GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
JUDGES 16:13-17
13 Then Delilah said to Samson, “You’ve been making a fool of me all along and you’ve been lying to me! Tell me how you can be tied up.”
Was Delilah a liar or a fool? Or was everything she said and did coming from cold, calculating greed? David describes the fool as an atheist (Psalm 53:1), someone who is corrupt, vile, and who doesn’t even attempt to seek God. Perhaps Samson thought he could answer a fool according to her folly (Proverbs 26:5), but it was a dangerous game. It’s more likely that Delilah really was just cold and calculating, using the beauty God gave her to her own advantage and not to his glory. A Christian woman or man with extraordinary beauty must be aware of the sinful nature of other people. Using that beauty to God’s glory means having to pay special attention to 1 Corinthians 8. What Paul says about meat sacrificed to an idol can be applied to the degree that a woman makes herself attractive in public: “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak… Therefore, if what I eat [or do, or wear, or fail to wear] causes my brother [in Christ] to fall into sin, I will never (do that) again, so that I will not cause him to fall” (1 Corinthians 8:9,13). The most God-pleasing way for a very attractive woman to use her beauty is to somewhat mask it in public, but then to let herself be spectacular privately for her husband. In this way she will echo the life of Christ, who veiled his glory in public, but allowed it to shine in private for his bride, the Church, at the Mount of Transfiguration, in small bursts during certain miracles, at his resurrection, and for eternity in heaven.
He told her, “If you weave the seven braids on my head into the fabric on the loom … ” 14 Doing this, she thrust a pin through his braids called to him, “Samson, the Philistines are here! ” He awoke from his sleep and pulled out the pin, and the loom with the fabric.
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16:13 Hebrew text. Some Greek manuscripts add and tighten it with a pin, I’ll become as weak as any other man. So while he was sleeping, Delilah took the seven braids of his hair, wove them into some fabric, and…
The clipped text of this passage may or may not be intentional (see the note below if you want to read more about the Hebrew text). Taking it as we have it here, Delilah hardly needed to hear any details at all. As soon as Samson started to talk about weaving his hair, Delilah’s mind started weaving her plan. When he fell asleep, she took the long braids of his hair and started up the loom. I have no idea whether she used his hair for the warp or the woof, or both, but in the end she held it together with a pin.
In verse 14, the words used for “she thrust in the pin” are identical to the words used in chapter 4 when Jael “drove the peg” through the skull of Sisera (4:21). The fact that Samson was asleep when this happened also relates his danger here to that of Sisera in chapter 4, except that Samson was delivered where Sisera was killed.
15 She said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not mine? This is the third time you have mocked me and not told me what makes your strength so great! ”
Once again Delilah nagged Samson. She appealed to love when she had only greed. In her heart she was a pagan, worshiping an idol of silver (Psalm 115:4)—not a statue, but simply silver itself. In this sense Delilah was altogether modern in the worst possible sense. She was willing to do anything to crush a true believer in order to get the smallest advantage. Yet “the longings of the wicked will come to nothing” (Psalm 112:7). Whatever was about to happen to Samson’s judgeship and body, it would not be the end of Samson. He was a sinner who trusted in God for his forgiveness; he was prepared for eternal life.
16 Day after day she nagged him and pleaded with him until he was tired to death, 17 and then he told her the whole truth and said to her, “My hair has never been cut, because I am a Nazirite to God from birth. If I were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.”
At last, Samson gave in. Did Delilah tell him that what a woman really wants is a man who will be completely honest with her about everything? A man who will be vulnerable, and drop his guard, and who will trust her with every one of his secrets? Well, it worked. He trusted her, and it was going to cost him his life.
We don’t know whether Samson married Delilah, or whether their dalliances were just sinful gratification, or something else. If they weren’t married, why didn’t he just leave, or drive her away? If they were married, it would explain why Samson gave in to her. A married man does not want to escape his wife; he wants to trust her, and to share everything with her. If he isn’t certain that he can fully trust her, he needs to put his life in God’s hands. And there are countless situations in life like this, when we can’t possibly be in full control, but where we need to do our best and trust that God will be with us and deliver us. This is why Jesus taught us to pray, “But deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13). In fact, Jesus said, “…from the evil one,” meaning the devil, but his words of course apply to every evil we might encounter. Luther explained:
“In conclusion, we pray in this petition that our Father in heaven would deliver us from every evil that threatens body and soul, property and reputation, and finally when our last hour comes, grant us a blessed end and graciously take us from this world of sorrow to himself in heaven.” (Small Catechism, Seventh Petition).
Fear, love and trust in God about all things.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Note:
In Hebrew, this passage is very much condensed, as I have translated it. Perhaps there actually is some missing Hebrew text. The Syriac (an ancient translation into a language similar to Hebrew) and the Hebrew Targum (an ancient paraphrase of the Bible) both have the missing lines, as does the Greek Septuagint. However, it’s possible to understand what’s missing just by reading the Hebrew, but I would not insist that every translation follow what I have done above. It would be better to handle this passage by including the longer text and footnoting the difference the way the NIV has done it. The problem is probably a case of the phenomenon known as homoioteleuton (“similar endings”), where a copyist’s eye has traveled from one word in a text down to the identical word (or word-ending) in a lower line, accidentally omitting a portion of the text in the copy.
The chronology of the transmission of the Hebrew text is not perfectly recorded, but there are certain details that are known. The complete Old Testament was finished shortly after the return from Babylon when Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi completed their books (c. 400 BC). From those days onward, in the new ‘second’ temple (Ezra 3:2; Zechariah 4:9), there was a copy of the completed Old Testament in a special place in the temple known as the Azarah (in fact, there may have been more than one: “Were there three Torah-scrolls in the Azarah?” by Solomon Seitin, Jewish Quarterly Review 2, Vol. 56, No. 4 [April 1966] pp. 269-272). The copies of Judges that were translated into Syriac, Greek and transcribed into the Targum may have included what was lost from this verse when the second temple was burned by the Romans in 70 AD. Note that no important doctrine in missing from this passage, but it is truncated to such a degree that it needs to be explained by a footnote.
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota