Judges 16:1-22
Samson and Delilah
1 Now Samson went to Gaza and saw a harlot there, and went in to her. 2 When the Gazites were told, “Samson has come here!” they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city. They were quiet all night, saying, “In the morning, when it is daylight, we will kill him.” 3 And Samson lay low till midnight; then he arose at midnight, took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two gateposts, pulled them up, bar and all, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.
4 Afterward it happened that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. 5 And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Entice him, and find out where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to afflict him; and every one of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.”
6 So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength lies, and with what you may be bound to afflict you.”
7 And Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings, not yet dried, then I shall become weak, and be like any other man.”
8 So the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bowstrings, not yet dried, and she bound him with them. 9 Now men were lying in wait, staying with her in the room. And she said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” But he broke the bowstrings as a strand of yarn breaks when it touches fire. So the secret of his strength was not known.
10 Then Delilah said to Samson, “Look, you have mocked me and told me lies. Now, please tell me what you may be bound with.”
11 So he said to her, “If they bind me securely with new ropes that have never been used, then I shall become weak, and be like any other man.”
12 Therefore Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them, and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And men were lying in wait, staying in the room. But he broke them off his arms like a thread.
13 Delilah said to Samson, “Until now you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me what you may be bound with.”
And he said to her, “If you weave the seven locks of my head into the web of the loom”—
14 So she wove it tightly with the batten of the loom, and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” But he awoke from his sleep, and pulled out the batten and the web from the loom.
15 Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and have not told me where your great strength lies.” 16 And it came to pass, when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him, so that his soul was vexed to death, 17 that he told her all his heart, and said to her, “No razor has ever come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaven, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.”
18 When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up once more, for he has told me all his heart.” So the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hand. 19 Then she lulled him to sleep on her knees, and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him. 20 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” So he awoke from his sleep, and said, “I will go out as before, at other times, and shake myself free!” But he did not know that the LORD had departed from him.
21 Then the Philistines took him and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza. They bound him with bronze fetters, and he became a grinder in the prison. 22 However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaven.
Samson found strength in his commitment to the LORD by his Nazirite vow from the day he was born to live a righteous life as signified by never cutting his hair. It was not the hair that contained the strength, but the commitment to obey and follow God that enabled his own abilities and wisdom to lead as a judge and warrior of God’s people. Unfortunately, as a man born in sin as we all are, this man of God took up with women that became his downfall in the end. This account mentions the harlot that led to a trap to kill him but God intervened and woke Samson at midnight to pick up doors of the gate of the city with the two gateposts in that strength and carry them up on a hill in plain sight to bear witness to his enemies that God was greater than their plans. Then he loved Delilah from the Valley of Sorek, a place in a wadi (valley) in Palestine. She was tasked and well paid by the lords of the Philistines there to uncover the secret to his great strength that they might defeat him and stop the attacks on their people. She asked him in intimate moments what the secret was and he told her several stories like binding him with seven fresh bowstrings, new ropes that have never been used, and even weaving his hair in a loom, so that his strength would depart and he would become as weak as an ordinary person. Finally, she wore him down by saying he did not really love her if he refused to tell her his secret, pestering him daily with her words and pressing him, until that his soul was vexed to death and he finally toiled her about the Nazirite vow that held his strength in his obedience as reflected in never shaving off the hair of his head. She then lulled him to sleep on her lap and had someone come to cut off his hair. Then she woke him and taunted Samson whom she said she loved as she betrayed him for eleven hundred pieces of silver, far more than Judas took to betray our Lord. The Philistines then blinded him, bound him, and put him to hard labor grinding grain in prison, much more strenuous than making small rocks out of big ones as we sometimes envision in prison. What the jailers and Philistine leaders who did these things to him failed to take notice of was that the symbol of Samson’s strength was growing back as he labored in the dark there. There is a slight pattern of Christ and Judas and the Pharisees under fear of losing their nation under the Romans here. The religious leaders, like the Philistines, tried to destroy the one who was trying to set the people of God free because they imagined they would lose their nation (John 11:48), and they plotted with payment to Judas (Matthew 26:14, Luke 22:3) to isolate and capture Jesus the Nazarene (John 18:5) in the garden of Gethsemane (John 18:1, 2-3) and crucified Him as if that would stop the omnipotent one from being killed and rising from death to life again to finish the work (John 17:3-4, 19:28, 30) He came to do to set them and us (John 8:36) free from our enemy who reigns over us by the sin he deceived us by in Eden’s Garden. The strength of the Lord was never taken away, for He willingly yielded (Philippians 2:5-6, 7-8) His strength to die for us that we might find eternal freedom of deliverance (1 Peter 2:24, 3:18) in His (Romans 14:9) work. Is our strength of commitment to the gospel enough to live for Him, or do,we allow sin to blind us until we repent and set our eyes once again on (Romans 12:1-2) Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith as we keep living in the direction of obedience to Him and avoidance of sin?
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