GOODMORNING

However, from her dealings with the Philistine leaders, she appears to be one. Other students believe that the basis for her name is the Hebrew word dalal, which means “to weaken, to impoverish.” Whether or not this is the correct derivation, she certainly weakened and impoverished Samson!

Each of the Philistine leaders offered to pay Delilah a considerable sum of money if she would entice Samson and learn the source of his great strength.10-4 They didn’t want to kill Samson. They wanted to neutralize his power, capture him, torture him, and then use him for their own purposes. Being able to exhibit and control the great champion of Israel would give the Philistines both security and stature among the nations and would certainly satisfy their egos as they humiliated the Jews.

When Delilah began to probe for the secret of his strength, Samson should have been aware of his danger and, like Joseph (Gen. 39:12; 2 Tim. 2:22), fled as fast as possible. But passion had gripped him, sin had anesthetized him, and he was unable to act rationally. Anybody could have told him that Delilah was making a fool out of him, but Samson would have believed no one.

It’s unlikely that the Philistines who hid in her chamber revealed themselves each time Samson escaped his bonds, because then he would have known that Delilah had set a trap for him. Her cry “The Philistines are upon you!” was the signal for the spies to be alert; but when they saw that Samson was free, they remained in hiding. Each of Samson’s lies involved Delilah using some kind of bonds on him, but the Philistines should have known that he could not be bound (Judges 15:13).

Delilah had to keep working on Samson or she would have lost the money and perhaps her life. After all, look at what the Philistines did to Samson’s first wife! If Samson had stopped visiting Delilah, he would have kept his hair and his power,10-5 but he kept going back, and each time she implored him to reveal his secret. Samson didn’t know his own heart. He thought he possessed enough moral strength to say no to the temptress, but he was wrong.

Being wise in the ways of sin (Luke 16:8; Prov. 7:21), during the fourth visit, Delilah knew that he had finally told her the truth. Since the Philistine “hit squad” had quit coming after the third fiasco, Delilah summoned them quickly, and they once again hid in her chamber.

When Delilah’s shout awakened Samson, he thought it was another one of her tricks and that he could handle the situation as before. But he was wrong. When he lost his long hair, the Lord left him; and he was as weak as other men. His power was from the Lord, not from his hair; but the hair was the sign of his Nazirite vow. The Spirit who had come upon him with such power had now departed from him.

Numbers 6:7 reads literally “because the consecration (nezer) of his God is upon his head.” The basic meaning of the word nezer is “separation” or “consecration”; but it is also used of a royal crown (2 Sam. 1:10; Zech. 9:16; Ps. 89:39). Samson’s long hair was his “royal crown” and he lost it because of his sin. “Behold, I come quickly! Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown” (Rev. 3:11, nkjv). Since Samson didn’t discipline his body, he lost both his crown and his prize (1 Cor. 9:24-27).10-6

The Philistines easily overpowered Samson and finally had their way with him. They put out his eyes,10-7 bound him, and took him to Gaza where he toiled at the grinding mill, doing work usually assigned to slaves, women, or donkeys. Someone has said that Judges 16:21 reminds us of the blinding, binding, and grinding results of sin. In his epic poem Samson Agonistes, John Milton has the champion say:

O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!

Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,

Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!

Samson is one of three men in Scripture who are especially identified with the darkness. The other two are King Saul, who went out in the darkness to get last-minute help from a witch (1 Sam. 28), and Judas, who “went immediately out: and it was night” (John 13:30). Saul lived for the world, Samson yielded to the flesh, and Judas gave himself to the devil (John 13:2, 27); and all three ended up taking their own lives.

But there was one ray of light in the darkness: Samson’s hair began to grow again. His power was not in his hair but in what his hair symbolized—his dedication to God. If Samson renewed that dedication, God might restore his power. I believe Samson talked to the Lord as he turned the millstone, confessing his sins and asking God for one last opportunity to defeat the enemy and glorify His name.10-8

Samson destroys himself (Judges 16:23-31)
It was tragic that a servant of the Lord, raised in a godly home, was now the humiliated slave of the enemy. But even worse, the Philistines gave glory to their god Dagon for helping them capture their great enemy. Instead of bringing glory to the God of Israel, Samson gave the enemy opportunity to honor their false gods. Dagon was the god of grain, and certainly the Philistines remembered what Samson had done to their fields (15:1-5).

