Judges 16:19-21
The Voice
Samson’s bride and Delilah are both presented as unfaithful and deceitful, and Delilah’s name has become synonymous with any wily and seductive woman who wants to ruin a man. Although these betrayals are part of God’s purpose, some readers have used these particular stories to put down all women. It’s good to remind ourselves that earlier in the Book of Judges God uses Deborah and Jael, brave and strong women, to achieve His purpose. The characters in the story of God’s people—men and women alike—are sometimes good and sometimes evil. Even a Levite, someone set aside to the priesthood of God, can behave with selfishness and cowardice.
19 She helped Samson fall asleep in her lap and called in a man to shave off the seven locks of Samson’s hair. Immediately his strength left him. 20 This time she called to him.
Delilah: Wake up, Samson! The Philistines are attacking!
His strength was gone. Samson woke up and thought he would shake himself free, as he had before, because he did not know that the Spirit of the Eternal had left him.
21 But this time the Philistines seized and held him. They put out his eyes. Then they took him to Gaza, where they bound him with bronze chains and put him to work grinding grain in the prison mill.
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