Judges · chapter 16 of 21
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Judges 16 tells how Samson lets himself be seduced by Delilah, a woman of the valley of Sorek. The Philistine lords offer her money to discover the secret of his strength, and after several lies he reveals that his Nazirite hair is the key. His hair is cut, he is captured and blinded, but in the temple of Dagon Samson prays, pulls down the pillars and dies, killing more Philistines in his death than in his life.
Judges 16 is the climax and end of Samson's story. The deliverer God set apart from the womb falls through his weakness for Philistine women and loses his strength. The chapter shows the tragedy of a gifted man who neglects what God gave him, and also the grace of a God who hears him one last time.
Samson goes to Gaza, sees a prostitute and goes in to her. The people of Gaza lie in wait all night to kill him at dawn, but he rises at midnight and carries the city gate with its posts to a hilltop facing Hebron.
Afterward he falls in love with Delilah, who lives in the valley of Sorek. The Philistine lords each offer her eleven hundred pieces of silver to find out the secret of his strength. Delilah presses him. First he says seven fresh bowstrings will weaken him, and he snaps those she uses with men hidden in the room. Then he says new ropes would bind him, and he breaks them too. Next, that she could weave seven locks of his hair into the loom, but he rises with the loom.
Delilah nags him every day until, vexed to death, he tells her everything: a razor has never touched his head, he is a Nazirite to God from the womb, and if he is shaved his strength will leave him. She sends for the Philistine lords, who bring the money. She lulls Samson to sleep on her knees, a man shaves his seven locks, and his strength leaves him. The Philistines seize him, and Samson does not know that the Lord has left him. They gouge out his eyes, bring him down to Gaza, bind him with bronze shackles and set him to grind in the prison. But his hair begins to grow again.
The Philistines gather to sacrifice to Dagon their god, and rejoice because he delivered Samson. They bring him from the prison to entertain them and place him between the pillars of the temple, full of people, with three thousand on the roof. Samson asks a young man to lead him to the pillars, and prays to the Lord to remember him and strengthen him once more. He pushes the pillars with both hands, and the temple falls on the lords and all the people. Those he killed at his death were more than those he killed in his life. His family buries him between Zorah and Eshtaol. He had judged Israel twenty years.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Samson confesses that he is a Nazirite to God from the womb and that if he is shaved his strength will leave him. He reveals the secret of his calling to the one betraying him, and his strength never lay in the hair but in the relationship with God that the sign represented.
Samson wakes and thinks he will go out as at other times, but he does not know that the Lord has left him. It is one of the saddest lines in the book: the loss of God's presence goes unnoticed.
Blind and humiliated, Samson calls on the Lord to remember him and strengthen him once more. He asks for one last act of deliverance, and God answers the one who returns to him, even at the end of a disordered life.
Samson dies with the Philistines, and those he killed at his death were more than those he killed in his life. His death fulfills what the angel announced, that he would begin to deliver Israel.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: He pulled them up with their posts and carried them to the top of a hill facing Hebron. — Judges 16:3
Answer: Eleven hundred pieces of silver. — Judges 16:5
Answer: With seven fresh bowstrings. — Judges 16:7
Answer: His uncut hair, the sign that he was a Nazirite to God from the womb. — Judges 16:17
Answer: They gouged out his eyes, brought him to Gaza, bound him with bronze shackles and set him to grind. — Judges 16:21
Answer: To Dagon, their god. — Judges 16:23
Judges 16 is a serious warning. Samson played again and again with what God had entrusted to him, until he lost it without realizing. In a class or small group we can talk about small concessions that, repeated, draw us away from God, and how important it is to guard our relationship with him above our skills or gifts.
But the chapter also offers hope. A blind and humiliated Samson prays, and God answers. God's grace is not used up by our mistakes, though consequences are real. God calls us to return to him at any moment, and his faithfulness stands above ours.
Judges 16 closes Samson's story with his death and burial. In Judges 17 a new section of the book begins, with two stories that show the religious and moral decline of Israel when there was no king.
The text indicates that the hair was the sign of his Nazirite vow, and that when that vow was broken, the Lord left him. The strength did not reside in the hair itself but in God's presence and power, which were no longer with him.
Hebrews 11:32 lists him among those who acted by faith. Yet the book of Judges does not present him as a moral model: he is both gifted and weak, and his story shows how God works despite his flaws.
Dagon was a god of the Philistines, associated with agriculture and grain according to some traditions. The Philistines credit him with Samson's capture, and the text shows that the one who finally falls is his temple.