Isaac’s Blindness: A Case of Narrative Deficiency

In the stories of Isaac’s deception by Jacob and of Samson’s betrayal by Delilah, the central character makes a decision that seems unaccountable. Isaac is immediately and persistently suspicious of the son who presents himself as Esau, so much so that we may be surprised that he gives him Esau’s blessing anyway. Samson, even more clearly, knows that Delilah is going to betray him, but nonetheless tells her his secret. In both cases, an interpretive comment by the narrator attempts to explain the odd behavior—but in both cases, the explanation is, I will argue, incomplete or unsatisfactory. Isaac, we are told, was fooled. This is no help, since the problem is that his suspicions seem to suggest that he was not fooled. Samson, the narrator explains, was worn down by nagging, but this is simply unconvincing given his story to that point and in any case seems a very weak reason for him to effectively throw away his life. If the reasons given for the unexpected action are not satisfactory, what reasons might be? And if there are better reasons, why would the narrator give us weaker ones? These questions raise the possibility that the biblical narrator could be mistaken about the motives of a story’s protagonist. Traditional interpretation of the Bible holds that the ultimate source of the text is God, that the human author has been provided with the stories by God, and thus that the narrator should be regarded as omniscient. It would therefore make no sense to suggest that the narrator could be mistaken about anything. The belief in divine inspiration is very old, but has little support in the text itself. Moses is traditionally regarded as the author—or as God’s amanuensis—of the