson said to them, ‘If this is how you act, I will not rest until I have taken revenge on you.’ He gave them a sound and thorough thrashing, and then he went down and stayed in the cave of the Rock of Etam.”

Nehemia: So now this is the second story. And this story isn’t about the foxes and the burning and the woman, it’s the Philistine response to that. But it’ll be relevant in a minute as well.

Lynell: Okay. “So, the Philistines came up and pitched camp in Judah and spread out over Lehai…”

Nehemia: That in Hebrew is Lehi.

Lynell: Lehi. Okay.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: “The men of Judah asked, ‘Why have you come against us?’ They answered, ‘We’ve come to take Samson prisoner, and to do to him as he did to us.’ Thereupon, 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cave of the Rock of Etam and said to Samson, ‘You knew that the Philistines rule over us. Why have you done this to us?’ And he replied, ‘As they did to me, so I did to them.’”

Nehemia: Let me stop there for a second. So, we have this interesting thing that Israel, the Land of Israel, was called for 17 or 18 hundred years, “Palestine”. So, from around the year 135 up until 1917, or actually until 1948, it was officially a district… Well, it wasn’t exactly always called Palestine, but in many of those periods it was called Palestine. Where did that name come from? So, there was originally an area called Philistia, or in Hebrew Peleshet, which was the area of the Philistines, but that’s limited to the area of what today is Gaza.

There’s actually a story in Herodotus where he talks about a certain king or general or something. Herodotus is the 5th century BCE Greek historian, and he talks about this person being in Philistia, and he leaves Philistia, and he goes to Ashkelon. So, Ashkelon already was outside of Palestine, or Philistia. How did the whole region come to be known as Palestine? So, what happened is, the Jews revolted against the Romans in the year 132. It was known as the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and they originally defeated the Romans under Bar Kokhba. And three-and-a-half years later, the Romans eventually defeated the Jews by wiping out… killing every man, woman and child in over a thousand Jewish villages. And then to strip the region of its Jewish identity, because it was called Judea, Yudea in Greek, or excuse me, in Latin and Greek.

He renamed it Palestina after the ancient enemy of the Jews. You want to strip the area of its Jewish content and identity, what the imperial invaders do is they name it after your ancient enemy. And so, he named it, Palestina. That is Hadrian, the Roman emperor, to strip it of its Jewish identity. And here we’re seeing in the Book of Judges, the Philistines are foreign invaders who rule over Judea, and here it’s literally Yehuda, the tribe of Judah. They say, “Don’t you know that the Philistines rule over us?” Alright, go on, Judges 15:12.

Lynell: “‘We’ve come down,’ they told him, ‘to take you prisoner and to hand you over to the Philistines.’ ‘But swear to me,’ said Samson to them, ‘that you yourselves will not attack me.’”

Nehemia: Because he’s like, “I can defeat our enemies. I can’t defeat my brothers.”

Lynell: Aww. “‘We will only take you prisoner and hand you over to them. We will not slay you.’ So, they bound him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. When he reached Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him.”

Nehemia: Ooh, and that’s appropriate, because we’re recording this a few days before Yom Teruah. And that’s the word, heri’u. It’s from the same root as teruah. It shows you the literal meaning of this word. You know, we’ve translated it often in English as Feast of Trumpets, and where that comes from is that sometimes it refers to the blowing of the shofar as teruah, but it’s also shouting. People shouting, “Yeah, we got Samson! Woo-hoo!” That’s teruah. Alright. “And the Philistines came shouting to greet him.”

Lynell: “Thereupon the Spirit of Yehovah gripped him.”

Nehemia: Come on!

Lynell: And…

Nehemia: Come on Holy Spirit! Come upon Samson.

Lynell: “And the ropes on his arms became like flax that catches fire. The bonds melted off his hands. He came upon a fresh jawbone of an ass, and he picked it up. And with it…”

Nehemia: So, jawbone in Hebrew is lechi.

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: He came upon the lechi of a chamor. The lechi, the jawbone, of a donkey. And it was fresh. Alright, go, let’s read that again. That’s Judges 15:15.

Lynell: “He came upon a fresh jawbone of an ass, and he picked it up, and with it he killed a thousand men.” Wow, that’s a lot of people.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: “Then Samson said, ‘With the jaw of an ass, mass upon mass. With the jaw of an ass, I have slain a thousand men.’ As he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone away, and hence that place was called Ramat Lechi.”

Nehemia: Which means something like “the hill of Lechi”, or the “high place of lechi”. “High” in the sense that it’s a raised-up area.

