Judges 16:15-22

15 Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.”

16 With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it.

17 So he told her everything. “No razor has ever been used on my head,” he said, “because I have been a Nazirite dedicated to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.”

18 When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come back once more; he has told me everything.” So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands.

19 After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him.^[a] And his strength left him.

20 Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the LORD had left him.

21 Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding grain in the prison.

22 But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

Judges 16:15-22 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JUDGES 16

In this chapter we have an account of Samson's too great familiarity with two harlots; by the one he was brought into great danger, and narrowly escaped, Jud 16:1-3, and by the other he was betrayed into the hands of the Philistines, having got the secret out of him wherein his great strength lay, Jud 16:4-20 who having him in their hands, put out his eyes, imprisoned him, and in their idol temple made sport of him, Jud 16:21-25, where praying for renewed strength from the Lord, he pulled down the temple, and destroyed multitudes with the loss of his own life, Jud 16:26-31.

Cross References

• 1. Judges 14:16
• 2. Numbers 24:10
• 3. S ver 5
• 4. ver 18; Micah 7:5
• 5. S Numbers 6:2; Numbers 6:2,5; Judges 13:5
• 6. S Joshua 13:3; 1 Samuel 5:8
• 7. ver 5
• 8. Proverbs 7:26-27
• 9. S ver 14
• 10. Numbers 14:42; Joshua 7:12; 1 Samuel 16:14; 1 Samuel 18:12; 1 Samuel 28:15
• 11. Jeremiah 47:1
• 12. S Numbers 16:14
• 13. S Genesis 10:19
• 14. Job 31:10; Isaiah 47:2

Footnotes

• [a] Hebrew; some Septuagint manuscripts "and he began to weaken"