The record that Samson "judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years" leads the ordinary reader to think of him as a sage, judicial personage, whereas it means only that he was the political and military leader of his people during that period, lifted to a magisterial position by his strength and prowess in war.

His achievements were muscular, not mental.
Rabbinical legends have magnified his stature and power in precisely the same manner as the imagination of the poet of the "Lay of the Nibelung" magnified the stature and strength of Siegfried.

His shoulders, says the legend, were sixty ells broad; when the Spirit of God came on him he could step from Zorah to Eshtaol although he was lame in both feet; the hairs of his head arose and clashed against one another so that they could be heard for a like distance; he was so strong that he could uplift two mountains and rub them together like two clods of earth, Herakles tore asunder the mountain which, divided, now forms the Straits of Gibraltar and Gates of Hercules.
The parallel which is frequently drawn between Samson and Herakles cannot be pursued far with advantage to the Hebrew hero.

Samson rent a young lion on the road to Timnath, whither he was going to take his Philistine wife; Herakles, while still a youthful herdsman, slew the Thespian lion and afterward strangled the Nemean lion with his hands.
Samson carried off the gates of Gaza and bore them to the top of a hill before Hebron; Herakles upheld the heavens while Atlas went to fetch the golden apples of Hesperides.

Moreover, the feats of Herakles show a higher intellectual quality than those of Samson, all of which, save one, were predominantly physical.