Lynell: “He was very thirsty, and he called to Yehovah, ‘You Yourself have granted this great victory through Your servant.’”

Nehemia: Come on, that’s your great salvation, it says. Teshua, the same root as the word yesha, yeshua, salvation. “You have granted this great salvation.”

Lynell: Oh, wow. Say it again.

Nehemia: You have granted this great salvation.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: Boy, is that appropriate that Samson is brought up when Yehovah today has granted us a great salvation by the killing of this evil Hassan Nasrallah. Halleluyah.

Lynell: Amen.

Nehemia: All right, let’s read verse 18 again. Sorry I interrupted you.

Lynell: No, “He was very thirsty, and he called to Yehovah, ‘You Yourself have granted this great salvation through your servant, and must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?’ So, God split open the hollow, which is at Lechi, and the water gushed out of it. He drank, regained his strength, and revived. And that’s why it is called to this day Ein Hakore of Lechi.”

Nehemia: So, ein hakore means “the spring of the one who calls out”, because he called out to Yehovah. So, in Lechi there was a spring called Ein Hakore, the Spring of the One Who Calls Out.

Lynell: “And he led Israel in the days of the Philistines for 20 years.”

Nehemia: Alright, so that’s Shimshon as the judge over Israel; it’s how he became the judge over Israel. He defeated the Philistines, and there’s a bunch of other stories. There’s the famous story where his later wife, Delilah, Delila, who is a Philistine herself, tries to figure out how to tie him up, and finally she learns that it’s his hair. And let’s skip ahead to Judges 16, because anybody who hears that Samson comes… like, it sounds confused with what the Shiite cleric said. He says, “You know what Samson did?” he said. “He destroyed and he broke.” I don’t remember exactly what he said. Hold on, let me see here. Okay. What the Lebanese cleric does is, he says about Samson, “He destroyed, he shattered, he left scorched earth.” And the first thing I thought about was the story we’re about to read, where Samson, in his death throes, kills more Philistines than he did during his lifetime through his death. But that didn’t involve any fire. So, what’s he talking about, “he left scorched earth”?

Okay, that’s the story of the foxes. Without a question, that’s referring to the foxes. Except maybe it’s not. Meaning, in a sense it is, if you’re talking about Samson. But we’ll talk in a minute about what it really is. So, let’s jump ahead to Judges 16 and see about the death of Samson. So, Samson was captured by the Philistines, and we’re told they blind him. So, let’s read verse 21, and then we’ll skip ahead after that.

Lynell: “The Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and shackled him in bronze…”

Nehemia: Come on, Gaza!

Lynell: Mhm. “And he became a mill slave in the prison.”

Nehemia: So, he’s blind, and he’s attached with chains to, you know, like a pole or something, and he’s just pushing on that pole all day. That’s something like that. Like, normally you have a donkey do it, “but we got a Jew, so let’s have him do”.

Lynell: Oh, wow.

Nehemia: “So then the Philistines make a feast to Dagon,” and let’s go… skip to verse… let’s go to verse 23.

Lynell: “Now the lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon and make merry. They chanted, ‘Our god has delivered into our hands our enemy Samson.’ When the people saw him, they sing praises to their god, chanting, ‘Our god has delivered him into our hands. The enemy who devastated our land and who slew so many of us.’”

Nehemia: They sound like the Lebanese cleric, “the enemy who devastated our land”. That’s what he said, “He destroyed, he shattered, he left scorched earth.” So, they’re remembering back to what he did, not just to them, but to the land itself.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: He burned their crops. Alright.

Lynell: “As their spirits rose, they said, ‘Call Samson here and let him dance for us.’ Sampson was fetched from prison, and he danced for them. And they put…”

Nehemia: Well, it doesn’t say dance…

Lynell: Oh, it doesn’t?

Nehemia: It says, ‘let him make laugh for us,’ but might mean ‘make us laugh.’

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: And they called Samson from the prison, and it says va’yitzachek lifneihem, “and he played around before them”. I don’t know if I should say what that means. Go listen to the Torah pearls, where we talk about Ishmael. He played around. Same word as where it talks about Ishmael. Anyway, if you read the next couple words, you’ll see perhaps what it means, but I won’t say. Maybe someone will write in the comments.

Lynell: “And he danced for them.”

Nehemia: “He played around before them.”

Lynell: “And they put him between the pillars.”

Nehemia: Yeah. Well, it doesn’t say “then”. “And they had put him between the pillars.” Anyway, let’s move on.

