on fire, he let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks and also the standing corn of the Philistines, with the vineyards and olives.”  On another occasion he allowed himself to be bound with cords, and thus apparently delivered powerless into the hands of his enemies; he then broke his bonds “like flax that was burnt with fire,” and taking the jaw-bone of an ass, which he found, slew a thousand men with it.  His account of this massacre shows that he regarded it in a humorous light:  “With the jaw-bone of an ass heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass I have slain a thousand men.”  We might also refer to his carrying away the gates of Gaza to the top of a hill that is before Hebron, and to his duping Delilah about the seven green withes.

In the above instances it will be observed that destruction or disappointment of enemies was the primary, and amusement the secondary object.  It must be admitted that all such jokes are of a very poor and severe description.  They have not the undesigned coincidence of the ludicrous nor the fanciful invention of true humour.  Samson was evidently regarded as a droll fellow in his day, but beyond his jokes the only venture of his on record is a riddle, which showed very little ingenuity, and can not be regarded as humorous now, even if it were so then.

It would, perhaps, be going too far to assert that no laughter of a better kind existed before the age at which we are now arrived; some minds are always in advance of their time, as others are behind it, but they are few.  The only place in which there is any approach in early times to what may be called critical laughter is recorded where Abraham and Sarah were informed of the approaching birth of Isaac.  Perhaps this laughter was mostly that of pleasure.  Sarah denied that she laughed, and Abraham was not rebuked when guilty of the same levity.[4]

With the exception of the above-mentioned riddle, and rough pranks of Samson, we have no trace of humour until after the commencement of the Monarchy.  The reigns of David and Solomon seemed to have formed the brightest period in the literary history of the Jews.  The sweet Psalmist of Israel was partly the pioneer to deeper thought, partly the representative of the age in which he lived.  It is the charm of his poetry that it is very rich and recondite—­a mine of gold, which the farther it is worked, the more precious its yield becomes.  But it everywhere bears the stamp of passion and religious ardour, and does not bespeak the critical incisiveness of a highly civilised age.  Argumentative acumen would have been as much below the poetic mind of David in one respect as it was above it in another, and while his rapturous language of admiration and faith seems above the range of human genius; his bitter denunciations of his enemies remind us of his date, and the circumstances by which he was surrounded.  Such immaturity would be sufficient to account for the non-existence of humour.