Judges 16:15–22

Then she said to him, “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.” And it came to pass, when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him, so that his soul was vexed to death, that he told her all his heart, and said to her, “No razor has ever come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaven, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.”

When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up once more, for he has told me all his heart.” So the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hand. Then she lulled him to sleep on her knees, and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him. And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” So he awoke from his sleep, and said, “I will go out as before, at other times, and shake myself free!” But he did not know that the LORD had departed from him.

Then the Philistines took him and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza. They bound him with bronze fetters, and he became a grinder in the prison. However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaven.

The key line is this passage is, “But he did not know that the LORD had departed from him.” That gives us two clues as to what’s actually going on here.

First off, it’s not really about the hair. Samson’s strength is gone because the LORD had departed from him. God may have done that because of the hair (or Samson’s careless attitude about the hair) but his strength departing is not a direct result of his hair being gone. Samson doesn’t have magical hair.

Secondly, Samson didn’t expect to lose his strength when his hair was cut off. His claim about the hair was just another lie. But then what does “told her all his heart” mean?

It means he told her all that he knew, but the bit about losing his strength was, he thought, a lie. It was a betrayal of all his secrets, but he didn’t know how significant it would turn out to be.

Okay, but then why mention that the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaven?

As Tim Keller explains in Judges For You, “The point is that the Philistines let his hair grow back.”

Even though they obviously bought into the magic hair thing, they carelessly let his hair grow long again.

The word that describes everyone’s behavior here is “sloppy.” That’s where we should see ourselves in this. We don’t think of life in Christ as dangerous. We tend to relax, let our guard down, and lose focus.

This can be a dreadful mistake. The enemy isn’t sloppy.

These Monday—Friday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. The Weekend DEEPs are written by Matt Richardson. To subscribe to all the DEEPs click here:

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV stands for the English Standard Version. © Copyright 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved. NIV stands for The Holy Bible, New International Version®. © Copyright 1973 by International Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved. KJV stands for the King James Version.