Lynell: Okay. “And Samson said to the boy who was leading him by the hand, ‘Let go of me, and let me feel the pillars that the temple rests upon, that I may lean on them.’ Now, the temple was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there, and there were some 3,000 men and women on the roof watching Samson dance. Then Samson called to Yehovah, ‘Oh Lord Yehovah, please remember me and give me strength just this once, oh God, to take revenge of the Philistines, if only for one of my two eyes.’ He embraced the two pillars that the temple rested on, one with his right arm and one with his left, and he leaned against them. And Samson cried, ‘Let me die with the Philistines. And he pulled with all his might.’ The temple came crashing down on the lords and all the people in it. Those who were slain by him as he died outnumbered those who had been slain by him when he lived. His brothers and all his father’s household came down and carried him up and buried him in the tomb of his father Manoah, between Zorah and Eshtaol. He had led Israel for 20 years.”

Nehemia: So, he killed more people in his death than he did in his life, and so I would imagine that’s what he’s talking about, this Lebanese Shiite cleric. But he mentions the burned ground, which has to be the foxes. So, I did a little bit of investigation because, frankly, I’m not an expert on Islam. And I found a really interesting journal article by a scholar named Andrew Rippin, and I’ll put a link up on nehemiaswall.com. And it’s called “The Muslim Samson: Medieval, Modern and Scholarly Interpretations”.

Lynell: Interesting.

Nehemia: And he brings the Muslim sources. And what’s interesting is the Quran never mentions Muhammad… or, excuse me…

Lynell: Samson.

Nehemia: That actually might be true as well. The Quran never mentions Samson by name, but medieval Muslim interpreters… because it’s a mistake to think of Islam as the religion of the Quran. This is a controversial statement that I’ll make, but Islam has as much to do with the Quran as Catholicism has to do with the New Testament and Rabbinical Judaism has to do with the Tanakh. There’s layers and layers of interpretation and traditions on top of it, and they don’t claim otherwise. With some exceptions… you have Quran-only Muslims, but that’s a very small minority, although it’s probably more of them than there are Karaites. But still, it’s in the maybe tens of thousands of people. Okay, so, the story of Samson, you’re not going to find it in the Quran, but there are verses in the Quran that they interpret to be a reference to Muhammad in the Middle Ages.

So, there’s someone named Al-tha’alabi, whoever that is, I’m sure I’m mispronouncing that. And again, this is in Rippin’s article, and Al-tha’alabi says, “God has said…” and then they quote the Quran, chapter 97, verses 1 to 3: “Lo, we revealed this message,” meaning, I guess, the Quran itself, “on the night of power, and what will explain to you the night of power? The night of power is better than a thousand months.” No idea what that means. One of the claims about the Quran is it’s the most beautiful poetry ever. That’s typical of the poetry of the Quran, and maybe in the original Arabic it’s more beautiful, but it sounds incoherent to me. I have no idea. Not only do I have no idea what it’s talking about, but the medieval Muslim interpreters said, “What on earth is this talking about? We’d better make up a story to fill in the gaps.”

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: No, really. So, what is… it says, “the night of power”, meaning, on which the Quran or some part of the Quran was revealed, “is better than a thousand months”. So, Abu Omar Al-iraqi told us, according to… this is still from Al-tha’alabi. So, some guy who was a tradition named Abu Amr Al-iraqi told us, according to his isnad, that is, tradition, “On the authority of Ibn Abi Naji, that the prophet mentioned a man from the children of Israel who wore armor in the way of God for a thousand months.” So, when the Quran says, this is better than wearing armor for a thousand months, what does that refer to? So, the medieval Muslim sources explain, “Well, there was an Israelite who wore armor for a thousand months.” The Muslims were amazed at that. “So, God revealed,” that is the verse, “lo, he revealed,” in the Qur’an. “Lo! He revealed it on the night of power,” et cetera, “during which that man wore armor striving in the way of God.” Okay, well, still didn’t tell us who this man is. Some Israelite wore armor for a thousand months. Is that Samson?

Well, it goes on. “Abdallah Abdabah told us,” this is again the Al-tha’alabi, this medieval Muslim source, according to his tradition on the authority of some other guy, “that Samson, whom God guided because of his righteousness, was from a Roman town whose inhabitants were idol worshipers.” What? Samson was from a Roman town? Remember, the woman says in the interview with this cleric, she says, “Samson the Israelite, or Samson, you know… Which Samson?” And I thought, at first, he’s nodding his head. But he doesn’t nod his head, because he’s a muslim scholar and he doesn’t believe that Samson is an Israelite!

