Delilah

🏷  Bible name Samson Semitic pun spook enemy · name   —   by Gerry · Jul 2020 · 357 words

The Biblical woman Delilah who helps defeat Samson is a pun with “weakening” by “detaching” & “tearing off”. She is the counterpart to Samson, whose name means “strength” through “veiling”. Delilah is the one who lifts Samson’s veil.

Delilah is a semi-admitted pun. The root dl / dll / dldl means “to weaken”, and Delilah’s name is sometimes interpreted as “she who weakens”.

Delilah : The mistress of Samson who betrayed him to the Philistines; Borrowed from Hebrew דְּלִילָה‎ (d’līla, “[she who] weakened”). — English (Wikt)

But that’s only half the truth: The same word root means “detaching”, “dangling”, “tearing away”, “taking off”, “lifting up”. Since Delilah is paired with Samson in the Biblical story, whose name puns with “strength” & “veil”, it’s pretty clear that her meanings of “weakening” & “taking off” are referring to lifting the veil. In the story, this is represented by cutting his locks, since Samson’s pun-root ṣmṣm means both “locks” & “veil”.

In the pun-encrypted spook parable beneath, that is the advice for our “hidden leaders”: Veiling & masking will strengthen them, because it shields their insane corruption from us, their subjects. But whenever we manage to take off their veil, they will be weak, because there is nothing behind it!

Hebrew, Aramaic dl, dll, dldl = weaken, detach, lift up, tear away, take off

דיל ; דלדל dldl; dyl : to reduce, weaken; to loosen, detach; loosely connected, hanging down, detached; poverty-stricken, beggarly; to become thin, sparse; to be reduced; to be detached, loosely connected, disarranged, parted into shreds; to be disregarded — Hebrew (Jastrow)

דלדל dldl : to be torn away — Aramaic (CAL)

דלדל dldl : to become poor, neglected; to be torn loose — Hebrew (Jastrow)

דלל dll : to lift up; to thin; to lift one’s self up, be proud — Hebrew (Jastrow)

דלל dll : to be thin, swing, hang; to be poor; to thin, to take off grapes, or take out plants — Hebrew (Jastrow)

דלל dll : to diminish something; to become small, to be diminished; to become rare; to be torn loose‏ — Aramaic (CAL)

דלדל dldl : to become minimal; to become minimal — Aramaic (CAL)

דלילו dlylw : tendency, facility; tendency, weakness for something; easily — Aramaic (CAL)

🏷  Bible name Samson Semitic pun spook enemy · name