Samson and Delilah
16
📚Then Samson went to Gaza 📖, and he saw a prostitute there and went in to her 📖. 2 📚And someone told the Gazites, saying, “Samson has come here”. And they surrounded him and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city, and were quiet all night, saying, “In the morning, when it is daylight, we will kill him”.3 📚And Samson lay down until midnight, and got up at midnight and picked up the doors of the city gate and the two posts and went away with them, bar and all. And he put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of a hill that is before Hebron 📖.
4 📚And it came about afterwards, 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 see in what his great strength 📖 lies, and how we can overpower him, so that we can bind him and subdue him, and each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels 📖 of silver”.
6 📚And Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me in what your great strength lies in and with what you can be bound to subdue you”.
7 📚And Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven fresh straps that have never been dried, then I will be weak and become like any other man”.
16:7 Samson foolishly begins to play a dangerous game that concerned holy truth about his relationship with God. It resulted in disaster (v 17), as it was bound to do.⚜
8 📚Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh straps which had not been dried, and she bound him with them. 9 📚Now men were lurking there, staying with her in the room. And she said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson”. And he broke the straps, as a piece of string snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known.
10 📚And Delilah said to Samson, “Look, you have mocked me and told me lies. Now please tell me with what you can be bound”.
11 📚And he said to her, “If they bind me tightly with new ropes that have never been used, then I will be weak and become like any other man”.
16:11 Even Samson, not the most intellectual of men, knew now that Delilah was trying to trap him for the Philistines. But he continued the game.⚜
12 So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them, and said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson”. And there were men in ambush staying in the room. And he snapped them off his arms like a thread.
13 And Delilah said to Samson, “Up till now you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me with what you can be bound with”.
And he said to her, “If you weave the seven locks of hair on my head 📖 with the cloth on a loom”.
14 📚And she fastened it with the peg, and said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson”. And he woke from his sleep, and went away with the peg of the beam and with the cloth on the loom.
15 📚And 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 in what your great strength lies”. 16 📚And it came about as she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, so that his soul was vexed to death,
16:16 Compare Prov 27:15-16.⚜
17 📚that he told her all his heart and said to her,
“No razor has come on my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will go from me and I will become weak and be like any other man”.
16:17 He knew his great strength was not in his physical frame but in his relationship to God (Jud 13:25; 14:6, 19; 15:14). So now the believer’s strength is not in himself but in the Lord (Eph 6:10). Samson revealed his secret. His behavior was something like that which the Lord Jesus warned against in Matt 7:6.⚜
18 📚And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up just this once, for he has told me all his heart”. Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought money in their hands. 19 📚And she put him asleep on her knees; and she called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. And she began to subdue him, and his strength went from him.
20 📚And she said, “The Philistines are on you, Samson”.
And he awoke out of his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself”. And he did not know that the LORD had left him.
16:20 His hair, the sign of his special relationship to God as a Nazirite, was gone, and it seems that at first he was not aware of it. But with it went the special relationship that alone had made him strong. He had knowingly betrayed himself and his relationship to God into the hands of the enemy, and now paid the price of his betrayal. He sold his strength for pleasure with a sinful woman – not the last to do so. For example, both David and Solomon failed in the same way.⚜
21 📚Then the Philistines took him and put out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with bronze fetters. And he became a grinder in the prison house.
16:21 See Prov 5:7-11; 7:21-27. Samson’s story is an illustration, one of the saddest in the Bible, of how far even a man dedicated to God’s service may fall. Sexual sin alone brought the mighty “warrior” of Jud 15:14-15 down to the pathetic wreck of this verse. Lust had found another victim to add to its long list of ruined men – see notes at 1 Kings 11:1. The Bible tells things as they are and does not make its heroes to be sinless and perfect. Notes at Gen 9:21; 12:13; 27:18-26; Ex 32:2-4; Num 20:12; 2 Sam 11:1; Matt 26:69-75.⚜
22 📚However, after he had been shaved, the hair of his head began to grow again.
Samson brings down the temple of Dagon
23 📚Then the lords of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon 📖 their god, and to rejoice; for they said, “Our god has delivered Samson our enemy into our hands”.
24 📚And when the people saw him, they praised their god; for they said, “Our god has delivered our enemy into our hands, the destroyer of our country, who killed many of us”.
25 📚And it came about, while their hearts were in good spirits, that they said, “Call for Samson, so that he may amuse us 📖”. And they called for Samson from the prison house, and he was an amusement for them. And they placed him between the pillars.
26 And Samson said to the boy who held him by the hand, “Let me feel the pillars the temple is resting on, so that I can lean on them”. 27 📚Now the temple was full of men and women, and all the lords of the Philistines were there, and about three thousand men and women were on the roof, who were watching as Samson was being an amusement for them.
28 📚And Samson called out to the LORD and said, “O Lord God, remember me, I pray you, and strengthen me, I pray you, just this once, O God, so that at once I may have revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes”.
16:28 Though this prayer was offered from a bad motive (personal vengeance), God heard it. If God waited till His people’s prayers were absolutely pure and selfless before answering, how many answers would they ever get? But God is compassionate and remembers we are but dust (Ps 103:13-14).⚜
29 And Samson took hold of the two central pillars on which the temple rested and by which it was held up, the one pillar with his right hand and the other with his left. 30 📚And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines”. And he bowed down with all his might, and the temple collapsed on the lords and on all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life.
31 📚Then his brothers and all the household of his father came down, took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burial place of Manoah his father. And he had judged 📖 Israel for twenty years.
16:31 Samson is listed with the great heroes of faith in Hebrews chapter 11, his sins and failings passed over. Compare Jud 4:8; Ps 103:10-14; Isa 44:22; Micah 7:18-19.⚜