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: Samson is a Roman!

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: And that goes on in this source. “historians there are related according to what has been told by me,” by whoever, bla bla bla. Okay. And then al-Taburi, who is another famous source of Hadith, which is like the Muslim oral law. “Samson was an inhabitant of one of the Roman cities. He had been guided by God because of his integrity. However, his people were idol worshipers. From his and their story, the following has been told to us by Ibn Hamid, who reported…” whatever. Okay.

So, this is incredible. So, they have a story about Samson, but it’s not the story from the Tanakh. You know, there’s these Christians, and one Jew, who have these talks where they talk about how, you know, the Muslims believe in Jesus, but it’s not the Jesus of the New Testament. And I’m not going to get into that, because that’s beyond the scope of what we’re talking about here. But they have stories about Samson, and it is the Samson of the Tanakh. But what they know about the Samson of the Tanakh is completely confused.

Bear in mind this isn’t even the Quran. So, there’s the guy who wore armor for a thousand years, or a thousand months, and that’s an Israelite. But they never say that’s Samson. In the context of the man who wore armor for a thousand years, then they tell a story about Samson. They never say directly that he’s Samson, at least in what we read so far.

So, let me read… this is actually what the scholar did here, is something interesting. He took all the different traditions, and he smooshed them into a single story, which is a bit dubious, but we’ll read it anyway. “Samson was the only…” this is the Muslim story about Samson. And why is this important? Because when the Lebanese Shiite cleric is talking about, “Samson came and he destroyed, he shattered, he left scorched earth,” he knows this story. Now, it could be the Shiites have a different story. I don’t know, I’m not an expert in Islam. I’m relying on what Rippin said here, and if somebody knows better, please post it in the comments.

But this is really interesting, because this is… and a lot of things in Islam strike me as, they were sitting around the campfire telling stories, and the stories kind of got confused. It’s kind of like that game “broken telephone”. Now, they might say that… not “might,” they say the same thing about us. In other words, in the Quran it says that the Torah and the gospel are valid, but then when you look at the Torah that we have and the… And when they say gospel, what do they mean? The four Gospels or New Testament? Whatever they mean, that’s a whole separate discussion. Like, for example, in their traditions, it wasn’t Isaac who was bound by Abraham to be sacrificed, it was Ishmael, the ancestor of Muhammad.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: So, the point is, they on the one hand acknowledge the Torah, or the Tanakh, perhaps you could say it means. On the other hand, their stories don’t match the Torah, so how do they reconcile the two? They say, “Well, you guys changed it.” We did? So, in other words, in the original Torah, they claim… some Muslims, not all, but some Muslims claim, that it mentioned Muhammad and predicted the coming of Muhammad, and the Jews changed it.

Anyway… so, here’s what it says about Samson, which is, they’re confused, from my perspective story. And again, they might say I’m confused, but I’m willing to accept that they say that, because I know I’m right. “Samson was the only man among them who had submitted himself to God.” And that’s a technical term. “Submitted himself” means they’re claiming he’s a Muslim. So, there’s one Muslim in the Roman town, and that’s Samson. And then Tha’alibi, which is really interesting, “He was a Muslim, among them, one of the people of the gospel.” So, they’re saying he’s not just a Christian, he’s a true Christian, and a true Christian is a Muslim, in their distorted view of history. That’s how, you know, Muslims… and again, this isn’t even the Quran, this is in the Middle Ages.

“His mother had made him a Nazarite. He was a man from one of their villages, to which the people were disbelievers who worshipped idols.” So, he’s a pagan! Samson’s a pagan, according to the Muslim sources! So, this Muslim cleric, in 2024, a few days ago, really… he knows this story. He doesn’t know what it says in the Tanakh, although the story we’re about to read says nothing about fire, that he got from the Tanakh. Or did he? We’ll get to that.

It goes on. “Samson did not live far away from them,” meaning the idolaters. “Alone he used to fight them and struggle with them in the way of God, taking his needs from them while killing them, taking them prisoner and seizing their property.” So, this is interesting because now this is a paradigm for what a Muslim should do. You should just go steal stuff from your neighbors who aren’t Muslims. That’s basically… no, no, that’s the message here.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: “Samson would encounter them only with the jawbone of a camel.” So, they know the story in the Tanakh, but it’s been corrupted and confused. Why a camel? Because they don’t know… I mean, they do know about donkeys, so I don’t know why a camel. But that’s the way they tell the story. “When they fought him and he fought them, he would work hard and become thirsty. Sweet water would burst forth from him from the rock at Lechi.” So, they’ve read the Tanakh story! They’ve heard it! Again, it’s like sitting around the campfire. This is like the… I don’t know… the TikTok version of the Tanakh story.

