The Beguilement

Jdg_16:4-18
As Samson judged Israel twenty years, and as these twenty years
could not well have commenced before that great action in which
he singly smote the Philistines in the presence of the three
thousand magnates of Judith by whom he had been delivered up,
the remaining scenes of his life belong to the close of that period,
when, one should suppose, he could not well be under, and was
probably somewhat above, forty years of age. He is, therefore,
now no longer young; but he is the same manas strong as ever,
and as weak as ever. The princes of the Philistines knew already
where Samsons weakness lay, but not his strength, Note:
Bishop HallContemplations, x. 5. His strength was so manifestly
superhuman, that it was clear to them, that any ordinary means
taken to destroy him must prove abortive. This admission on their
part, incidentally indicated, is very important, and ought alone to
satisfy those who incline to think that Samson was merely a very
strong man. It shows that he was much more than thisthat he
was, for special purposes, endowed with powers far above any
that can naturally belong to the strongest of the sons of men.
In the conviction they had attained, the object of the Philistines
was to discover wherein lay his great strengthwhether it
consisted in the possession of any charm or amulet, the loss of
which would divest him of his supernatural powers, and leave him
nothing more than a strong man. We do not read of any king
among the Philistines till the time of David, and then only at Gath.
Yet in the time of Abraham they had a king. At this time each of
the five great cities, Ashdod, Gaza, Askelon, Gath, and Ekron,
seems to have formed, with its dependencies, a separate state,
presided over by its own Seren Note: A peculiar title, rendered by
lord and prince in the authorized version, and probably
denoting, a chief or magistrate.but united to each other by their
common origin and interests, for general purposes. All these
Seranim Note: The title only occurs thus in the plural. now made
common cause against Samson. It was useless to bring armies
into the field against an individual, and such an individual; but
they were determined to support each other in the attempt to
crush him, and to share among them whatever expense and
trouble the attempt might involve. So they lay watchful for any
advantage the proceedings of the Hebrew champion might offer.
The careless hero was not long in affording them all the
advantage they could have desired. They heard that he had
become devoted to a woman named Delilah, inhabiting the vale of
Sorek. The history does not say that she was a harlot, like the
woman of Gaza; but neither is she called his wife; and had she
been such, she would heave been taken to his own house, and
we should not find him visiting at hers. Nothing could have
occurred more opportunely for the Philistine Seranim. They
repaired to her, or sent to her in one of the intervals of Samsons
visits, offering her a large bribe to entice from him the secret of his
strength. The sum was eleven hundred pieces of silver from each
of the five. The pieces were probably shekels, in which case the
whole sum amounted to something more than six hundred
pounds of our moneya sum not inconsiderable even now, and a
very large one for that age and country.
In reading the record of this enticement, we should bear in mind
that the facts are related with extreme brevity. In the
conversations between Samson and the woman, results only are
statedthe final purport only given, without any notice of the little
artifices of conversation and dalliance, the watching for favorable
moments and natural turns of thought and incident, which
disguised the wickedness of the design, and gave a seemingly
natural turn to the womans attempt to get possession of his
secret. The various attempts on her part to betray the confidence
she supposed Samson had reposed in her, are so related, also,
as to appear to have followed in rapid and immediate succession.
But the form of Scriptural narrative does not require us to suppose
this was necessarily the case: that it was so, is against the
probable truth of circumstances and natural analogies. It is far
more likely that these attempts were made at different visits of
Samson to the vale of Sorek, when a sufficient interval had pared
to blunt the keenness of any suspicions that may have been
awakened in his mind. Simple-minded and confiding as Samson
was, he was not altogether so silly as an unintelligent mode of
reading the narrative may make him appear.
Samson very clearly indicated his consciousness of what became
him, by the siege he stood before his great trust was surrendered.
He did this after a manner of his own, however; and his conduct is
less becoming than formerly with his wife at Timnath. Her he told
plainly that he could not disclose his secret, although that was
one of small importance in comparison, But to Delilah he seems
incapable of giving a distinct refusal. He shrinks from the
importunity to which it would expose him; and therefore he tries to
amuse her by one invention after another, which, but for the
immediate test to which she subjected themthat is, if she had
been, as he supposed, sinceremight have passed off with her
for the real secret.