The people at the religious festival called for Samson to be brought to entertain them. They were in high spirits because their enemy was now in their control and Dagon had triumphed over Jehovah. They thought that Samson’s blindness rendered him harmless. They didn’t know that God had deigned to forgive him and restore his strength.

In the kjv, two different words are translated “make sport” in 16:25 (“entertain” and “perform” in the niv). The first means to celebrate, frolic, joke, and entertain; and the second means to perform, make sport, and laugh.10-9 We aren’t told exactly how Samson entertained the huge crowd in Dagon’s temple, but one thing is sure: He gave them every reason to believe he was harmless and under their control. He was even in the hands of a boy who was leading the blind man from place to place. We’ve seen previous indications that Samson was a clever fellow with a sense of humor. Thus no doubt he gave the audience just what it wanted.

In previous visits to Gaza, Samson had undoubtedly seen this temple and noted its construction. After all, it housed over 3,000 people, and it would be difficult for him not to notice it. During a break in the day’s entertainment, Samson asked his attendant to lead him over to the pillars; and there he uttered his last prayer.10-10 The fact that God answered suggests that all was right between him and his Lord (Ps. 66:18-19).

It’s likely that his parents were dead by now, but his relatives on his father’s side came and recovered the body and buried it. The word “brethren” in Judges 16:31 in the Hebrew carries a broad meaning of “relatives.” As far as we know, Samson was an only child. The phrase “between Zorah and Eshtaol” in verse 31 reminds us of 13:25. Samson is back where he started, only now he’s dead. The light has failed.

How do you assess the life and ministry of a man like Samson? I think Alexander Maclaren says it well: “Instead of trying to make a lofty hero out of him, it is far better to recognize frankly the limitations of his character and the imperfections of his religion …. If the merely human passion of vengeance throbbed fiercely in Samson’s prayer, he had never heard ‘Love your enemies’; and, for his epoch, the destruction of the enemies of God and of Israel was duty.”<10-11

His decline began when he disagreed with his parents about marrying a Philistine girl. Then he disdained his Nazirite vow and defiled himself. He disregarded the warnings of God, disobeyed the Word of God, and was defeated by the enemies of God. He probably thought that he had the privilege of indulging in sin since he wore the badge of a Nazirite and won so many victories for the Lord, but he was wrong.

“Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls” (Prov. 25:28, nkjv).

“He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city” (Prov. 16:32, nkjv).

Through the four tests by Delilah, Samson became more open to her, sharing the secret of his life, only to have her use him for her own gratification in getting rich. As Samson slept on her knees, the picture of what happened brings the reader back to Sisera, who slept at the feet of Jael (5:24–27). Now, however, Samson was the enemy who was about to be killed and Delilah was the hero.27 This is a picture of Israel in her harlotry (2:17). Through intermarriage with the Canaanites Israel forfeited the opportunity to build and strengthen their own families and nation and allowed their strength to become their weakness. The failure to capitalize on their strength of separated lives, focused in the homes of the nation, brought about their downfall.

Hartman notes a change of roles in Samson and Delilah.28 Samson is no longer the protagonist in the story; Delilah takes that position and Samson becomes the foil. Once Delilah achieves her purposes with Samson, he reverts to his old position. The lesson for Israel is obvious: when they go outside Israel and make covenants with the enemy, they are no longer in control of the situation. The enemy takes over and they are dominated. Samson, the strong man, was no longer in control. When he was captured, that position was made very clear to him. The Philistines gouged out his eyes and made him a grinder in the prison (16:21). Block notes that the Philistines were following an ancient Near Eastern custom. Prisoners were blinded and then forced to do menial tasks of slaves and women.29 So Samson, ironically, ended up doing a woman’s job. The man, who had incredible strength over other men was defeated in his greatest weakness, that of foreign women, to end up emasculated and doing the task of a woman. The reversal of responsibilities, already seen in the Deborah-Barak story, reaches its peak in the final judge himself. Samson in his strength is an attractive figure; Samson at his end is a pathetic ruin.