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: It’s so confused. You’re like, wait, what does it actually say in the Tanakh? And he would drink like… so, it’s interesting. They described this as a repetitive action, it didn’t happen once. “He would happen and become thirsty. Sweet water would burst forth repeatedly from him from the rock at Lechi,” even though it’s a one-time event in the Tanakh, “And he would drink from it until he was revived and had regained his strength. Neither iron nor anything else could hold him. He struggled with them in the way of God for a thousand months.”

Ah, so the one who struggled with a thousand months isn’t an Israelite, he’s a pagan who comes from a Roman town. And then Taburi says, “In that way he fought and battled them in the way of God. And in his raiding, he would obtain his needs from them.” So, he comes from a pagan town, but he becomes a Christian. “They were powerless before him until finally they said, ‘There is no way to get to him except through his wife.’” So, they know some of the story, but it’s been confused. And look, why do they say he’s a Christian? Probably because they didn’t read the story in the Tanakh; they heard the story from Christian monks.

Lynell: Ah.

Nehemia: Or Christian clerics, and so they assumed he was a Christian. The Christians told us the story. Now, I’m speculating. I don’t know. “They went to his wife and bribed her. She said, ‘Yes, I will tie him up for you.’ So, they gave her a strong rope and said, ‘While he is sleeping…’” obviously this is a retelling of the Tanakh story. “‘While he is sleeping, bind his hand to his neck so we may come and take him away.’ So, while he was sleeping, she bound his hand to his neck with the rope. When he awoke, he pulled it with his hand, and it fell from his neck. He said to her, ‘Why have you done this?’ She said, ‘I wanted to test your strength with it. I have never seen anybody like you.’ So, she sent a message to them, ‘I tied him with the rope, but it was of no use.’ So, they sent her…”

And I don’t know if I’ll read the whole story. Basically it’s a retelling of what we read in Genesis (Judges). She eventually cuts his hair. And guys, you can read this in Rippin’s article, which I’ll put a link to. It’s on page 242, if you want to hear the full Muslim story about Samson, who is a Christian who comes from a pagan family or a pagan town. So, he’s a convert to Christianity. And it’s interesting; in some of the Muslim sources, this story is told within the chronological order of the man known in Christianity as Saint George. So, Saint George of Lydda was a Christian martyr who was originally a Greek from Cappadocia, which is in today’s central Turkey, and he was a Roman soldier who believed in Jesus. Although according to one version of the history, he might have actually been a bishop; maybe he wasn’t a Roman soldier. In any event, he was martyred by the Romans, and he became Saint George. And later, there’s a story about Saint George and the dragon, where he slays a dragon, but that’s kind of a later elaboration of the story.

So, they think he’s a contemporary just before or after Saint George. In other words, they think Samson is someone who lived in the 3rd century CE or AD. And you think, how could that be that you would think Samson lived in 3rd century AD? Well, the Quran has Haman in the court of Pharaoh. So, chronology isn’t their greatest strong suit.

Alright. It goes on. Or let me jump ahead. So, his wife, who they don’t name… but we know her as Delilah. Delila. “She sent for the people who came and took him. They cut off his nose,” and this is after she cut his hair. “They cut off his nose and his earlobes, gouged out his eyes,” that part’s in the Tanakh, “and then stood him before the people,” meaning the Philistines… Well, it doesn’t actually say Philistines; the Romans, I guess. “And stood him before the people in front of the multi-columned minaret.”

So, the Roman pagans have minarets! Well, I guess maybe that’s where the Muslims got it from, I don’t know. “The people are…” Maybe that’s what they thought Muslims got it from, from Romans, I guess. I don’t know. “The people and their king looked down from atop it,” meaning the minaret, “in order to gaze at Samson and what had been done to him.” And this is parallel to what you read at the end. “When they mutilated him and placed him there, Samson called unto God that he be given power over them. So, God ordered Samson to seize two of the supports of the minaret…” Sound familiar?

Lynell: Mhm.

Nehemia: “On which the king…” And it’s interesting, because in the Tanakh they’re worshiping Dagon. But here, they’re Roman pagans who have a minaret rather than some kind of palace. “So, he ordered Samson to seize,” meaning God, “ordered Samson to seize two of the supports of the minaret upon which the king and the people who were looking at him were located, and pull on them. So, he pulled on them.” And Tabari adds, “God restored his sight and those things which had been removed from his body, so his ears and his nose grew back,” according to Tabari’s version. “The minaret fell down along with the king and the people who were on it, and they were all killed by it in the destruction.”

