<p>Nobody has perfected the art of getting screwed over quite like the Jews.&nbsp; Ever since the dawn of time, the people of Israel have been jerked around by everyone from the Egyptians and the Babylonians to a bunch of obscure civilizations you've never even heard of before.&nbsp; It seems like at any given point in time, the Jews are being brutally oppressed by some heathen godless culture or another.</p>
<p>Well as of the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Judges, they were under the thumb of their ancient enemies the Philistines.&nbsp; It was during this time that the strongest and most powerful of all the Israelites proved that all you only needed was a quick temper and a shitload of Jew Power to make as stand and fuck up some pagan bitches with the Holy Realness.&nbsp; That hulking behemoth of a man was known as Samson, and he was a badass.&nbsp; This is his story.</p>
<p>Once upon a time there was a guy and his wife who got busy like all the time but couldn't conceive a child.&nbsp; Well one day the wife was walking home from buying a loaf of bread at the supermarket when all of a sudden she met an Angel of God.&nbsp; The Angel came up to her and was like, "hey you know how you can't get pregnant?&nbsp; Well God says that you're going to get knocked up and have a kid who is going to totally rock.&nbsp; He will be a total badass as long as you never cut his hair for any reason.&nbsp; Also you should keep kosher and lay off the booze while you've got one in the oven because you don't want this kid to have any kind of fucked-up birth defects or anything".</p>
<p>Within weeks she became pregnant just as the Angel had predicted, and the couple named their son Samson.</p>
<p>After Samson had reached manhood, he was walking through town one day when he saw a fine ass Philistine babe.&nbsp; As was the custom back in those days, he went home and told his Dad that he wanted to marry this chickenhead.&nbsp; His folks, being the good Jewish parents they were, were all like, "but Samson, she's not a Jew!"&nbsp; He said he didn't care, and he wanted this babe to be his wife.</p>
<p>A couple days later he was headed back into town to go on a date with this chick when all of a sudden a huge-ass fucking PISSED-OFF LION jumped out of the brush.&nbsp; This thing immediately started tearing ass towards him, roaring and baring it's razor-sharp teeth.&nbsp; Well Samson didn't even give a shit.&nbsp; He grabbed the fucking thing and pulled it apart with his bare hands like it was a piece of paper made out of beef.</p>
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<p align="center"><img src="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/samson1.jpg" alt="" vspace="8" /><br />This picture came from&nbsp;<a href="http://www.thebricktestament.com/" target="blank">http://www.thebricktestament.com</a>,<br />which is probably one of the greatest websites ever created.</p>
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<p>After destroying the King of the Jungle with nothing more than a bad attitude and the ole'&nbsp;<a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/meat+hooks" target="blank">meat hooks</a>, Samson went off to his date.&nbsp; They got some Starbucks and hung out, and decided they were going to get married because they were totally into each other.</p>
<p>At the rehearsal dinner before the wedding, Samson issued a riddle to thirty of his Philistine wedding guests.&nbsp; He told them that if they couldn't answer the riddle they each had to give Samson one of their finest robes.&nbsp; However, if they were able answer the riddle, then he would give one fine robe to each of the thirty guests.&nbsp; They got all psyched up about the idea of getting some free swag, so they agreed.&nbsp; Samson presented them with the riddle, but they were totally stumped.</p>
<p>The guests eventually got pissed and told Samson's wife that they were going to fucking set her and her father on fire if she didn't tell them the answer to the riddle.&nbsp; So she of course immediately went home and cried and whined to Samson until he finally gave her the correct answer.&nbsp; She immediately went back to the Philistines and passed the info along, and they were then able to answer Samson's riddle correctly.&nbsp; Just like that - BAM - he had to come up with thirty fine robes.&nbsp; Luckily, Samson, being the resourceful man that he was, knew just how to do this.</p>
<p>He got SUPER fucking Omega pissed, traveled to the Philistine village of Ashkelon, killed thirty dudes with his bare hands, stole their robes and presented his asshole wedding guests with the pilfered shit.&nbsp; Now THAT'S how a badass handles that sort of dilemma.</p>
<p>After a long day of slaughtering Philistines for no good reason, Samson got drunk and went to his wife's house for a booty call.&nbsp; He knocked on the door to her home and her father answered.&nbsp; When Samson was all like, "Hey I'm going to go upstairs and get some busy", his father-in-law was like, "Dude I thought you hated her, so I married her off to your best man!&nbsp; If you want though, you can marry her younger, hotter sister..."</p>
<p>Samson was stunned.&nbsp; He looked his former father-in-law in the eyes and said:</p>
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<p align="center"><em>"From this day I shall be blameless in what I do against the Philistines:&nbsp; For I will do you evils."<br /><br />- Judges 15:7</em></p>
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<p>Samson then proceeded to get pissed in the sort of totally balls-out way that people got pissed in the Old Testament.&nbsp; He put together a crazy army of foxes, slapped horned viking helmets on them, strapped a bunch of torches to their tails and set them loose in the Philistines' farmlands and vineyards.&nbsp; By the time they were done running around incinerating everything, the entirety of the Philistine croplands had been reduced to smoldering ashes.</p>
<p>Well the Philistines were understandably pretty angry at Samson for destroying all of their food and wine, so they were like, "OK jackass, if you like fire so much let's see how you enjoy this!"&nbsp; Then they captured Samson's ex-wife and her father and burned them alive.</p>
<p>This would prove to be a mistake.&nbsp; Badasses like Samson don't back down when you start setting their loved ones on fire.&nbsp; They seek vengeance.</p>
<p>Samson got the biggest sword he could find, headed into town and started fucking up Philistines like it was his job.&nbsp; The Bible is a little hazy on the details, simply saying he "cut them to pieces in a great slaughter".&nbsp; It's brief and to the point, but explicit enough that you have a pretty good idea of how fucking ripshit he was at these motherfuckers.</p>
