Turn with me this evening to the book of Judges, chapter 16. Judges, chapter 16, and in the Pew Bibles, that is on page 254. Judges chapter 16, and our text for tonight is the first 22 verses. And so, hear the Word of God.
Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went into her. The Gaza-ites were told, "Samson's come here." And they surrounded the place and set an ambush for him all night at the gates of the city. They kept quiet all night, saying, "Let us wait till the light of the morning, then we will kill him." But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron. After this, he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came to her and said to her, "Seduce him. See where his great strength lies and by what means we may overpower him that we may bind him to humble him. And we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver." So Delilah said to Samson, "Please tell me where your great strength lies and how you might be bound that one could subdue you." Samson said to her, "If they bind me with seven fresh bow strings that have not been dried, then I shall become weak and be like any other man." Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bow strings that had not been dried, and she bound him with them. Now she had men lying in ambush in an inner chamber, and she said to him, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson." But he snapped the bow strings as a thread of flax snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known. Then Delilah said to Samson, "Behold, you have mocked me and told me lies. Please tell me how you might be bound." And he said to her, "If they bind me with new ropes that have not been used, then I shall become weak and be like any other man." So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them and said to him, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson." And the men lying in ambush were in an inner chamber. But he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread. Then Delilah said to Samson, "Until now you've mocked me and told me lies. Tell me how you might be bound." And he said to her, "If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and fasten it tight with a pin, then I shall become weak and be like any other man." And so while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his head and wove them into the web and she made them tight with a pin and said to him, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson." But he awoke from the sleep and pulled away the pin, the loom and the web. And 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 you have not told me where your great strength lies." And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. And he told her all his heart, and said to her, "A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man." When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, "Come up again, for he has told me all his heart." Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands. She made him sleep on her knees. And she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him. And she said, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson." And he awoke from his sleep and said, "I will go out as at all other times and shake myself free." But he did not know that the Lord had left him. And the Philistine seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison. But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.
As some of you may remember, I've been slowly, and I emphasize the word slowly, doing a series through the life of Samson. It started back in 2019. Now, to put that in perspective, Dr. Godfrey's been doing a series through the Psalms for as long as I can remember. But chapter 16, as a whole, could be titled "The Death of Samson." Chapter 15 ends with the formula, "And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines, 20 years." And elsewhere in the book of Judges, when we see that formula, almost always the next phrase is, "and then the judge died." But here, with Samson, instead of one sentence, we get a whole chapter on the death of Samson. Because unlike the other judges, his death was actually a key part, a crucial part of his judging. Our passage, the first part of chapter 16, is in many ways somewhat painful to read. We sometimes use the phrase "watching a train wreck." We use that for something that is tragic, and yet you almost can't look away. And in many ways, that is Samson's life in this passage.
The book of Judges as a whole it's organized by all of these cycles these Judges cycles that are going on. But as they go on, they don't just repeat. As we go through the book of Judges, they get worse and worse. And so many talk of this downward spiral that we find. And so in the book of Judges, when we get to Samson, the last of the judges, we're at the low point. But it's often at those low points that we most clearly see then God's grace.
And as we reflect on Samson tonight, it's necessary to remember that he was set up for Israel as, in many ways, a mirror. It was for them to reflect, and we could say also for us to reflect. Samson, we find out back in chapter 13, but here he brings it out in our passage in verse 17, that he was set apart as a Nazarite to God from his mother's womb. He had this holy status of a Nazarite. And it corresponds to what God did with Israel as He brought them to Himself and said, "You are my treasured possession. You are a holy people, a priesthood." But Samson, as we've read if we read the earlier portions, And as we see in this chapter, he disregards God's calling. And if you know the history of Israel, throughout the book of Judges, they do the same thing.
And so the book of Judges, in many ways as a whole, but especially maybe this passage, is this hard look at the folly of sin. We see one trapped, mired, being led astray and seen in the deadly consequences. And yet it's not the end, as we said. And so we'll break this up into three parts: a characterization, a cycle, and a crisis.
And so first, this characterization. Our text actually begins with a smaller story. The main part is about Samson and Delilah, but we get this short account from the life of Samson that may seem somewhat abrupt. What is it doing here? Well, it's given to characterize this last judge.
At the end of chapter 15, it may have seemed almost like a turning point in Samson's life. He had just won a great battle against a thousand Philistines, and he then had a crisis as he is almost dying of thirst, and all of this causes him to turn to God as he cries out in prayer. And in that cry, God provides. He provides water for him there in this wilderness. But now we find out Samson hasn't changed.