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: Then Tha’alabi adds, “His wife also perished with them.” That’s not in the Tanakh. “God restored his sight to him and made whole the parts of his body that they had afflicted, and he returned as he had been. The story of Samson took place during the days of the petty kings,” meaning the Romans, “and God is all-knowing.” So, this is the 3rd century AD if you put this into Muslim chronology.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: So, when the Lebanese cleric is talking about, “Well, you know what Samson did. He destroyed, he shattered, he left scorched earth.” So, there was nothing in what he did… That’s why I read this whole elaborate thing. There wasn’t a word about that, “with scorched earth.”

Lynell: Right!

Nehemia: Not a single word. So, where did they get that? Unquestionably, they got that from Judges 15, the story of the foxes.

Lynell: Yeah.

Nehemia: However, there is a subtext, and the subtext is that there is a book that was written a number of years ago called The Samson Option, and the Samson Option, according to this book, it’s claimed, is something within Israeli military doctrine. And I guarantee you this Muslim cleric knows about the Samson Option. In the Samson Option, if Israel is ever defeated and going to be overrun and destroyed, we fire off the nuclear missiles that we have and we take out the Arab states around us.

Lynell: Oh, wow!

Nehemia: And that’s called the Samson Option.

Lynell: Oh, my goodness!

Nehemia: So, when he talks about Samson, and she says, “Samson the Israelite?” And he doesn’t acknowledge and say, “yes.” He kind of smiles.

Lynell: Oh, my goodness!

Nehemia: Because to him, Samson… he doesn’t even know that Samson is an Israelite. He knows that Samson is a Christian convert from paganism. He’s a Roman.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: But he knows what the Samson Option is because that’s now something in popular culture, and that’s Israel is going to set off their thermonuclear weapons and, you know, bomb Lebanon and Syria and any enemies. I don’t think they think Israel is going to bomb Egypt and Jordan because we have peace treaties with them. But, yeah, we’re gonna bomb Tehran and maybe Riyadh and Mecca.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: Who knows? I don’t know what… I’m not privy to those decisions. So, the Samson Option is when you know you’re going to die anyway, you put your hands on the pillars and you push, knowing that it’s going to kill you.

Lynell: Wow!

Nehemia: Knowing that it’s going to kill you.

Lynell: Wow!

Nehemia: So, when he says about Samson, I don’t even know if he knows about the foxes. When he says, “He destroyed, he shattered, he left scorched earth,” he’s probably thinking about the Samson Option, that Israel might use nuclear weapons against you. So be careful! But it’s interesting; here’s a Muslim cleric in September 2024 saying, “Samson left scorched earth, so be careful. They’re coming for you, Nasrallah. Make your last will and testament.” And then you have an Israeli song from 18 years ago, “The IDF is coming to burn you, Nasrallah,” and they drop 80 bombs of around a ton each, including bunker busters, and they kill Nasrallah.

Lynell: Yeah.

Nehemia: Interestingly, he didn’t burn. His body was intact, we’re told, and he suffocated somehow from the smoke or something like this. So, this is amazing stuff, and I praise Yehovah, and I rejoice over the death of Nasrallah. But one last thing we have to talk about, and that is, there’s two verses in the Bible, in the Book of Proverbs, that seemingly contradict. So, I’m going to ask you to read Proverbs chapter 11, verse 10. And this is very much the Jewish way of reading Scripture, is, you look for the contradictions. You have the thesis and the antithesis, the thesis and the antithesis, and from looking at the two of them together, you get a synthesis. Okay, what is it saying? What are the boundaries of these two different statements? Because we know the Bible isn’t contradicting itself.

Lynell: Right, of course. So, it says, “When the righteous prosper, the city exalts. When the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy.”

Nehemia: Yes. Okay. And literally when the…

Lynell: Is it teruah?

Nehemia: No, it’s rina, which is “song”. Literally, “when the evildoer is destroyed,” is literally what it says, “there is song.” So, if I could sing, I would, but I can’t. But the Arabs sang for me, so thank you. Although maybe they were praising the wrong name. So, praise Yehovah. Proverbs 24:17-18. How do we reconcile what we just read with that?

Lynell: “If your enemy falls, do not exalt. If he trips, let not your heart rejoice, lest Yehovah see it, and be displeased, and avert His wrath from Him.” Whoa! Those do seem to be contradictory.

