Samson's Delilah Dillema: The Prodigal Son of the Old Testament

Judges 16:15-22 ESV

15 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.” 16 And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. 17 And he told her all his heart, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite 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.”

18 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. 19 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. 20 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. 21 And the Philistines 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. 22 But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

I remember there was once a young, sweet boy who left off being sweet and started to become quite unruly in his adolescent years. In fact, he became so unruly in his teenage years that the way this boy became now was unrecognizable. He was nothing like the young, sweet boy he used to be.

It broke his mom and dad’s heart, especially as his unruliness only got worse as time went by.

He had gone from being a young, sweet boy, to being an unruly teenager, to eventually becoming a known criminal and an alcoholic as a young man.

But even though this now young man was far from what he was as a boy, even though he had veered off onto an incredibly dark path, his mom and dad never stopped loving him. He may have turned his back on them, but they never turned their backs on him.

That young man was me…

I know what it’s like to leave the path of right living, to turn my back on those who love me, and for them to remain faithful to me, nonetheless.

Someone else who knows all about this, but to a much greater extent than what I just described is Samson, the man whose dilemma we have been focusing on this month.

As we said a few weeks ago, the origin of Samson’s dilemma was his weakness for women, but the woman who he had a particular weakness for was a woman known for her flirtatious behavior named Delilah.

Now, Samson loved Delilah, but Delilah was content to play the field and not settle down with anyone. And because this was how Delilah felt about Samson, she had no problem with seducing and betraying him when she was offered a handsome cash reward from the Philistine lords for doing so.

They told her, “Find where Samson’s great strength lies and let us know how we can rid him of that strength so that we may bind him, and then each one of us will give you 1,100 pieces of silver.”

Like I said, she didn’t really feel strongly about Samson, and she was offered a whole lot of money to betray him, so it was a no brainer for her, of course she was going to betray him.

So, she went about attempting to get Samson to reveal the secret to her.

And as she went about this, it became obvious that Delilah was up to no good as she repeatedly asked Samson where his strength lied.

So, obviously Samson knew that hanging around Delilah wasn’t a good idea. But he was determined to play with the fire, convinced that he wouldn’t get burnt. So, he stuck around, and he slid farther and farther down the slippery slope of sin until we arrive at the part of the narrative in which we are reading from today.

Now let’s see what the fallout of Samson’s persistence to hang around sin was in our reading.

First let’s look at verse 15, where it says:

*Judges 16:15 ESV

15 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.”

Samson had toyed with Delilah as she asked him where his strength lied. Initially he wouldn’t tell her, instead, he would lie and tell her that his strength lied in places that it did not. In fact, he lied to her three different times about this.

And so now, Delilah says, “You say you love me Samson! But how can you love me when you won’t tell me what I want to know!?”

Now, in our first sermon in this series, back in verse 4 of this chapter it says that Samson truly loves Delilah. So, when he hears the woman he loves telling him that she doesn’t believe that he loves her, it starts to work on him.

But still, Samson probably thought that eventually, Delilah would just leave him alone about this whole business and it would be a thing of the past and everything would be fine between the two of them.

But that’s not what happened, which we see in the next verse of our reading, verse 16, when it says:

*Judges 16:16 ESV

16 And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death.

She didn’t leave him alone about it at all. It says that day after day she pressed him hard with her words. Over and over again she asked him to reveal to her where his strength lied, day after day she would tell him that he didn’t love her because he wouldn’t reveal the secret to her.

In fact, it says that it was so bad that Samson’s soul was vexed to death. Now there are a couple of definitions for that word ‘vexed’, but the most applicable definition concerning the narrative in which we are working through here is ‘annoyed’.

So, basically it says that Delilah was annoying Samson about this. And it says that the annoyance was so frequent and so intolerable that Samson preferred to die rather than to keep listening to it.

So, because of his extreme annoyance at Delilah, he finally gave in. We see this in verse 17 where it says:

*Judges 16:17 ESV

17 And he told her all his heart, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite 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.”

Samson knew that if he decided to just lie to Delilah again it would only result in more nagging from her and more annoyance for him. But Samson loved her, and he didn’t want to be without her, so he knew that the only way that he was going to keep her around and enjoy her company was if he told her the truth.

This verse says that ‘he told her all his heart.’ In other words, he revealed the full truth to her. And the truth was that the source of Samson’s strength was God Himself. But the way in which God communicates this great strength to Samson is through his hair.

Samson’s hair was a symbol of the relationship between he and God. And it showed that God had specifically chosen Samson to begin to save Israel from the Philistines. Therefore, he told her that if one would shave the hair from his head, thus removing that peculiar mark of he and God’s special relationship, that God would then leave him, and he would then be just as weak as any other man.

Delilah knew that he wasn’t playing around this time, so she acted upon it, as the next verse tells us:

*Judges 16:18 ESV

18 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.

Delilah knew that this was the truth, she knew that he had told her all his heart. It was the only possible explanation for his great strength. So, she went to the Philistine lords who had promised her, her cash reward and she told them that this time it was the real deal. And so, they gave her, her reward.

The deal was done, the secret had been revealed, now all that was left to do was effectively make Samson as weak as any other man. And this, Delilah went about doing as the next verse tells us:

*Judges 16:19 ESV

19 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.

Samson, the divinely chosen deliverer of Israel slept upon his promiscuous lover’s knees, and as he slept, she called a man in to cut his hair. And after his hair was cut, his strength was gone.

All that was left to do now was for Samson to be humbled by his enemies, which we see in the next verse:

*Judges 16:20 ESV

20 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.

Just as she had done when Samson had fooled her before, Delilah shouted, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” and he woke up thinking that this was more of the same old, same old. But little did Samson know that this time, the Lord had left him.

Now, let’s think about that for a moment. God was the Source of Samson’s strength, and Samson’s hair, was what symbolized God’s special relationship with Samson. But Samson took the things of God lightly, he thought to himself, “Even if she does cut my hair, I’ll still be as strong as ever!” Samson was willing to sacrifice his relationship with God for a flirtatious woman who had no feelings for him.

God stopped relaying His strength to Samson, and because of this, it was no problem for his enemies to capture him now:

*Judges 16:21 ESV

21 And the Philistines 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.

Strong and mighty Samson, deliverer of God’s people was now like anyone else, just a regular man with regular strength.

And because he was just a regular man with regular strength, the Philistines, the enemies of Samson were able to seize him and imprison him as easily as they would with any other man.

Samson had turned his back on God, he had forsaken Him, and now he was paying the price for turning his back on the One Who had made him who he was.

But God didn’t turn His back on him… there was still hope:

*Judges 16:22 ESV

22 But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

His hair began to grow again! This shows that even though Samson had seemingly left God, his leaving was a permissive leaving, and that before long, Samson would be back! His God would be back! And his strength would be back!

Beloved, what this shows us today is that even when God’s people are not faithful, He still is.

It shows us that He will accomplish His purpose through them, and that He will complete the good work that He started in them.

This shows us that the discipline that God gives to His children, those who are saved, is meant for our good. It shows us that when we choose to wander away, quite often God will allow this for a time. But if we are truly His, this wandering will eventually cease when like the prodigal son, God opens our eyes and we say, “What am I doing here?! I’m returning to my Father’s house!”

The love of God is that when we are His, no matter where we go, we are still His, and He will ensure that we return to His fold as He lovingly waits for us and draws us back to Himself.

Beloved, praise God for His faithfulness, for His love, and for the fact that even when we don’t want Him to, He keeps working on us!

Amen?