And it came to pass afterwards that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.
After years of astonishing strength, the man set apart to God gives his heart to a Philistine woman. Commentators read this verse as the last step of a slow decline, and it raises one question — what happens when our love settles where God's heart is not set?
Samson had failed before through his eyes and his appetites. This time one word in the verse marks something new.
One word, which the Spirit of God uses, gives the key to this last trap. It says, "After this he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah." This word "loved" shows that Satan had now found Samson's special weakness. He combined the two earlier temptations into one. He drew Samson to Delilah through his natural affections and through his bodily desires at the same time.
The same writer applies this to us. The moment our hearts are set on what the Lord's heart is not set on, we are out of communion. And out of communion, we soon become easy prey to every passing temptation.
The fall did not begin in this verse. Samson was a Nazirite: a man under a vow that set him apart to God. One writer traces three women, and three steps down.
In Samson's life, three women mark the three stages that led to the loss of his Nazirite standing. The first pleased his eyes. He formed a passing connection with the second (Judges 16:1), and he loved the third (Judges 16:4). When he gave his affections, the last hour of his Nazirite life had sounded.
The place itself carries the message. A Nazirite's vow forbade him the fruit of the vine.
Sorek means "the vine." It is a sad sight. The victorious Nazirite, who had lived on the rock and drunk from the well there, now goes down to drink from the brook that ran through the valley of the vines. As a Nazirite he had refused the fruit of the vine, and at the start of his career he had killed a lion in the vineyards. There he overcame the strong one. Now, in the valley of the vines, he falls victim to Delilah, whose name means weakness.
Commentators differ on the name. Another reads Sorek as "a snare," and hears in the going down a moral descent, not just a change of place.
Her name carries the point. Weakness brings down Israel's strongest man.
Here is the strong man caught in the trap, and the weak woman — whose very name seems to mean "weakness" or helplessness. That very woman, in her weakness and helplessness, is the one who draws him and holds him. Nothing can free him from her power, because his own heart has come under that power.
Samson had every warning. Delilah tried more than once to hand him over, and he stayed.
Here we meet more than the old sin repeated, and in its most corrupt form. With it comes an infatuation as extraordinary as his disgrace. Without that infatuation, the repeated attempts to seize him would have opened his eyes to her trickery and their murderous hatred. But the way of those who break God's law is hard, and the guilty man falls under this strange woman's spell again and again. Such is the blinding power of sin. Was he ignorant of her vileness, or of his own danger?
Strip away the drama and one thing was on trial. Samson's uncut hair was not a magic charm but a visible sign of a life given to God.
His unshaven hair carried his unbeatable strength, by God's will. Only one thing was really involved — obedience... It is the perfection of the creature, giving God His place and man his own. It is the lowliest place for anyone here on earth, and at the same time the morally highest, as it is for the angels above.
Kelly adds that Samson fell as Adam fell, and as everyone since has fallen. Only Christ stood, though He was tried as no one else ever was.
- Descent — The fall came slowly. One woman pleased his eyes. One he visited briefly. The third he loved, and each step went deeper than the last.
- Affection — The word "loved" is the hinge. Earlier traps caught his senses. This one caught his heart — and once the heart is caught, the last hour has sounded.
- Location — He went down to the valley of the vine, the very thing his vow forbade. Another reading of the name is "a snare." Moral descent has a geography.
- Blindness — He had plenty of proof of Delilah's design, and stayed anyway. Such is the blinding power of sin.
- Obedience — Behind the hair, the strength and the secret stood one issue: obedience. It gives God His place and man his own. Samson lost it; Christ never did.
And the lords of the Philistines came up to her, and said to her, Persuade him, and see in what his great strength is, and with what we may prevail against him, that we may bind him to overpower him; and we will each give thee eleven hundred silver-pieces.
The five Philistine rulers do not attack Samson. They go to the woman he loves and put a price on the one thing they cannot break: the secret of his strength.
They lay this plot while Samson is away. One writer treats that hidden meeting as the hinge of the whole story.
The most important thing in the story may be a conversation Samson never heard and never knew about. The five lords of the Philistines came to Delilah and said, "Entice him, and see where his great strength lies" (Judges 16:5). This is very like the time when Satan asked the Lord's permission to deal with Job, to test him and afflict him. As far as we can see, from the start of that story to the end, Job never knew what lay behind his terrible suffering.
Earlier the Philistines had used terror on someone close to Samson. With Delilah they change the currency.
He goes down there and links himself with her, and the Philistines make full use of that. If he has put himself under the power of a principle that is not according to God, a visible power will soon take hold of him — something more than the power over his heart. They offer this woman pay. Philistines are not very careful about how they do things. The first time, they appealed to one of Samson's friends with a threat: they would burn her and her father's house with fire. Now they appeal to this one with silver — eleven hundred pieces of it — if she will only entice from him what he had never yet disclosed: the secret of his strength.
The rulers do not say "seize him" or "frighten him." Where the ESV has "seduce him," older translations read "entice him" — and that word had already appeared once in Samson's story.
Samson's weakness was now plain to see. Even the lords of the Philistines, Satan's instruments, had found the quickest way to trap their enemy. "Entice him," they say to Delilah, "and see where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overcome him." Notice the word "entice." It is the same word Samson's "companions" used at his wedding feast. It unfolds the secret of Satan's method. He will terrify where possible; but failing that, he always turns to enticements. Many a servant of the Lord has stood in the front line of the battle. By God's grace he never flinched under Satan's fiercest attacks. Yet afterwards he fell an easy victim to this more subtle temptation.
