Heptateuch (the first seven books of the Bible in verse) 7.700–7.745

yet he does not know the shadow that the blind man possesses. Shut in prison, he turns the mill with his strong right hand; so the use of his sides helps him with a double weight. Without long delay, by the honour of returning hair, the shorn locks revived, which at the same time restored with them both strength and grace. See, on a certain day the chiefs gathered in crowds to hold a solemn feast for the god whom those who worship vain things hold as divinity: they call him by the ancient name Dagon. Here, while they rejoice in the downfall of the deposed Samson, standing far off in the central vault of the temple, they ordered the man, now ready to conquer, to be summoned. He, ordered to die, is dragged in, and to those loosed in laughter his blindness gives occasion for their wickedness. By chance the whole house hung on two columns beneath it; going between them, he grips both and holds them in a full embrace and leans back, so that it might fall with greater force, and, having prayed to the Lord, he drew down an avenging ruin with his own death. Bereaved of him, his father and brothers and all his kin gather and mourn the dead and honour him with a tomb.

Meanwhile Micah asks his mother for a very large talent of silver; the woman, trusting, explains that it is holy and vowed to God, but to be returned at a fixed time; soon she makes lofty gifts for the holy one, and teraphim and a temple to God; and, his lap filled, his younger son, as priest, brings gifts to the Lord. Afterwards Micah chooses a young man from Judah and binds to himself one seeking a dwelling, with a heap of gifts, and, taken in, he earned God’s sanctuary by his vows. See, the tribe of Dan, suddenly seeking new realms, sends five envoys from its company, searching, to test everything, which portion of land is better, where then they might settle their homes. While they go round and survey the glades and byways, they come to the man from Judah and fall into talk, asking what he does, what rites he practises; when asked, after he had told them, compelled, he consults the commands of the high Lord God, and declared heaven’s favour, and commends them, bidding them depart. Returning, they told this to their people; and now in a dense column six hundred come. They carry off the ephod and the carved image and the teraphim, and ask the man from Judah to stay with them.

When Micah prepared to call back the fugitive, he is driven off; the priest, now adopted, does not wish to return. Laish is attacked in war and, its houses burned, loses its homes and is denied its citadels in grief. And the band of victors eagerly settles there and gave it the tribe’s name; for it is called Dan. There was a certain man, a Levite, who, having no wife, seeks a concubine from among the slave women. She, given to him, yielded, then, dissolving the shared yoke, hostile, flies far off and flees the partnership of the scorned bed. When her husband anxiously wished to call her back, he was leading with him a servant they shared and beasts, and, coming to his father-in-law, asks for the daughter according to their covenant; the father promises and gently cherishes him and, by detaining him, gradually entices him to stay with him. Soon he, settling down, eats and rests untroubled in a peaceful home.