<p>After he beat the shit out of every Philistine he could get his hands on, Samson went to the land of Judah and took up residence in a cave on the Rock of Etam.&nbsp; After being involved with so much death and destruction, he just decided to find a place to get away from it all and return to nature like Ralph Waldo Emerson on steroids.&nbsp; Unfortunately, the Philistines were not in any mood to let him get away.&nbsp; They put together a huge army and marched on Judah.</p>
<p>Since the people of Judah weren't in any position to go to war with the Philistines, they made a deal - they men of Judah agreed to hand over Samson if the Philistines would spare them.&nbsp; The Philistines agreed, and the high council of Judah headed to the Rock of Etam to get Samson.&nbsp; When they showed up he was just like, "Whatever.&nbsp; Go ahead and tie me up, but don't kill me.&nbsp; Just take me to the Philistines".&nbsp; So they bound him with two strong ropes and marched him down the mountain.</p>
<p>When the Philistines saw Samson coming they all started screaming insults at him like the audience at a Michael Richards show.&nbsp; When they saw their mortal enemy bound up and helpless, they all started to march towards him with their weapons drawn.&nbsp; But Samson wasn't about to be executed like some kind of chump.</p>
<p>All of a sudden, Samson flexed his giant manly pecs and the ropes holding him broke off into a thousand pieces.&nbsp; The Philistines all immediately froze in panic and collectively muttered "oh shit" under their breaths.&nbsp; Samson then grabbed the closest thing he could find, which just so happened to be the jawbone of an&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey" target="blank">ass</a>, and started beating the holy living fuck out of EVERYONE.&nbsp; When the dust finally settled, he had slaughtered one thousand Philistine soldiers with a freaking bone club.&nbsp; I think this is where the phrase "kicking ass" comes from.</p>
<p>Once he was done single-handedly destroying an entire regiment of Philistine infantry with little more than a blunt instrument and a shitload of determination, Samson sat down on a rock and realized he was half-dead from dehydration (fighting an army all by yourself is hard work).&nbsp; So he looked up to the heavens and cried, "Hey God I killed a thousand Philistines but now I'm thirsty as a motherfucker!" so God came down and gave him some Powerade.&nbsp; Samson got re-fueled by electrolytes and went home, where he went on to serve as the Judge of Israel for twenty years.</p>
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<p align="center"><img src="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/samson3.jpg" alt="" vspace="8" /><br />Samson steps on some Philistine's throat&nbsp;<a href="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/stmichael.html" target="blank">St. Michael</a>-style.</p>
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<p>Many years later Samson fell in love with this chick named Delilah who was a total bitch.&nbsp; The Philistines, who were still super pissed at Samson, came to Delilah one day and offered her a shitload of gold if she could find out what Samson's weakness was.&nbsp; Well she kept pestering him (you know how perseverative and annoying girls can be sometimes when they want you to do something), and eventually he told her about the source of his unmatched power:&nbsp; His&nbsp;<em>Dreadlocks of Hill Giant Strength +4</em>.&nbsp; He told her that he had never shaved in his entire life, and that like any good rock star the key to his power was his hair.&nbsp; She relayed this to the Philistines, and then one night when Samson was sleeping she shaved his head like a bad dorm roommate.&nbsp; The Philistines then busted into his home, bound him in bronze shackles, gouged his eyes out, and threw him in prison to serve a life sentence of hard labor.</p>
<p>A couple days after he was locked up, the Philistine leaders decided to throw a huge banquet to celebrate their victory over this guy who had been their hated enemy for over twenty years.&nbsp; The entire nobility, along with about three thousand other Philistines got together at the Temple of the god Dagon to get wasted and offer up sacrifices.&nbsp; Once the party really got hopping and everyone started to get a little tipsy, they decided to bring Samson in so that everyone could yell mean things and throw tomatoes at him.&nbsp; So the guards fetched him from prison so he could serve the entertainment of the heathen jackass Philistines.</p>
<p>Samson couldn't see, so he begged his captors to place his hands on the two huge pillars that served at the primary supports for the Temple.&nbsp; The guards obliged him and then went back to whatever they were doing.&nbsp; Samson placed on hand on each pillar and called out to God for the strength to exact vengeance on his enemies.&nbsp; God was a lot more down with vengeance and destruction back then, so he once again gave Samson super strength.&nbsp; Samson pushed with all of his might, toppling both pillars and bringing the entire temple crashing down on top of the Philistines.&nbsp; Everyone was crushed to death.</p>
<p>Samson was a badass because he didn't fucking take shit from anybody for any reason.&nbsp; He single-handedly wiped out an entire army, he stuck it to the Philistines whenever he had the opportunity, and he exacted revenge whenever he felt even the slightest bit wronged.&nbsp; In the end, even when it looked like everything was lost, he went down and took everyone else with him.&nbsp; That's badass.</p>
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<p align="center"><img src="http://www.badassoftheweek.com/samson2.jpg" alt="" vspace="8" /></p>
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<p align="center"><em>"Straining all his nerves, he bowed:<br />As with the force of winds and waters pent,<br />When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars<br />With horrible convulsion to and fro<br />He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew<br />The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder<br />Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,<br />Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests,<br />Their choice nobility and flower."<br /></em><br />- John Milton, Samson Agonistes</p>
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<p><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: xx-small;">Links:</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.thebricktestament.com/judges/index.html" target="blank">The Book of Judges at The Brick Testament</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13423a.htm" target="blank">The Catholic Encyclopedia</a></p>