First, he told her that if he were bound with seven green withes
which had never been dried, then he should become weak as
another man, and unable to rend them asunder. This is
interesting, as showing that ropes of crude vegetable fibers were
in use among the Hebrews of that age, as they are now in many
countries, composed of such things as vine tendrils, the tough
fibers of trees, pliable twisted rods, osiers, hazels, and the like.
Such ropes are strong enough; although less compact, and of
greater bulk in proportion to their strength, than those of spun flax
or hemp. The strength of such ropes may be estimated from the
fact, that the legs of wild elephants and buffaloes are usually
bound with them, when newly caught, in India; and it is rarely
indeed that they give way to the force of the most powerful
animals that the whole creation can supply. Such ropes are
strongest, and less liable to break, when greenthat is, newly
made; but we suppose that it was not on this account Samson
was led to name them, but because of some occult relation to his
own strength which they might be supposed to bear. Not doubting
that she should now win her reward, the faithless woman then
bound him, probably while he slept, with the green ropes, which
the Philistines very gladly provided. She then roused him with the
wordsThe Philistines be upon thee, Samson. This was no vain
alarm. They were there, probably in an adjoining room, and were
to have rushed in on a preconcerted signal, were it found that he
was properly secured. But Samson sprung up, and rent the green
ropes from his arms like burnt tow. The Philistine liers in wait,
finding this to be the case, probably did not show themselves; and
the woman was thus enabled to pass the matter off as a fond
attempt to test his truthfulness. This supposition that the
Philistines did not show themselves, and that Samson was not
aware of their presence, relieves the transactions from much of
their apparent difficulty, and explains that Samson could still go
on dallying with the danger. The authorized translation
unreasonably places the liers in wait in the same chamber; but
this needlessly perplexes the subject, and has no warrant in the
original, which signifies that liers in wait sat for her in an inner
chamber.
The second time, when he seemed to yield to her importunities,
he told her that new twisted or spun ropes would doshowing
that such ropes were known, although those of crude vegetable
had not yet gone out of use. Flax, we know, was before this time
an object of culture in both Egypt and Palestine, and with this,
such ropes seem to have been made. Hemp was also probably
cultivated, although the fact is not so distinctly mentioned in the
sacred books. The result in this instance was precisely the same
as before.
In the next invention by which Samson tried to amuse the
importunity of Delilah, he approached dangerously near his great
secret. His infatuation was like that of the moth, approaching
gradually nearer and nearer to the flame which destroys it at last.
This device was suggested by the presence of the small loom in
which the women of those days wove their household stuffsa
kind of industry from which it would seem that females even of
Delilahs stamp, did not hold themselves exempt. These looms,
as shown in Egyptian sculptures, and as still subsisting in the
East, are very simple, and comparatively light, and must by no
means be confounded with the ponderous apparatus of our own
hand-loom weavers. Samson told her that if the long locks of his
hair were woven in with the web, he would become as powerless
as any other man. This was done; and to make the matter more
certain, the guileful woman actually fastened the web, with the
hair thus woven in it, with a strong pin or nail to the wall or to the
floor. But this availed not; for when the alarm was given, although
he could not disengage his hair from the web, he rose and went
forth dragging the weaving frame, the web and the pinthe whole
apparatusafter him by his hair.
At length, worn out by the womans importunities, who protested
that his repeated deceptions, and his obstinacy in refusing to
gratify her curiosity with the knowledge of a secret, of so little
consequence to her but for the love she bore to himand, above
all, seeing that there was nothing in the past to give him that
knowledge of the treachery which we possess-he yieldedhe
told her all that was in his heart. His hair, he informed her, was
the sign and seal of his consecrated condition from the birth, by
which alone he held all his superhuman strength. To take off his
hair would be to cut him off from that consecrated condition, and
divest him of the powers he held in virtue of it. He would then be
like any other mannot necessarily a weak manbut not
stronger than any man of his muscles and sinews might be
expected to be. The woman saw, from the earnestness of his
manner, that this time he had not deceived her. One might drink
she would have been moved from her fell purpose by this strong
proof of his regard for herbut no: the use she made of it was to
revive the, by this time, wavering faith of the Philistine Seranim as
to the success of their scheme, by causing such strong assurance
of success to be conveyed to them, that they hurried down with
the money, for which she had sold Samson into their hand. The
terms of the message would almost imply, that they had given up
the enterprise, at least in this form, and determined to be fooled
no more as they had beenCome up this once, for he hath
showed me all his heart.