Nehemia: So, should we be rejoicing over the death of Nasrallah, or shouldn’t we? And it’s interesting, because the Talmud discusses this question. Not about Nasrallah, about our enemies, and it gives a story about… well, God was in heaven, and He was upset that the Israelites were singing over the death of the Egyptians. And He said, “Those are My creations. Why are you rejoicing? They died.” But that’s not in the Tanakh. In the Tanakh, Miriam goes out with her timbrels and she’s singing literally a song. With the destruction of evildoers, there is song, and the Egyptians were evildoers who enslaved us, and the Israelites were literally singing.

So, we know that if your enemies are destroyed, you should be singing. Your oppressors, your foreign oppressors. And so, this is the explanation of… the Talmud reconciles the two verses as follows, and there have been other explanations over the years. I’m not going to go into all of it. But this is in the Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 16a, and it ties it into Mordecai and Haman. Not Haman who lived in the time of Pharaoh, but Haman who was a Persian official, apparently an Aegean, some sort of a Greek who lived in the time of Artaxerxes, or Achashverosh in the Hebrew. Ahasuerus? Or what is it in English? Or something like that.

Alright, so, there’s a story that the rabbis elaborate upon. So, Haman was required to put Mordecai on a horse and ride him around in the royal garments. That’s in the Book of Esther. And then Haman is preparing him. This is the story of the rabbis elaborating. “Haman dressed Mordecai in the royal garments. Haman then said to him, ‘Mount the horse and ride.’ Mordecai said to him, ‘I’m unable, as my strength has waned from the days of fasting that I observed.’” Remember, in the Book of Esther, there was three days and three nights of fasting. “Haman then stooped down before him and said to him…” I, uh, let’s see… this in the Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 16a. So, we’re reading Hadith, we’re reading Quran, we’re reading Talmud, and of course we’re reading Tanakh. “Haman then stooped down before him, and Mordecai ascended on him. As he was ascending the horse, Mordecai gave Haman a kick. A deliberate kick.”

Lynell: [Laughter]

Nehemia: This is in the Talmud; we’re not saying this happened. “Haman then said to Mordecai, ‘Is it not written for you…’” So, Haman’s quoting the book of Proverbs, “‘Do not rejoice when your enemy falls?’ Mordecai said to him, ‘This statement only applies to Jews, but with regard to you it is written…’” And then he quotes Deuteronomy 33:29, “And you shall tread upon their high place.”

So, in other words, the solution of the Talmud… it doesn’t mention Proverbs 24:17-18, but that’s an… or sorry, it doesn’t mention Proverbs 11:10, what we just read. The subtext, though, is that the way it reconciles “do we rejoice when our enemy fails or don’t we?” And the answer of the rabbis, which I think is correct, is that the rejoicing is for the evildoers. So, you may have a personal enemy, your neighbor who you hate, who hates you, or your business rival, and… is he an evildoer or is he just your enemy? To you, he’s your enemy, and to him you’re his enemy. That doesn’t mean he’s wicked and an evildoer.

Lynell: Hmm.

Nehemia: So, Proverbs 11:10 is about the evildoer, resha’im, singular, rasha. Which is interesting because it sounds like the word Russia, but… So, when the evildoer is destroyed, there should be song. But when you have a personal enemy, who might not be an evildoer, he’s just someone who doesn’t like you and you don’t like him, don’t rejoice about that. So, the Talmud says it’s about Israel. I don’t think it’s about Israel. I think it’s about, there are people who are genuinely evil, and when they are destroyed, you should be happy. But if I have some personal gripe with somebody, you know, somebody wrote something mean about me on the internet…

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: And he sees me as an enemy, and I will accept that for these purposes, even though, you know, whatever. He doesn’t really know me, and I don’t really know him. Is he an evildoer? No. He’s just kind of a jerk. Maybe I’m a jerk too, sometimes.

Lynell: He didn’t kill 100, you know… thousands of people.

Nehemia: He didn’t kill thousands of people. This is not an evildoer, he’s just a jerk.

Lynell: Gotcha.

Nehemia: He’s a person of poor judgment, perhaps.

Lynell: Not a lot of wisdom.

