Strength, Betrayal, Blindness, and Samson’s Final Act

Gaza was the southernmost of the five Philistine cities, on the coast road to Egypt, about forty miles from Samson’s home. The verse runs on three verbs, went, saw, went in, the same sequence as his first sight of the woman at Timnath in 14:1. Seeing is the sense that governs Samson, and it is the one he will lose.

The Gazites wait “in the gate”, the one place every visitor must pass through, and they keep “quiet”, a word that can mean they held still or made no plans to move before light. They assume a man with a harlot will sleep until morning.

A city gate had two leaves turning on posts and was locked with a bar across both. Samson takes the whole assembly, frame and all. Hebron lies about forty miles uphill from Gaza, so “before Hebron” may mean a hill facing toward it rather than beside it; either way the gate of Philistia ends up in the heart of Judah.

Sorek is the valley running west from the hills near Zorah toward Philistine country, named from a choice red grape, sorek, which Isaiah 5:2 and Jeremiah 2:21 use of the choicest vine. For a Nazirite forbidden the vine, the address is pointed. Delilah is the first woman in Samson’s life whom Judges names, and the only one it says he loved.

“The lords” are the seranim, the five rulers of the Philistine cities, a title used only of them. Eleven hundred pieces each from five lords is 5,500 shekels, a staggering sum set against the ten shekels a year Micah will offer his Levite in 17:10. Micah’s own mother in the next chapter has exactly eleven hundred.

Delilah does not disguise the question at all. She asks where his strength lies and how he may be bound “to afflict thee”, repeating the lords’ own words. The verb for afflict, anah, is the one used of humbling a captive, and she says it to his face.

“Withs” are bowstrings or cords of fresh gut or sinew, still moist and so at their strongest. Seven is Samson’s number in this chapter: seven cords here, seven locks in verse 13, and the seven days of his wedding feast in chapter 14. The lie sits close to the truth, since the real secret also involves the number seven.

The lords supply the materials themselves, so the plot is no private game between lovers. Delilah binds him, which means Samson lies still and lets her do it, knowing what she asked and why.

Tow is the short, broken fibre left from combing flax, and it flares and parts the instant a flame touches it. The ambush is hidden in an inner room, so the Philistines see nothing. “His strength was not known” means the secret stayed a secret, which is the point of the whole first round.

“Mocked” is the verb talal, to trifle with or deceive, the word Jacob uses when Laban cheats him of his wages (Genesis 31:7). Delilah takes the tone of the injured party while the men with knives wait in the next room.

New ropes were exactly what the men of Judah had used in 15:13, and Samson snapped those at Lehi. “Never were occupied” means never put to work. He offers a method already disproved in public, which suggests how little he takes the game seriously.

The second round is told more briefly than the first, the ambush mentioned almost as an afterthought. “From off his arms” is the same phrase used at Lehi in 15:14, where the cords became as burnt flax. The repetition is part of the lesson: Samson keeps winning the same way and stops thinking.

The loom was an upright weaving frame, and “the web” is the warp on it. His hair was plaited in seven braids, a common way of wearing long hair in the ancient Near East. With this answer Samson brings his hair into the game for the first time: he is circling the truth.

The pin, or peg, beat the weft tight and fixed the web to the beam. The Greek version fills out the half verse the Hebrew seems to lack, with Delilah weaving the locks while he sleeps. He wakes and walks off with the loom’s beam dangling from his head.

Delilah turns from method to love, using the same words Samson’s Timnite wife used in 14:16, “thou dost but hate me”. Both women win the secret the same way, and both work for Philistines. “These three times” counts his failures of candour, not her acts of betrayal.

“Pressed” is the verb for crowding or constraining, the same used of the Timnite bride who “lay sore upon him” in 14:17. “Vexed unto death” is literally “his soul was shortened”, the idiom for impatience worn to its end. Delilah wins by exhaustion rather than by persuasion.

The phrase “all his heart” recurs three times across verses 17 and 18. Samson’s own words match what the angel told his mother in 13:5, that no razor would touch his head. He speaks of being a Nazarite from the womb, the only time he names the vow himself, and he names it only to give it away.

Delilah knows the truth when she hears it; the verse does not say how, but the tone had changed from the jokes before. “Brought money in their hand” is the last word on her, and the Book of Judges never records her again.

“Upon her knees” pictures his head in her lap. She calls a man to do the shaving, so even the decisive act is hired. “She began to afflict him” uses anah again, and the verb comes before the loss of strength: the humbling begins while he still sleeps.

He expects to “shake himself” free, the motion of a man throwing off loose bonds, as at other times. “Wist not” means he did not know. The Spirit had come upon him four times in the book (13:25, 14:6, 14:19, 15:14), and its departure is the one change he does not notice.

Gouging the eyes was a known treatment of captives, as Zedekiah suffered in 2 Kings 25:7. Grinding at the hand mill was the work of slaves and women (Exodus 11:5), and some have seen it as the work of a beast set to a millstone. He is taken down to Gaza, the city whose gate he carried away.

One line, and nothing is said about what it means. The Book of Judges simply records that the sign of the vow returns, and leaves the reader to watch the hair and wait while the Philistines do not.

Dagon was a grain god honoured across the region, whose temples stood at Gaza and Ashdod (1 Samuel 5:2). The phrase “our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand” is exactly Israel’s own formula for victory given by the LORD, now said of an idol.

The people’s praise is a little rhyming song in Hebrew, with “our enemy” and “destroyer of our country” ending in similar sounds. The destroyer is a fair charge: he burned their grain fields in 15:5, the crops of a grain god.

“Make us sport” is from the root tsachaq, to laugh, the root of Isaac’s name. Whether Samson is made to perform feats or simply mocked is not said. Pillars of wood set on stone bases held up the roof of Philistine temples of this period; the excavated temple at Tell Qasile had two such central pillars close together.

The lad holding his hand marks how blind and harmless the Philistines believe him to be; a boy is enough to guide him. Samson asks only to lean, a request for rest that no one refuses.

Three thousand people on the roof are watching the courtyard below, as at a public show. The number on the roof alone gives the scale of the fall. All the lords are present, so the rulers who paid Delilah are gathered in one place.

This is Samson’s second recorded prayer; the first, in 15:18, was for water. He piles up names, Adonai YHWH and then Elohim, as a man does when he pleads. “Only this once” echoes Delilah’s “Come up this once” in verse 18. The Hebrew can be read “one vengeance for my two eyes” or “vengeance for one of my two eyes”.

“Took hold of” is lafat, to grasp or twist, the verb Ruth 3:8 renders “turned himself” when Boaz starts awake at midnight. Right hand and left hand name the two pillars as Samson feels them, and the Book of Judges slows to the position of each hand before the end.

“Let me die” is literally “let my soul die”, nephesh, the same word as the soul vexed unto death in verse 16. He dies as he had lived, among Philistines. The final summary counts the dead, a grim ledger that the Book of Judges states without comment.

Zorah and Eshtaol are where the Spirit first began to move him in 13:25, so he is buried where his calling began. His family, the brothers never mentioned before, can come and collect his body, which shows how shattered Philistine rule was that day. Twenty years repeats 15:20.