Samson's Last Strength

The Philistines could not beat Samson in a fight, so they tried something else. There was a woman he loved, whose name was Delilah, and the rulers of the Philistines came to her secretly and said, “Find out where his great strength comes from, and how we can tie him up and hold him down — and every one of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.” So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me, please — where does your great strength come from? What could anybody tie you with?” And Samson said, “If they tie me with seven fresh bowstrings that have never dried out, I will be as weak as anybody else.” So she got seven fresh bowstrings and tied him with them while men waited hidden in the next room, and she called out, ‘The Philistines are on you, Samson!’ — and he snapped the bowstrings like a bit of burnt thread. And Delilah said, “Look, you have made a fool of me and told me lies. Now tell me what you can be tied with.” So he told her: new ropes. And she tied him with brand-new ropes, and called out again — and he snapped them off his arms like a piece of string. And a third time she asked, and a third time he gave her an answer that was not the truth, and a third time he broke free.

But Delilah did not stop. She asked him day after day, and cried, and said, “How can you say you love me, when your heart is not with me? Three times now you have made a fool of me, and you still have not told me where your great strength comes from.” And she pressed him and pressed him with her words, day after day, until he was worn out to death — and at last he told her everything in his heart. He said, “No razor has ever touched my head, because I have belonged to God from the day I was born. If my hair were shaved off, my strength would leave me, and I would be as weak as anybody else.” And Delilah knew that this time it was the truth. So she sent for the rulers of the Philistines, and they came up with the silver in their hands. And she let Samson fall asleep, and while he slept a man came and shaved off the seven long locks of his hair. And she called out, ‘The Philistines are on you, Samson!’ And he woke up and said to himself, ‘I will go out and shake myself free, the way I always have.’ But he did not know that the Lord had left him. So they took him, and they blinded him, and they carried him down to Gaza and put bronze chains on him and set him to work turning a heavy millstone round and round in the prison house — the strongest man in the world, grinding grain in the dark. But the hair of his head began to grow again, after it was shaved.

Then the rulers of the Philistines held a great feast for their god Dagon, and all of them came, and the whole house was packed full of men and women, with about three thousand more up on the flat roof. And they were happy and loud, and they said, “Our god has given our enemy into our hands!” And when they had drunk enough, they called for Samson to be brought out of the prison house so they could laugh at him. And they stood him between the two great pillars that held the whole building up. And Samson said quietly to the young man who was leading him by the hand, “Let go of me, and let me feel the pillars that hold this house up, so that I can lean on them.” And Samson prayed: “Lord, remember me. Give me strength just this one time more, O God.” And he took hold of the two great pillars, one with his right hand and one with his left. And he pushed with all his strength — and the whole house came down on the rulers and on all the people who were in it. And Samson died there with them. And his brothers and his father’s whole family came and carried him home, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol, in his father Manoah’s tomb. He had been Israel’s judge for twenty years.

And that is how it went in the days of the judges, over and over again: the people forgot God, and trouble came; and the people cried out, and God sent somebody to save them — Othniel first of all, and Ehud with the sword he had hidden under his coat, and Shamgar with an ox-goad, and Deborah under her palm tree, and Gideon with his torches, and Jephthah, who made a promise he was sorry for ever afterwards, and Samson with his long hair — and the land was quiet for a while, until the people forgot again. But God did not forget them. Not once, in all those years.