What the Bible says about Samson and Delilah
Samson and Delilah
16 Once Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute and went in to her.
2 The Gazites were told, “Samson has come here.” So they circled around and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They kept quiet all night, thinking, “Let us wait until the light of the morning; then we will kill him.”
3 But Samson lay only until midnight. Then at midnight he rose up, took hold of the doors of the city gate and the two posts, pulled them up, bar and all, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron.
4 After this he fell in love with a woman in the valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah.
5 The lords of the Philistines came to her and said to her, “Coax him, and find out what makes his strength so great and how we may overpower him, so that we may bind him in order to subdue him, and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.”
6 So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me what makes your strength so great and how you could be bound, so that one could subdue you.”
7 Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings that are not dried out, then I shall become weak and be like anyone else.”
8 Then the lords of the Philistines brought her seven fresh bowstrings that had not dried out, and she bound him with them.
9 While men were lying in wait in an inner chamber, she said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” But he snapped the bowstrings as a strand of fiber snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known.
10 Then Delilah said to Samson, “You have mocked me and told me lies; please tell me how you could be bound.”
11 He said to her, “If they bind me with new ropes that have not been used, then I shall become weak and be like anyone else.”
12 So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” (The men lying in wait were in an inner chamber.) But he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread.
13 Then Delilah said to Samson, “Until now you have mocked me and told me lies; tell me how you could be bound.” He said to her, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and make it tight with the pin, then I shall become weak and be like anyone else.”
14 So while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his head and wove them into the web and made them tight with the pin. Then she said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” But he awoke from his sleep and pulled away the pin, the loom, and the web.
15 Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me three times now and have not told me what makes your strength so great.”
16 Finally, after she had nagged him with her words day after day and pestered him, he was tired to death.
17 So he told her his whole secret and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, then my strength would leave me; I would become weak and be like anyone else.”
18 When Delilah realized that he had told her his whole secret, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, “This time come up, for he has told his whole secret to me.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands.
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Samson’s Demise (16:1 – 31)
Gaza (16:1). Whereas Samson’s previous experiences had happened at Timnah, on the northern edge of territory occupied by the Philistines, in 16:1 he is in Gaza, more than thirty miles southwest of Timnah. Gaza was the southernmost city of the Philistine Pentapolis, situated near the Mediterranean coast. While the fifteenth-century b.c. list of conquests by Thutmose III refers to Gaza as “a prize city of the governor,” in the twelfth century the Philistines took over the city.
Gaza
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Prostitute (16:1). On prostitution in ancient Israel and the surrounding peoples, see comment on 11:1.
Read more from Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary of the Old Testament
19 Then the spirit of the Lord rushed on him, and he went down to Ashkelon. He killed thirty men of the town, took their spoil, and gave the festal garments to those who had explained the riddle. In hot anger he went back to his father’s house.
14:19 stripped … of. The expression occurs elsewhere only in 2Sa 2:21, where it denotes the equipment stripped from a slain man, particularly the belt from which weapons and tools were hung. Carrying these items 20 miles (32 kilometers) back to Timnah in a mocking gesture, Samson presents them to the Philistine guards as their promised change of clothes. returned to his father’s home. Within the context of ancient Near Eastern marriage customs, the fact that Samson went home after the wedding was probably not unusual. In a cultural context where marriages were patrilocal, his new father-in-law could have interpreted his action as a return home to get the house in order. These periods of separation often lasted several months. Meanwhile, the wife continued to live at home, and the husband would visit her at more or less regular intervals, bringing gifts and enjoying a night of love. According to 15:1, Samson seems to think he can return to his wife at any time.
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21 So the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles, and he ground at the mill in the prison.
Gouged out his eyes (16:21). In subjecting Samson to this kind of punishment, the Philistines follow a common ancient Near Eastern custom. In Mesopotamia defeated enemies were often blinded by gouging out their eyes and then humiliated by being forced to perform the most menial of tasks, customarily assigned to slaves and women. Hittite sources report that captors blinded particularly dangerous captives to prevent them from taking up arms or trying to flee. Some, like the following letter from Kikarša to Taḫazzili, report that blinded hostages were forced to grind grain in the mill houses:
I hope all is well with my dear brother and that the gods are lovingly protecting you. Concerning the matter of the blind men that you wrote me about: they have conducted all of the blind men up to the city of Šapinuwa. They have left behind here ten men (to work) in the mill houses. I have inquired about them, and there is no one here by the name you wrote me. You should write to Mr. Šarpa in Šapinuwa. All the (other) blind men are there.
Obviously sight is not needed to grind grain. As in 9:52, the mill involved here would have been a smaller handmill, in contrast to larger mills turned by livestock.
Read more from Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary of the Old Testament