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    Reflection Essay - Week 6

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    Renée Peters
    Samson's story reflects that light is life itself. In the story, after Samson loses his physical strength and is imprisoned and blinded, he finds spiritual redemption. In his darkness and solitude, Samson remembers that God created the universe with light and that light permeates all of creation and the soul. He realizes he does not need physical sight to see the light of God. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Samson regains his strength through the spiritual light of God and avenges his blindness, seeing more clearly through his inner light even without physical sight.

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    Reflection Essay - Week 6

    Uploaded by

    Renée Peters
    29 views2 pages
    Samson's story reflects that light is life itself. In the story, after Samson loses his physical strength and is imprisoned and blinded, he finds spiritual redemption. In his darkness and solitude, Samson remembers that God created the universe with light and that light permeates all of creation and the soul. He realizes he does not need physical sight to see the light of God. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Samson regains his strength through the spiritual light of God and avenges his blindness, seeing more clearly through his inner light even without physical sight.

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    Samson's story reflects that light is life itself. In the story, after Samson loses his physical strength and is imprisoned and blinded, he finds spiritual redemption. In his darkness and solitude, Samson remembers that God created the universe with light and that light permeates all of creation and the soul. He realizes he does not need physical sight to see the light of God. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Samson regains his strength through the spiritual light of God and avenges his blindness, seeing more clearly through his inner light even without physical sight.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    29 views2 pages

    Reflection Essay - Week 6

    Uploaded by

    Renée Peters
    Samson's story reflects that light is life itself. In the story, after Samson loses his physical strength and is imprisoned and blinded, he finds spiritual redemption. In his darkness and solitude, Samson remembers that God created the universe with light and that light permeates all of creation and the soul. He realizes he does not need physical sight to see the light of God. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Samson regains his strength through the spiritual light of God and avenges his blindness, seeing more clearly through his inner light even without physical sight.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Renée Peters Peters 1

    Dr. Robert Llizo

    HNRS 3740-03

    24 February 2023

    Word Count: 630

    Reflection Essay - Week 6: Light of the Phoenix

    How does Samson’s story reflect that light is life itself?

    In Paradise Regained, the story of Samson is retold through Milton’s eyes. Samson was

    a judge of God. But in his pride, he loses his physical power and becomes blind. However, it is

    in that low point that he finds spiritual redemption. After Delilah instigates the shaving of

    Samsons divine hair, the “Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to

    Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house” (Judges 16:21).

    Samson was without sight, and he must’ve cried out, “O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of

    noon, / Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse / Without all hope of day / The Sun to me is dark /

    And silent as the Moon, / When she deserts the night / Hid in her vacant interlunar cave!”

    (Milton 332). This is the agony he endured in the prison: darkness in his eyes but more

    significantly, darkness in his soul. He was betrayed by the woman he loved and trusted, and he

    lost what gave him worth: his strength. “What is a man without his strength”, he must have

    thought. The total eclipse was more than just his physical sight but also his sight into the future.

    He was blind to God’s providence and that he would overcome this imprisonment. It is in this

    prison, alone, and weary that one may have time to engage solitude with God. Prison is hard but

    it gives a broken person time to think and build up inner strength. Thinking of God creating the

    universe with His power and wisdom, he says, “O first created Beam, and thou great Word, /

    “Let there be light, and light was over all”” (Milton 332). It is in this humbling place, that
    Peters 2

    Samson remembers the God that gave him his power and strength. He is very aware of the loss

    of light in his eyes, but he knows “That light is in the Soul, / She all in every part; why was the

    sight / To such a tender ball as th' eye confined?” (332). He realized that light is not confined to

    the eyes but is threaded throughout his body, his soul, and all of creation. God breathed light

    into creation and that same light permeates all. He realizes that he does not need his physical

    sight to truly see. Samson concludes that “light so necessary is to life, / And almost life itself, if

    it be true” (332). No matter the predicament, Light is with each individual person, if they open

    their spiritual eyes to it. Light is life itself because life is God and God is light. He is the light

    that leads the blind out of the cave into the light of revelation. Samson, as he is about to

    entertain his captors, realizes what God he serves and calls on His name. Samson cries, “O Lord

    God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I

    may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes” (Judges 16:28). He asks God to

    strengthen Him with the light of life, although he is till blind. His hair grows back and he in a

    martyr-like fashion takes down the Philistine house with his regained strength. His paradise was

    regained although “blind of sight, / Despised and thought extinguished quite, / With inward eyes

    illuminated / His fiery virtue roused / From under ashes into sudden flame” (Milton 378). He

    does not regain his physical sight, but the physical is avenged through the spiritual. He can see

    more clearly than he ever did in his life and like phoenix he burns bright with God’s light.

    Works Cited

    New Cambridge Paragraph Bible, KJ590:T: Personal Size. Edited by David Norton.

    Cambridge University Press, 2011. pp. 327

    Milton, John. Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes: And the Complete Shorter Poems. Edited

    by William Kerrigan et al., Modern Library, 2012. pp. 332-378

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