Samson's Delilah Dillema: Love is Blind

Judges 16:4-6 ESV

4 After this he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. 5 And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Seduce 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.” 6 So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength lies, and how you might be bound, that one could subdue you.”

Have you ever heard the saying; “Love is blind”? To say that love is blind means that loving someone makes you incapable of seeing the faults of the one you love.

Now, this can certainly be a good thing. I mean, we all have our faults, so loving someone to such a degree to where you don’t notice their faults but only see the good in them is most definitely a good thing.

But it can also be a bad thing. As I said, we all have our faults, but some faults are glaring, in fact, some faults are so glaring that when you see them you should know right away that being in a relationship with this person is not, nor ever will be a good thing.

But sometimes love is so blind, that we will force ourselves to ignore these very glaring faults, refuse to acknowledge them, and because of that, it eventually results in a catastrophe for everyone involved.

This latter description of love is blind is most certainly the case when it comes to the narrative that we will be looking at throughout the month of March, the narrative of Samson and Delilah. Or, what I like to call, Samson’s Delilah Dilemma.

Samson’s Delilah dilemma is a tragic account of the fact that love is blind can certainly be a tragic thing at times. It’s an account that tells us of how one willingly gave up his close relationship and fellowship with God for what he thought was love. But it is also an inspiring account of how even when we as God’s saved children leave Him, He never leaves us.

So today, let’s go ahead and look at how Samson found himself in this dilemma in the first place.

Our reading starts off with two words: After this. So, obviously something happened before we arrive at where we are at in our reading for today.

You see, from birth, Samson was what was called a Nazirite. And a couple of sermons later, I’ll describe in detail what it meant to be under the vow of the Nazirite, but for now it will suffice us to know that one who was under the vow of the Nazirite was to be especially holy to God and to live that way.

Well, when people took the vow of the Nazirite, it was done within a certain time frame. Like, someone may vow the vow of the Nazirite for 6 months, or a year, or several years. But Samson was a Nazirite from birth. In other words, he was to live his entire life under this vow, as one who was especially holy to God.

Well, Samson didn’t exactly do that, because the after this here in our reading is in reference to Judges 16:1, which was right after Samson had gone and slept with a prostitute, a Gentile prostitute at that.

So, though Samson was to live a most holy life, he certainly wasn’t accustomed to it as he rarely practiced holy living.

And while Samson didn’t care too much for the prostitute that he had just had relations with, he later met another woman, and his feelings towards her were much greater.

The first verse of our reading introduces this woman to us, and it tells us about how Samson felt about her.

It says:

*Judges 16:4 ESV

4 After this he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.

Ok, so, while Samson briefly knew the prostitute in 16:1, it says that he loved a different woman. So, obviously Samson held a very strong, peculiar attraction to this woman. But if we know anything about Samson’s love life prior to this account, and if we know anything about this account with Delilah, we know that when it came to Samson, love for women was a problem for him.

Now of course, there is nothing wrong when a man loves a woman, but the problem when it came to Samson and love was how he went about finding love and the kind of women that he loved.

The name of the woman who Samson falls in love with is Delilah. Now, we’ve said before that in ancient, biblical times, names carried much greater meaning than they do today. In ancient times, someone’s name often referred to what their destiny would be or a character trait that would later be revealed in life. Sometimes names were even changed in order to better match someone’s character or their new destiny.

Well, the name Delilah means, “to flirt”. So, this obviously tells us something about Delilah’s character, for while Samson seemingly loved Delilah, Delilah liked to flirt.

When it came to Samson, he may have been a one-woman man once he met Delilah, but her name suggests that she didn’t feel the same way about Samson. It suggests that she kept Samson around, but she was still out playing the field herself.

But Samson’s love for Delilah wasn’t just obvious to her, it was also obvious to his enemies, as the next verse in our reading tells us:

*Judges 16:5 ESV

5 And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Seduce 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.”

Now, earlier in this chapter when Samson went and had relations with the Gentile prostitute in Gaza, it says that the men of the city surrounded the place where Samson and the prostitute were staying with the intent of attacking him when he left. But the great strength of Samson that God had given to him was too much for his attackers as he was able to evade them.

So now, some of the lords of the Philistines, that is, some of the leaders of the Philistines, who were Samson’s natural enemies knew that as long as Samson held this great strength, they would never be able to overcome him.