The very first act that we're actually told of Samson, back in chapter 14, states, "And Samson went down to Timnah and saw a woman in Timnah from the daughters of the Philistines." Notice how chapter 16 starts: "And Samson went to Gaza and saw a woman, a prostitute." This should sound familiar. Here we have this parallel again. this cycle, as we said, but also this decline.
Now, Timnah, the first woman that he saw, was a small Philistine city just down the road from where he grew up in the Sorek Valley. Gaza was one of the biggest, most important Philistine cities, about as far away from his hometown in Philistia that he could be. And in Timnah, Samson goes there, sees a woman, and says to his parents that he wants to marry them, Telling them, "Go get her for me, she's right in my eyes." Now Samson goes to Gaza and sees a prostitute. And then he goes to visit her.
But this initial passage it actually focuses more on Samson's amazing potential. One that, unfortunately, he is squandering in his pursuit of his pleasures. The people of Gaza, they hear that Samson's there. They've been fighting against them. He just had this great victory over them. And so he is the top on the wanted list. And so they set an ambush for him. But somehow, Samson knows of it, or he's told we're not told about that, but he leaves in the middle of the night, and boy, does he leave. The gates that were supposed to lock him in until the morning, he lifts them right up and carries them away.
Now, I love archaeology, and I wish we had those gates. I could show you a nice picture, tell you how much they weighed. We're not quite sure exactly what they looked like, and we're not actually sure exactly how far he carried them. It mentions this hill facing Hebron. It wouldn't have to go all the way up to Hebron, which was a number of miles away, but maybe something closer to Gaza that was facing Hebron on the east. But I don't think any of that really matters for us to understand the point. Normal people don't do this. Even very strong people can't do this. Only one empowered by God can do this.
And yet, we shouldn't miss... Oh, and as we think about that, we also shouldn't miss that removing a city's gates was in many ways symbolic of conquering it. You're taking away its protection, its defense, is exposing it. And so in a sense, Samson's mocking the Philistines. "You thought you had me captured? I'm going to pillage you." But he's not doing this as the leader of the Israelites against their enemies. As we see throughout his life, he actually had no interest in leading. And Israel had no interest in following him. His battles with the Philistines, they come out of personal grudges. As he says in chapter 15:11, "As they did to me, so I've done to them." That's why he was fighting. And now he just uses this miraculous display of strength to escape after satisfying his desires.
And so we shouldn't miss how this episode characterizes Samson. But it also sets us up for the rest of the chapter. As Samson, this judge who was invincible when God was with him, he'll be back in Gaza at the end.
And so that gets us to the main part: this cycle of Samson. In verse 4, we're introduced to this third and final woman in Samson's life, Delilah. She is the only one who's named. And we're told that she's from the Sorek Valley. And the Sorek Valley was where Samson's hometown was. And also then down the valley is where the Philistine city, Timna, was. And so where he had first saw a woman there and wanted a wife.
We're not actually told more about Delilah, but based on Samson's previous record of his choice of women, we think it's probably a Philistine, and probably with what happened right before, she was probably again a prostitute. But what we do know, what the text tells us, is that Samson loved her. And we find out very quickly that that's a love that was misplaced. And from, again, what we know of Samson, this love was based on what was right in his own eyes.
Delilah, Delilah very quickly we're not sure what she felt for Samson but she very quickly is lured into league with the Philistines. These lords of the Philistines they come up and they offer her a lot of money, eleven hundred would have been a lot of money especially since it's from each of them. And they say, "We need you to find out Samson's secret for us."
And as we read this section, it should sound a little familiar: that a group is asking one of his women to reveal his secret. Back in chapter 14, at his wedding feast to this woman from Timnah, Samson made a wager with the Philistines that they had to solve his riddle. But they couldn't. And so what do they do? They go to his wife and say, in chapter 14 15 "Seduce or entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father's house with fire."
Notice the same word is now used here in chapter 16, 5. "And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and they said, seduce, entice him and see where his great strength lies and by what means we may overpower him that we may bind him to humble him. And we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver.
And so we have this parallel, but we should also, again, sort of see how stuff has changed. This is now becoming more serious. The first was about some money. There was a wager. This is now Samson's life we're talking about. And the Timnite woman, she told Samson's secret because she was threatened with death. They were going to burn her or her family. Delilah is ready to do it for money.
And the outcome is the same. Both women pressed upon Samson until he reveals his secret. And again, we get parallel words, parallel phrases. And so back in chapter 14, we get it told in a short, a very short form, 16 through 7: "And Samson's wife wept over him and said, you only hate me. You do not love me you have put a riddle to my people and you have not told me what it is And she wept before him the seven days that their feast lasted. On the seventh day he told her because she pressed him hard."