Nehemia: He doesn’t follow “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. Okay. So, I don’t think it’s about Israel/not Israel. It’s about people who are genuinely wicked. That’s what rasha means; wicked, evildoers. People who are genuinely wicked. When they’re destroyed, you should rejoice. Pharaoh was genuinely wicked. He ordered the death of babies. He chased down Israel to destroy Israel, to kill every man, woman and child. And so, when those people drowned, Israel rightfully rejoiced. Haman was genuinely evil. Haman was the Nasrallah and the Hitler of his generation. He was truly evil. And so was Nasrallah. Just because I have it in for somebody because he doesn’t like me and I don’t like him, that doesn’t mean that person’s an evildoer.

You know, it’s kind of like the old thing, in football. I heard this from Keith. So, when you pray for your team to be victorious, well, doesn’t God hear the prayers of the other team? You’re rivals.

Lynell: Oh, right, right,

Nehemia: But they’re not… the other team isn’t evil.

Lynell: So, Nehemia, what’s this word in Hebrew? You said rasha. Reish…

Nehemia: Rasha. Reish-Shin-Ayin…

Lynell: Ayin. That’s what I couldn’t get, the last…

Nehemia: Which is singular rasha, in Yiddish, or in Eastern European Hebrew we would say “Russia”. That’s how it was pronounced, because…

Lynell: Oh, really?

Nehemia: …rasha in standard proper Hebrew… And in plural, resha’im. So, when resha’im are destroyed, there’s song, and Nasrallah was a rasha. Was he our enemy? He also was our enemy. But your enemy doesn’t have to be a rasha. It’s really an interesting… I think that’s profound, that’s the synthesis here. There’s this profound moral lesson here in Proverbs.

And part of Proverbs is to… you know, one of the forms of Proverbs is what’s called the chida, and chida is a riddle. And so, this is essentially a very deliberate riddle between Proverbs 11 and Proverbs 24, that you’re meant to look at these together and say, “Okay, what is the difference?” Like, there’s an example in Proverbs 26:4-5, which are two juxtaposed next to each other verses that are directly contradictory statements. And that’s a riddle. Okay, what does the first one mean and what does the second one mean?

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: There’s some nuance here that we’re missing. And the nuance here is the first verse. Proverbs 11:10 speaks about resha’im, truly wicked, evil people. And 24:17 speaks about your enemy, who may not be an evil person. He just doesn’t like you.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: If he’s an evil person, then you should rejoice.

Lynell: Amen. Then we should rejoice, because this was an evil person.

Nehemia: Who knew that, from the death of Hassan Nasrallah, we could learn one of the profound moral lessons from the Book of Proverbs? Praise Yehovah.

Lynell: Amen.

Nehemia: Now, I can’t sing, but would you sing praises over the death of Nasrallah? I’m going to put you on the spot here. Sing a praise.

Lynell: Okay. Any praise?

Nehemia: Yeah, sure.

Lynell: Alright.

Nehemia: As long as it’s a praise to Yehovah.

Lynell: Does it have to be a special song? Can we not just sing?

Nehemia: No. Any song.

Lynell: [singing] Praise Yehovah, Praise Yehovah, For He has conquered our enemies

Nehemia: Amen.

Lynell: [singing] Praise Yehovah, Praise Yehovah, For He has conquered our enemies. Amen.

Nehemia: Amen. I want to end with the words of Samson. Judges 16:28. Samson prayed when he was blinded and had his hands on the pillars.

Lynell: Yeah, that was really…

Nehemia: And he knew he was going to die.

Lynell: He was so strong.

Nehemia: He said, “Adonai Yehovah,” “Zochreni na,” “remember me please,” “ve’chazkeni na ach ha’pa’am ha’zzeh ha’elohim,” “and strengthen me, please, this one time, Oh, God.” “Ve’innakmah nekam-achat mi’shtei einai mi’plishtim,” “and let me be avenged, the vengeance of just one of my eyes from the Philistines. And I pray, Yehovah,” “zochrenu na, Adonai Yehovah.” “Remember us, please.” “Ve’chazkenu,” and strengthen us please, Yehovah, and our army and our leaders and our allies. Strengthen us, Yehovah, this time that we meet may free our hostages and defeat our enemies. And not just Nasrallah, but the rats hiding in the tunnels in Gaza. Father, I ask that the tunnels collapse upon our enemies in Gaza the way that the palace collapsed upon the Philistines. And, Father, I ask that You be with the hostages, and You be with our soldiers, and You give wisdom to our leaders and to our allies and the leaders of our allies. Father, I ask for them to have wisdom and to give them strength and to guide them, because we know everything that they do, it’s only through You that all of our victories and our salvation takes place. And I praise You, Yehovah. Amen.

Lynell: Amen.

Nehemia: Praise Yehovah.

Lynell: Praise Yehovah.

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