“Every day she kept nagging at him and pressing at him, till it bothered him to death, so that he finally told her everything. He said to her, ‘No razor has ever touched my head, because I have been a nazir of God since I was born. If someone shaves me, then my strength will leave me; and I will be like any other man.'”-Judges 16:16-17
Samson has tricked Delilah again…
And she can’t take it anymore.
She decides to go all out on Samson and begins nagging at him day and night.
We’re told Samson was bothered to the point of death.
He had already given away part of the secret behind his strength…that it had to do with his hair.
Now he knew things had reached the boiling point.
If he didn’t tell Delilah the truth about his strength, he could lose the company of this beautiful seductress forever.
So Samson spills the beans.
He tells her…
“No razor has ever touched my head, because I have been a nazir of God since I was born. If someone shaves me, then my strength will leave me; and I will be like any other man.”
Delilah knew deep down in her gut that Samson had finally told her the truth this time.
So there’d be no more need for tests.
She calls for the 5 Philistine kings to come and get ready to capture Samson “because he has finally told me the truth“.
Notice verse 18 where it says the kings brought the money with them.
Boy, this was one money-hungry woman!
She wanted to get paid in full on the spot.
Probably a small amount of time passed…
And as usual, the foolish Samson assumed he had everything under control.
But not this time.
One fateful evening, Delilah lulls Samson into a sleep with his head on her lap.
She then signals for a barber to enter into the room and cut off Samson’s hair.
It would have been a quick job since Samson’s hair was still braided into 7 locks.
Afterwards, Delilah shouts out again…
“Samson, the Philistines have come for you”
Samson says to himself..
“I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.”
However, it was not to be.
The verse that immediately follows tells it all:
“But he did not know that the Lord had left him.”
It was over.
Samson’s Nazarite hair was gone and with it his supernatural strength.
The Philistine soldiers rushed in, grabbed Samson and pinned him down.
Then they gouged out both of his eyes with a sword.
I’m reminded of the verse…
“Show no pity:
life for life,
eye for eye,
tooth for tooth,
hand for hand,
foot for foot.”
-Deuteronomy 19:21
Samson had taken a lot Philistine life indiscriminately throughout his life.
Was the Lord now paying back Samson for his disobedience?
Here’s the big takeaway I’m getting from all of this.
There’s a limit to how much we can take advantage of God’s grace and flirt with sin before it becomes too late for us.
We commit a few little petty sins…
Nothing happens…
So we assume we can keep on behaving as we always have…
We assume there will be no consequences…
Until one morning we wake up and find out, like Samson did, that the Lord has left us.
Samson letting his hair get cut was the final straw that broke the camel’s back.
It was the literal severing of the covenant he had with the Lord.
We’ll talk about this some more the next time we meet.
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