 |
| To Part 1 |
Let’s pay a visit to the scene where Delilah is beside herself after going down some
rabbit holes because we know that she really wanted those 5500 shekels of
silver from the Philistine lords. This was a rare opportunity to be set for
life financially. Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for only 30 pieces of silver
(Mt 26:15).
Then she said to him [Samson], How can you say, I love you, when your
heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and have not
told me where your great strength lies. (Jdg 16:15).
Knowing what we know about Samson and Delilah, this she said verse is oozing with heartfelt sincerity, yes? When she looked into Samson’s eyes, she didn’t see a sparkle but silver. Poor Delilah is frustrated with Samson. I realize that this verse is not in parity with Jesus accusing the Jews that they honored Him with their lips but their hearts were far from Him (Mk 7:6), but every time I read these words of Delilah, I can’t help but think of that verse in the NT where Jesus’ points out the feigned love of the spiritual leadership of Israel for Yahweh.
Obviously, these are two unrelated events, but both reveal a hypocritical love: the former of a heartless woman who pretended to love a man whose inhuman strength was not strong enough to resist her devilish inquiries, and the latter of a nation’s love for God whose heart was not even in the Holy Land. Delilah exposed her lackluster love for Samson when the secret of his strength was out in the public domain, and he was apprehended by the Philistines. Israel’s love for Yahweh was revealed by crucifying who they thought was a false Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Both were a tale of two loves that killed the object of their insincere love.
Knowing what we know about Samson and Delilah, this she said verse is oozing with heartfelt sincerity, yes? When she looked into Samson’s eyes, she didn’t see a sparkle but silver. Poor Delilah is frustrated with Samson. I realize that this verse is not in parity with Jesus accusing the Jews that they honored Him with their lips but their hearts were far from Him (Mk 7:6), but every time I read these words of Delilah, I can’t help but think of that verse in the NT where Jesus’ points out the feigned love of the spiritual leadership of Israel for Yahweh.
Obviously, these are two unrelated events, but both reveal a hypocritical love: the former of a heartless woman who pretended to love a man whose inhuman strength was not strong enough to resist her devilish inquiries, and the latter of a nation’s love for God whose heart was not even in the Holy Land. Delilah exposed her lackluster love for Samson when the secret of his strength was out in the public domain, and he was apprehended by the Philistines. Israel’s love for Yahweh was revealed by crucifying who they thought was a false Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Both were a tale of two loves that killed the object of their insincere love.
The
Philistines have been desirous of capturing or killing Samson for nearly twenty
years now; the Philistine nation was given a sigh of relief, and they were in a
celebratory mood hearing the news of Samson’s capture; it spread faster than
the foxfire (Jdg 15:4, 5). This joyous time would be short-lived.
Soon
they would gather officially and pay homage to Dagon, the half fish and half
man deity, for delivering Samson into their hands, the destroyer of their land
and the killer of so many sons of the Philistines (Jdg 16:23, 24). Oh, if we
would grasp the gravity of this moment! Yahweh receives no glory when we
compromise our holiness unto Him! The Philistines were deadly mistaken that
Dagon was greater than the God of Israel.
For
some reason, Samson had a penchant for Philistine women who were in a culture
steeped in worshipping false gods. Delilah was wanting Samson to prove his love
to her by revealing the secret of his strength, a patently dangerous thing for
Sam to do.
She
had bugged Samson about this so much that he was worn down into believing she
was trustworthy, letting down his guard, revealing his secret, and thus,
disregarded the warning given by his parents (Jdg 13:5; 16:17). You would have
thought that Samson would have learned from a similar situation involving a
woman of Timnah, similar to Delilah in the Valley of Sorek, vexing him to death
for an answer, the former concerning his riddle, the latter about his strength
(Jdg 14:16-17). The mighty Samson caved-in to both.
How
could Samson be so foolish to disclose the source of his strength? Exchanging Samson
for silver was Delilah’s agenda. He loved her, but she didn’t love him in
return, and the Bible is silent on why she loved him just enough to betray him!
Here you have the strongest man in the world giving in to a pestering woman
because her annoying incessancy was driving him crazy! She used the question of
trust like a wedge, “If you truly loved me, you would trust me” repetitively.
Though
Samson was a man of faith (Heb 11:32), he had compromised his spiritual
integrity at great cost. I always try and give Bible characters a fair shake
and the benefit of the doubt when there is not enough data to judge rightly,
but Samson has only himself to blame for disclosing the “source” of His
strength. His strength was never intended to overshadow personal holiness.
He
was commanded to be holy both from the Torah and his Naziritic commitment (Lev
11:45; Num 6:5). This was an obligation to obey and be pleasing to Yahweh in
his “inner life and outer walk.” Personal holiness is highly under-rated among
believers today to their moral and spiritual detriment,
(1Pe
1:15) but
as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your
conduct,
(1Pe
1:16) because
it is written, BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.
His
uncut hair as we have seen was the symbol of his supernatural strength, but the
source behind the symbol was Yahweh.
There
are inescapable conclusions about men or women of God in Scripture that must be
pointed out without intentionally sullying their character. We all are weak,
but He is strong (cf. Php 4:13). No matter how saintly we strive, there’s an
ugly side to us all; it is called the sin nature, and it is as ugly now as the
day we were born again (cf. Rom 7). To claim we are “washed in the blood of
Jesus” and to live without partnering up with the Holy Spirit to put a check on
the sin nature is shortsighted and spiritual irresponsibility.
For
Samson, his underlying sin was overconfidence (cf. Jdg 16:20). He was putting
stock only in his hair and not focusing on being holy to Yahweh as part of his
total Naziritic commitment. His hair remaining uncut was a very big deal, no
doubt about it, but so was his personal holiness unto Yahweh in the other
aspects of his life.
