Samson and Delilah

After this, Samson loved a woman named Delilah in the valley of Sorek. The Philistine lords came to her and offered her silver if she would find out where Samson's great strength came from, so they could bind him and overpower him. Then Delilah asked Samson how he could be tied up and weakened.

Samson gave Delilah three false answers. First he spoke of fresh cords, then new ropes, then the seven locks of his hair woven into the loom. Each time, men were waiting in an inner room. Delilah cried out that the Philistines were on him, and each time Samson broke free. Day after day she kept pressing him with her words.

At last Samson told her all his heart. No razor had touched his head, he said, because he had been a Nazirite to God from his mother's womb. If his head were shaved, his strength would leave him. Delilah sent for the Philistine lords. While Samson slept on her knees, she called for a man to shave off the seven locks of his head. When Samson woke, he did not know that Yahweh had departed from him.

The Philistines seized Samson, put out his eyes, took him down to Gaza, and bound him with bronze fetters. In prison he ground at the mill. Yet his hair began to grow again. Later the Philistine lords gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to rejoice, saying that their god had handed Samson over to them.

They called Samson out of the prison to entertain them and set him between the pillars. A boy led him by the hand, and Samson asked to feel the pillars so he could lean on them. The house was crowded with men and women, and about three thousand people were on the roof watching. Samson called to Yahweh to remember him and strengthen him once more.

Then he pushed against the two middle pillars, and the house fell on the lords and the people. Samson died there, and his brothers and all his father's household buried him. He had judged Israel for twenty years.