The Gates of Gaza
1 Samson went to Gaza, and saw there a prostitute, and went in to her. 2 The Gazites were told, “Samson is here!” They surrounded him and laid wait for him all night in the gate of the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, “Wait until morning light; then we will kill him.” 3 Samson lay until midnight, then arose at midnight and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city, with the two posts, and plucked them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of the mountain that is before Hebron. 4 It came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. 5 The lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Entice him, and see in which his great strength lies, and by what means we may prevail against him, that we may bind him to afflict him; and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.” 6 Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength lies, and what you might be bound to afflict you.” 7 Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven green cords that were never dried, then shall I become weak, and be as another man.” 8 Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven green cords which had not been dried, and she bound him with them. 9 Now she had an ambush waiting in the inner room. She said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He broke the cords as a flax thread is broken when it touches the fire. So his strength was not known. 10 Delilah said to Samson, “Behold, you have mocked me, and told me lies. Now please tell me how you might be bound.” 11 He said to her, “If they only bind me with new ropes with which no work has been done, then I will become weak, and be as another man.” 12 So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them, then said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” The ambush was waiting in the inner room. He broke them off his arms like a thread. 13 Delilah said to Samson, “Until now, you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me with what you might be bound.” He said to her, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the fabric on the loom.” 14 She fastened it with the pin, and said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He awakened out of his sleep, and plucked away the pin of the beam and the fabric. 15 She said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and have not told me where your great strength lies.” 16 When she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, his soul was troubled to death. 17 He told her all his heart and said to her, “No razor has ever come on my head; for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will go from me and I will become weak, and be like any other man.”
Gaza's gates on his shoulders prove his strength is intact — then Delilah asks for its secret four times, and the fourth time he hands her the vow.
Samson went to Gaza, and saw there a prostitute, and went in to her.
The verb again — saw Judges 14:1 — and this time in the heart of Philistine country. The Gazites lock the city and wait at the gate to kill him at dawn; Samson rises at midnight and walks out carrying the gate — doors, posts, bar and all — to a hilltop facing Hebron, forty miles of ridge away Judges 16:2–3. The episode establishes, immediately before Delilah, that his strength is fully intact and his enemies entirely unable to take him by force. What force cannot do, the next verses will do by asking.
It came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.
The only woman in his story he is said to have loved — and the first, the text notes, to be named. The lords of the Philistines — all five — come to her with a contract: entice him, and see in which his great strength lies... and we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver Judges 16:5. Fifty-five hundred pieces of silver, a fortune, for a secret. They have finally understood that Samson is not defeated by binding but by intimacy.
Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength lies, and what you might be bound to afflict you.”
What follows is a game played four rounds, and the game itself is the indictment. Delilah's question never varies and is never disguised — she asks, in so many words, how to bind and afflict him, and each time she tries the answer with an ambush in the inner room Judges 16:9 Judges 16:12. Green cords, new ropes, the seven locks woven into the loom: each lie edges closer to the truth, the third one touching his hair. A man who plays at betrayal with the terms of his consecration has already half surrendered them.
15 She said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and have not told me where your great strength lies.” 16 When she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, his soul was troubled to death.
The method that broke him at Timnah breaks him again — a woman's daily pressure wielding the word love Judges 14:17 — and the narrator's phrase is exact: his soul was troubled to death. Not deceived; worn out. Samson knew what she was doing — three ambushes had sprung — and stayed.
He told her all his heart and said to her, “No razor has ever come on my head; for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will go from me and I will become weak, and be like any other man.”
The secret, when it comes, is not a fact about hair. He told her all his heart — the vow, the womb, the consecration, everything the angel had announced before his birth Judges 13:5. The strength never resided in the hair as a physical property; the hair was the last surviving mark of a lifelong separation to God whose other terms — the vineyard, the carcasses — were already spent Judges 14:8–9 Judges 15:15. To shave it was to finish, deliberately, the dismantling he had been doing carelessly for years. He handed the last of his consecration to the person contracted to destroy him, and called it his heart.
held with reason What this mark means