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
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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