The Philistines had felt Samson's power without ever understanding it.
Until now, Samson had guarded his close and secret relationship with God, despite everything. He had something the world could not understand. The world could not rise to its source. His strength remained a riddle to his enemies. No doubt they saw its effect, but that effect was aimed at them. So they were all the more eager to wrest the secret of it from him, and to learn what weapons to use against this servant of the Lord.
Samson had already failed openly and often. Yet the enemy still had ground to take.
It seems strange, almost unthinkable. Samson had failed so openly, and yet the stronghold of his heart was still on the right side. It was not in the hands of the enemy, although it had been unfaithful time and again. But the stronghold, the innermost soul of the man, was still for God, who in mercy had so far stepped in on his behalf. Now Delilah is to lay siege to that stronghold of his heart. She is to draw the key from him, so that the enemy may rush in and take full possession.
One writer weighs what a person loses by handing God's secret to a stranger.
Samson had no excuse for yielding to Delilah's flattery. But she had trapped him in her snares; otherwise he would have drawn back in horror from what she asked. "The secret of God, the possession of His confidence, is the highest of all privileges. To betray it to a stranger, whoever he may be, is to despise the precious position in which His grace has placed us: it is to lose it."
- Secret targeted. His strength was a riddle his enemies could feel but not explain. So they set out to wrest its secret from him and learn what weapon would work.
- Secret besieged. His heart's stronghold was still on God's side; Delilah's task was to get the key to it so the enemy could rush in.
- Secret enticed. They do not say "seize him" but "entice him" — Satan terrifies where he can, and where he cannot, he allures.
- Secret priced. They threatened one woman with fire; this one they paid — eleven hundred pieces of silver.
- Secret betrayed. To hold God's confidence is the highest privilege; to hand it to a stranger is to despise that place — and to lose it.
Then Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I pray thee, in what is thy great strength, and with what thou mightest be bound to overpower thee.
Delilah asks Samson straight out what makes him strong, and how an enemy could tie him down and beat him. The Philistine rulers have bribed her to ask, and the strange thing is not the question but that Samson stays to hear it.
The rulers went to Delilah because nothing about Samson accounted for what he did. His power was not in his build. It came from his place before God as a Nazirite — a man set apart to God, marked by hair that was never cut.
We should not imagine Samson to be a giant with an impressive physique. Samson's strength was a mystery to the Philistines. They had to turn to Delilah: "Persuade him, and see in what his great strength is." But that great strength depended entirely on his consecration as a Nazirite. When his hair was cut off, he became as weak as a child.
Samson is in this conversation because he gave way to his own heart. Even so, his secret had held until now.
This is where the path ends for the child of God who gives way to the first stirrings of his natural heart, instead of judging them. Until now Samson had guarded his close, secret relationship with God, despite everything. He had something the world could not understand, and its source was beyond the world's reach. His strength remained a riddle to his enemies. No doubt they saw its effects — effects aimed at themselves. That made them all the more eager to wrench the secret out of him, so they could find out what weapons to use against this servant of the Lord.
The rulers send a woman, not an army. That choice shows how the enemy usually works.
He will terrify where possible. Failing that, he always turns to enticements. Many a servant of the Lord has stood in the front line of the battle. By God's grace he never flinched under Satan's fiercest attacks. Yet afterwards he fell an easy victim to this more subtle temptation.
She states her purpose openly, so the fault here is Samson's.
Samson had no excuse for giving in to Delilah's flattery. But she had caught him in her net, or he would have drawn back in horror from her request. "The secret of God, the possession of His confidence, is the highest of all privileges. To betray it to a stranger, whoever he may be, is to despise the precious position in which His grace has placed us: it is to lose it."
Samson neither tells the truth nor walks away. He answers with a boast about an old victory.
Have you boasted of some past victory in such a way that it has become the start of a fresh trap? Samson here is thinking of his past victory over the Philistines, how he snapped the cords. He says, I will do it again... And so he did — he broke the cords, but he now had a fresh cord around his soul. It was boasting in a past victory in front of someone who had no business knowing anything about it — and he had no business being with her at all.
Nothing in nature links long hair to power. The link was obedience to what God had commanded.
There might have seemed little connection between uncut hair and all-conquering strength. But God was in it. A God who is obeyed and honoured is a God of strength to us. This was God's strength, given to a man who recognised Him so clearly. It was a gift he kept only by obeying — by staying true to the vow of separation to God that he had taken.
The same secret holds for anyone serving God today, and the danger to it is quiet, not loud.
The secret of his strength is what we have been seeing all through. It is the secret of a judged self, of weakness, of utter helplessness leaning on almighty strength... there is no power he need fear so much as hidden alliances with what is not according to God.
The same question can be put to Christ Himself.
We must now ask our beloved Lord Delilah's question: "Please tell me the secret of where your great strength lies." The answer comes at once. He always walked His pathway with the "joy of the Lord" as His strength.
- The secret is separation. Samson's power was never muscle; it rested wholly on his consecration to God, marked by uncut hair.
- The secret stays hidden. His enemies saw the effects but not the source, so they had to buy the answer from someone close to him.
- The secret draws enticement. Where the enemy cannot frighten a servant of God, he charms him — and front-line men fall to that more easily.
- The secret dies when you tell it. To hand God's confidence to a stranger is to despise the position grace gave you, and so to lose it.
- The secret is safest in Christ. Ask Him Delilah's question, and the answer comes at once: the joy of the Lord was His strength.