The Banjo Bible

“Moses summoned all Israel and said…’You will settle in the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety'”  Deuteronomy 12:10

It was a very hairy man who struck a certain town,
And stumbled on a leery plan to bed and settle down.
He wandered here and wandered there, until a true beguiler
Enticed him with her looks and flair – a woman named Delilah.
The union, though, was fateful for our Samson and his mop,
For soon the lass would launch a store – a sort of barber’s shop.

Well Samson was a man of might – the strongest human ever,
With strength akin to dynamite and gelignite together.
He was the Living Lord’s design to save His populi,
From horrid things their Philistine oppressors used to try.
In fact it’s said that once he warded off a thousand crims
With just a bone, and what the Lord’d put into his limbs.

Delilah, though, was fair and flash, as tempters mostly are,
She wore a strike-your-fancy sash; and loved a verbal spar.
She was a humorist of note and keen at repartee,
She honed the art of self-promoting: “Me,” she said “for Me!”
But here’s the thing, of all, that touches most upon our wagging –
She loved her money very much, and sure was good at nagging.

So when the dreaded enemy approached her in frustration
And offered her a hefty fee for certain information
About her strong beloved and his energy and muscle,
She took to seek the grubby grand, and started up the tussle.
“I have a question, dear, I do, I hope it isn’t rude,
But how could one as strong as you be tethered and subdued?”

Well Samson, so it seemed, was fine and willing to be tied –
He said “My darling, use some twine that hasn’t fully dried.”
The Philistines in turn provided seven bits of string,
And lay in wait as Lilah glided in to do the thing.
But when she called the plotters out to catch her wily double,
He tossed away the string without the slightest bit of trouble!

He later told her “Use my scruffin’, fluffin’ hair for weaving,
And see the rough and tough and puffin’ power in me leaving.”
She probably felt the time was right to give his hair a groom,
And gladly strung it extra tight across her weaving loom.
But when he felt his shaggy head connected to some cloth,
He pulled apart the pin and thread, and flung the fabric off.

Another try, another fail, but ‘Lilah was progressing –
You’ll notice there her maiden sale in hair and whisker dressing.
And so she let her lasso fly towards a final ropin’ –
For speaking metaphoric-lie, her barber’s shop was open!
She simply had to get the gent – her patron number one –
To answer her equivalent to “How’d you like it done?”

“I beg you, dear, to tell me how you’re stronger than a lion.”
But Samson gave her nothin’ now – a-nothin’ was he buyin’.
Delilah, though, she nagged and nagged and nagged and nagged again,
As if she’d caught a cat and dragged it screaming through his brain,
At last her partner, worn and fraught, and sick to death of chidings –
As good as said “I’ll have it short around the back and sidings!”

Delilah gave her friends a wink, a dexter eyelid shut –
“We’ve only got to give, I think, his bloomin’ hair a cut!”
They hurried in to lend a hand, and brought the promised cash,
And gave the strong ‘un’s every strand a cold and ruthless slash.
And as they did the quick and shoddy, maladjusted shearing,
The strength inside our Samson’s body did a disappearing.

His hairiness had been the source of all his punch and vigour,
For with it came the blessed force of someone vastly bigger.
The Lord, in fact, had told his Mum and Dad at his conception,
To raise the little chum to be badly-groomed exception.
And if a razor never saw the skin upon his cranium,
He’d always have an inward braun of reinforced titanium.

But now the Phillies hauled him off for dark incarcerating,
And with a condescending scoff began the celebrating.
They merried by the thousand in the temple of an idol,
Til Samson, from the wretched din, was going suicidal.
But then they made an error, for they brought him in to mock ‘im,
Which gave the wounded warrior another chance to sock ‘em!

He asked the Lord to give him just a final little filler
Of power – then he yelled and thrust his hand against a pillar.
He pushed it down – another too – and made the hall collapse,
And almost, in a day, removed all Philly from the maps.
And so the Lord had used a bloke who wasn’t too finessed,
To foil a foe and fix his folk a phase of fearless rest.