And the lords of the Philistines knew that the strength that Samson possessed was not natural strength, but supernatural strength that he had obtained from God. So, they knew that if they were going to take Samson, they were going to have to first strip him of the source of his strength.

And they had heard that Samson now loved a woman with a bad reputation who obviously didn’t love him in return, so they thought to themselves, “What better way to find the source of his strength than through the woman he loves!”

So, the Philistine lords came to flirtatious Delilah and they told her that if she could seduce Samson and figure out where his great strength lied, they would offer her a handsome cash reward.

Our reading says that each one of the lords would give her 1,100 pieces of silver for her efforts. Now, we don’t know exactly how many Philistine lords there were, probably 5, but maybe more. But at any rate, they were desperate and offering her a huge amount of money for helping them out.

So, how was she going to respond? Well, as I said, Samson loved Delilah, but Delilah obviously didn’t love Samson. So, when she had the opportunity to gain a great sum of money at the expense of betraying a man whom she didn’t even love, she jumped at the opportunity.

The last verse of our reading tells us this, when it says:

*Judges 16:6 ESV

6 So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength lies, and how you might be bound, that one could subdue you.”

Just like the Philistine lords commanded her, Delilah went to Samson, the man who loved her, and she began to seduce him.

She probably got herself all pretty, and as we keep saying, Samson seemingly loved Delilah and was smitten for her, so she probably was telling him that she loved him too.

Though Delilah was flirtatious and loyal to seemingly no man, I’m sure that this cash reward inspired her to do her very best at pretending as though there was no other man in the world for her but Samson.

And because she acted like she was so devoted to him and so in love with him, she said, “Honey, show me your love and your devotion to me. If you really love me, you’ll tell me something that nobody, but you know, and that’s where your strength lies and how somebody could take that strength away from you.”

Now, at this point, with most of us probably knowing what’s going to happen if Samson sticks around this girl, we say, “Samson! Run before it’s too late!” but do you remember what I was talking about at the beginning of this message? Love is blind, and sometimes love can be so blind that you overlook someone’s faults to such a degree that you don’t have enough sense to get out of the rain and it ends up hurting everyone involved.

And as we continue through this narrative in the weeks to come, we will see that this was the case with Samson and his Delilah Dilemma.

One very important thing that the narrative of Samson’s Delilah Dilemma can teach us is the prevalence of sin in the world that we live in and in our own lives.

You see, when a person is born, he or she is born in sin and thus comes from the womb loving sin.

Contrary to what many preachers and teachers will tell you, in our natural state, what we love most is sin. And what is foreign to us in our natural state is love for and service to God.

And because loving and serving God is so foreign to us, it takes a supernatural act on the part of God to make us want to love Him, serve Him, worship Him… because it’s not something that anybody would naturally do.

But though hopefully all of us here today have been the blessed recipients of this supernatural act on the part of God and have been saved by Him, still our original nature, the nature that loves sin more than anything else is still alive within us.

And Paul the Apostle tells us, this nature that loves sin is always at war with our new nature that desires to love, please, serve, and worship God.

And just like Samson, our natural love for sin can be very blind. Sin is seductive, sin is appealing, and sometimes, even though we know that it’s sin and we thus know that it’s wrong, we blindly follow it until we end up in some place we wish we never were.

It is as Solomon tells us in the Proverbs:

*Proverbs 5:3-5 ESV

3 …the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, 4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. 5 Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol;

Yes, sin is seductive, it’s like a woman whose lips drip with honey, whose speech is smoother than oil, but whose end is as sharp as a two-edged sword and bitter as wormwood.

Such is the power of sin! Even in the lives of us as believers. So, for this reason, as we look at the example of Samson and Delilah, as we ponder on the capability for sin to be prevalent in our own lives, may we heed to the advice of Solomon which comes before this passage in Proverbs, where he says:

*Proverbs 5:1-2 ESV

1 My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, 2 that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge.

In a world of sin, especially knowing that sometimes our natural love for sin can be quite blind, it is of the utmost importance that we be most attentive to wisdom, that is, the commands of God. Commands which are always for our good.

May we be humble enough to admit that left to ourselves, we will always blindly follow the path of sin. But let us also recognize that God is greater than us, His ways are greater than us, His commands are good for us, and the love that we have for Him must outweigh the sin that we naturally love.

And may we be attentive to Him and incline ourselves to Him.

Amen?