Well, notice the same wording in chapter 16, verse 15: "And he said to and she said to him, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? You've mocked me these three times. You've not told me where your great strength lies. And when she pressed him hard, that same term, with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death, and he told her all his heart."
Now what's unique about chapter 16, and that we need to spend a more time on is it focuses on the process here. In chapter 14, we only get a couple verses, but now we get this long, repeated cycle. Four times it takes before Delilah gets this secret out of Samson. And as we read this section, we often just scratch our head and we start saying, "How could Samson be so foolish? What was he doing? First off, he's been in this situation before with this Timnut woman. Did he not learn anything there?" But again, as we repeat and we see this repetition, we can only ask, "What was he thinking?"
But to understand it rightly, and it may be a little different, not exactly what you thought to this first, we have to pay attention to some details. There are things that repeat, but there's also parts that differ.
And so each time, Delilah asks Samson, in part or whole, what the Philistine lords had requested. She comes and says, "Please tell me where your great strength lies, how you might be bound that one could subdue you." And then Samson tells her something to be done. Then she does it, and then we finally get her test of whether it works as she cries out, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson."
Now as we read it, and I think this is how I had always taken it, we assume that each time she cries out, "The Philistines are upon you," they come out and fight against him, and he comes out and then is able to defeat them, at least for the first three times, and then the fourth time they capture him. But that's not actually what the text says.
In verse 9, if you look there, and we could read that, it says that now she had men lying in ambush in an inner chamber. And she said to him, "The Philistines are upon you." But he snapped the bow strings as a thread of flax snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known. So we're told the Philistines are lying there in ambush, but there's no mention of a fight. There's no mention of them coming out of hiding.
And we could see the same thing in verse 12 of our text, in the second time. And then in the third time, in verse 14, there's no Philistines even mentioned.
And so what we see here is that the Philistines, they come, they were waiting, but they were waiting to see if it worked. If Samson was truly bound. And when he snaps it off and is able to break free, they stay hidden. They remain hidden. And since the first two times don't work, they don't even bother to show up on the third time. Thus, Samson doesn't know they're there.
It's not as obvious as it might be to us on first read that he should know that Delilah is in league with the Philistines. We know the Philistines are there. Delilah knows the Philistines are there. But Samson does not.
In addition, another detail that I think is important is in the third and fourth times we're told that Samson is asleep, that he goes to sleep when Delilah braids his hair and then when she cuts it off. But in the first two times, there's no mention of sleep, that Samson is asleep, and so he must have been awake.
And as you think about what's done, it fits rather well. It's hard to imagine Delilah tying him up with the bow strings and the ropes while he slept. Delilah isn't secretly tying him up. Instead, what we see here is Samson is letting her tie him up. Samson lets Delilah bind him, and then he easily breaks it when she makes her cry, "The Philistines are here!"
And so as we put all this together, it's not that Samson actually thought the Philistines were there that they were coming. He thinks this is all a game for him it's a game in which he gets to show off his great strength to his woman. And Samson, as we read, he certainly seems like he's playing this game with Delilah. He's having fun with her. He's making up all of these ways in which she could try to bind him, confident that he can break free as he always has in the past.
And so it's all fun and games until it's not fun anymore. By that final time, Delilah, thinking of that wealth she's waiting on, accuses him, berates him, impresses him continually, day after day, night after night. And it says in verse 16, this is until he was wearied to death. He couldn't stand it anymore. And so, he tells her all his heart. And she knows this time is different. She knows right away.
Verse 17 there: "And he told her all his heart and said to her, A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man.
Now again we say, "What was Samson thinking?" What is clear is that Samson was in a position he never should have been with Delilah. But he loved it so much. He loved it so much he was willing He was willing to do anything to keep it going.
Now in some ways, Samson's statement comes as a little bit of a shock. When he reveals his heart to Delilah, he acknowledges that despite all he's done, at his core, Samson identifies himself as a Nazarite to God one who is holy to God and he knows that his strength is connected with that status. And we're not told that anywhere else in the text, but Samson has made that connection. And so despite all that he has done ignoring so many of God's laws Samson has kept God's mark, that sign of being holy to God, upon his head: his uncut hair.
We know of the Nazarite vow from Numbers 6. And there it describes a temporary vow an Israelite could make to separate themselves as holy in a special way to God. And then there were special regulations that went along with it, like not drinking wine, which we're pretty sure Samson didn't keep. But the most distinguishing requirement was allowing your hair to grow, allowing your hair to grow for the whole time of the vow.