It
was that compromise of holiness that eventually upended Samson, leading him
to unwisely disclose how to rid himself of his strength, and then peacefully falling
asleep in the lap of a deceitful and calculating devil. What we read of what
happened to him next could have been avoided had he been holistically holy, in
other words, holy in all aspects of his life.
We
should never lose sight of who, what, when, where, why, and how we are in God
but at the same time launch forth from the foundation of being positionally
holy (salvation) to being practically holy before the LORD as we serve and
worship Him (progressive sanctification or maturing in the faith). Hopefully,
we get a better insight into the need for personal holiness in our lives,
intellectually, emotionally, and volitionally at all times in worship and
service to Yahweh to avoid impurity before Him and hypocrisy before man as we
look briefly at Samson’s life.
Delilah
would have lived and died in obscurity, but it was her involvement with Samson
that immortalized her in Scripture as a woman who betrayed the love of a man
for personal enrichment. She was cold, cruel, callous, calculating, unrelenting,
greedy, and unprincipled. Her people were oppressing the Israelites. God had
been using the Philistines in chastening His people for their idolatrous ways,
then enters Samson onto the stage of biblical history.
The
evidence is inconclusive that Delilah was ever a temple prostitute, but if she
was, it might help to explain why she treated Samson’s heart like a thing to be
used and then discarded. It’s either that, or she suffered from a delusional
and dysfunctional love/hate relationship when it came to males, and Samson was
no exception. We do not know why her heart was so desensitized to
heartlessness, but greed had to have been a component driving her deception and
betrayal.
We
learn from this defective relationship that the law of the harvest does not discriminate between true faith and false faith. There is a ripple effect of consequences of our choices, good
or bad. Whenever believers begin compromising the standards of holiness in
order to build a relationship with others who have conflicting worldviews,
colliding cultural standards, values, religion, morality, and ethics, problems
are inevitably on the horizon.
The
old saying that opposites attract is true for magnets, but people are not
magnets. The ungodly will only drag us down. This is not a diversity initiative
approved by God, we are to be spiritually separate (2 Cor 6:14-18). Samson’s
union with the ungodly only eroded his moral and spiritual values.
Afterward
[Jdg
16:1-3]2 it happened that he [Samson] loved a woman in the
Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah (Jdg 16:4).
The
way I figured it; there were 5,500 reasons for a woman like Delilah to find a
way to deliver Samson into the clutches of the Philistines (Jdg 16:5, 1,100 x
5). Read her words after she was deflected down three rabbit holes by Samson on
her seeking the secret of his strength,
Then
she said to him, How can you say, I love you, when your heart is not
with me [“not devoted to me,” K&D3, “thy
heart is not open to me”
(Benson), “when
you won’t ever trust me”
(MSG), “when
you won’t share your secret with me” (NET), “when
you won’t confide in me”
(NIV)]?
You have mocked me these three times, and have not
told me where your great strength lies (Jdg
16:15)!
Interestingly, she mocked him three times with, The Philistines are upon you [pretending as if
she had nothing to do with it] (Jdg 16:9, 12, 14)! She should have gotten an
Oscar for her performance! Samson was making sport of her in her quest to
discover the source of his strength. She was dead serious while he was teasing
her. His secret was worth 5500 silver shekels to her; her obsession to know the
secret of his strength should have set off all kinds of bells and whistles!
Self-invincibility is highly overrated; don’t you think? <><
%20MG%20t-bkgrd%2060x44.png){kind=small}
%20sunflower%20makeover%2045x63.png){kind=small}
____________
2. The clause, afterward
it happened that he loved a woman (Jdg
16:4), indicates that an undetermined amount of time had transpired since the
Gaza gate incident (v3). Delilah is not referred to as a harlot like the
unknown woman in Jdg 16:1, or a wife as was the case of Samson’s deceased wife
from Timnah (Jdg 14:1, the worst said of this woman of Timnah was by Samson’s
father, Manoah, questioning Samson’s choice of significant other, a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines, a critical remark, Jdg 14:3d).
The phrase, went in to her,
can refer to sexual activity (cf. Gn 38:18; 2 Sam 17:24), or it can take on a
completely different meaning based upon the context (cf. Jdg 4:22). It is
prudent and wise to treat the context
of any passage as the sovereign of hermeneutics. The more plausible meaning of
this phrase in Jdg 16:1, went in to her, is that Samson had
illicit sex with this harlot; he was “between relationships.”
He is
mentioned along with David in Heb 11:32 who had unlawful sex with Bathsheba and
attempted to cover it up, and it got messy; you recall. If Samson was working
in the capacity of a “spy” as the two spies dispatched to Jericho by Joshua,
spending an evening with a harlot would not arouse any suspicion; it makes
sense. But, was Samson’s visit to a harlot only a ruse for some greater purpose
or simply a matter of lust?
I am of the opinion that this was a one-night stand; unlike the spies at Rahab’s place; the
Philistines were already well aware of what Samson looked like. It takes two to
tango; this was a matter of impulsive sex. Shortly after midnight, God sent a
message to the Philistines with Samson taking the gate at Gaza and carrying it
to the top of a hill; Samson’s God could enter and leave at His pleasure, and
the Philistines were helpless to do anything about it. It would be irresponsible
to employ Samson’s interactions with this harlot as proof that God approved of
it; the obvious reason is that sin does not promote holiness or vice versa
(cf. Jdg 13:5 with Jdg14:4).
3. C.F Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old
Testament Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975), 422.