And the term that describes that hair on the head of the Nazarite as this sign of consecration, being holy to the Lord, it's actually the same term that's used of the high priest's headband, on which it read, "Holy to the Lord."
But now Samson's willing to give it up. What did he think Delilah would do with this knowledge of his secret? He saw what the Timnite woman did, and he's seen what Delilah has done on all these other occasions. Or was he thinking at all? He was wearied to death as the text says, and he was willing to do whatever to make the noise stop so that he could just get back to chasing the pleasures of this world. He was willing to give up God's mark of holiness for what was good in his eyes.
This cycle of Samson, it's the cycle of sin. And it shows its foolishness. At a foundational level, sin is irrational. It goes all the way back to our first parents in the garden, having all the bounty that God had given and choosing what is right in their own eyes.
My catechism class knows that one of my favorite Proverbs is Proverbs 26, verse 11: "Like a dog that returns to his vomit, so a fool who repeats his folly." How could Samson be so foolish? Now remember that mirror: How could Israel be so foolish? How could I? How could you?
Well, as we move on, we get his crisis. Delilah wastes no time in gathering the Philistine lords and, of course, their money that comes with them. And she shaves Samson while he sleeps and wakes him with her usual cry. And so we read in verse 20, "She said, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. And he awoke from his sleep and said, I'll go out as at other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had left him."
What was he thinking when he woke up? Did he not realize his hair was gone that had been shaved? Or did he think that and hope that maybe things would just go on as normal, despite the fact that he had disregarded God's sign of his consecration?
Well, he finds out very quickly that everything has changed. Verse 19 tells us that his strength left him. But the parallel in verse 20 emphasizes that source of his strength: "The Lord had left him."
And there doesn't seem to be much of a struggle. The Philistines take him quickly. And so we read in verse 21, "And the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison."
Samson was now experiencing the consequences of sin, of his rejection of the Lord, and thus God was turning him over to his enemies. Those eyes that had led him to see and what was good in His own eyes and thereby sin, they were now blinded. His strength, that had protected him from all harm, was now gone.
This was the pattern in the judges' cycle, and it was also true of Israel as they eventually are brought away into exile. The only other mention of someone blinded and bound with shackles will be the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, as he is brought to prison in Babylon.
God, through Hosea, had spoke of Israel in His judgment, "Not my people." And in so many ways, He has the equivalent here of saying to Samson, "Not my judge."
Now that would be a horrible place to end. But it's not the end. Just as God will say again to Israel, "My people," we read in verse 22, "But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved."
There was nothing magical about Samson's hair. As we said, his strength left him because the Lord left him. But the regrowing of his hair is a sign that God's mark on Samson was still there. His mother had said, "This child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death." And he's not dead yet.
This crisis for Samson will again cause him to turn to the Lord in prayer.
Now earlier in verse 19, there's an interesting phrase, and it picks up this idea of beginning that we find in Samson. As it says that really, Delilah, by cutting his hair, began to subdue him. But the rest of the chapter shows us that he's not subdued yet. This one who was going to begin to save Israel, that God had begun to stir him. He still has a work for him.
This, the book of Judges, the story of Samson, it's God's love story, not Samson's love story. His love for the unlovable, for those who were His enemies, for those who spurned His mark of holiness upon them.
The book of Judges, in all of this, points forward Points forward to a greater judge, a greater Savior that would come. The one who would save them from not what Israel's seeming problems are, as they're oppressed by Moabites and all of these others, but what their real problem was: sin. Their sin and misery. Jesus Christ would come through His death on the cross to redeem His people.
And so as we read the book of Judges, it can often be troubling as it explores the depths of sin. It's not sometimes fun reading. But as it does that, it highlights for us the heights of God's mercy and grace.
And so I pray that the life of Samson that will cause me to examine ourselves in those own cycles of sin that we fall into as we play around with fire. Some of you may feel trapped. Some of you may be experiencing crisis because of this. But as we think of that cycle of sin and we think of Samson, may it also cause you to know the extent of God's love and mercy. That here we have Samson at this low point in Israel, in this low time in the book of Judges, and yet God still had a plan for him. That from those depths God will hear as we cry out to Him.
Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You how in it we see that You have loved a people that spurn You, that turn against You, that ignore Your laws, that sin in so many ways that are like that dog so often returning to this foolishness of our sin. And in that we know that only through Your Spirit, only through Your regenerating grace, Can we become new? New, made, remade into that image of Christ. And so we pray that You will continually put before us, put before us the blessedness of Your law, our need in light of it for Christ's work, our great confidence that we can have in His accomplishment, and then spurring us on in this life of gratitude. And so we pray that You bless us as we go out in this week. In Jesus' name, Amen.