Samson’s last chapter is the sum of all the others. He carries off the gates of Gaza in a night he should never have spent there. He loves Delilah, who is paid to destroy him, and hands her the secret after she wears him down. The hair goes, the strength goes — and “he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.” Blind, chained, grinding grain for his enemies, he prays one last time between two pillars: let me die with the Philistines.
A study in Judges 16 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 9 min read
The Doors Of The Gate Upon His Shoulders
“Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and went in unto her… and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts… and carried them up to the top of an hill that is before Hebron.”
Judges 16:1, 3
He is a judge of Israel, and he spends the night with a prostitute in the enemy’s strongest city. Trapped by an ambush at the gate, he simply pulls the gates — posts, bar and all — out of the wall and hauls them uphill for miles. The strength is undiminished; the judgment is gone. It is a display with no purpose except to prove he can, in a place he had no business being.
Wherein Thy Great Strength Lieth
“And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death; that he told her all his heart… There hath not come a razor upon mine head; for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb.”
Judges 16:16-17
Delilah is bribed by every Philistine lord to find the secret of his strength. She asks him outright, three times, and three times he sees her hand it to the enemy — and stays. Ellen White notes he had the clearest possible evidence of the plot and shut his fear down anyway. Worn down by daily nagging “unto death,” he tells her everything. The vow he had broken in private for years he now sells for a quiet life.
“Little by little he had violated the conditions of his sacred calling. God had borne long with him; but when he had so yielded himself to the power of sin as to betray his secret, the Lord departed from him. There was no virtue in his long hair merely, but it was a token of his loyalty to God.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 566
He Wist Not That The LORD Was Departed From Him
“And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.”
Judges 16:20
This is the darkest sentence in the book. He rises to fight “as at other times” — and the power is simply not there, and he does not even know why. A man can lose God’s presence so gradually that the morning it is finally gone feels like every other morning. They put out his eyes, bind him in bronze, and set him to turning a mill — the work of an ox. The strongest man alive, blind and harnessed in a grinding-house.
Let Me Die With The Philistines
“And Samson called unto the LORD, and said, O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once… And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines… So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.”
Judges 16:28, 30
The Philistines credit their god Dagon and bring Samson out to mock. His hair has grown; more to the point, his suffering in prison had brought him to repentance. His last prayer is humble at last — remember me… strengthen me… only this once — and God answers. Hebrews still lists him among the heroes of faith (Hebrews 11:32). A wasted life, redeemed at the very end by a broken man who finally asked.
“Physically, Samson was the strongest man upon the earth; but in self-control, integrity, and firmness, he was one of the weakest of men. Many mistake strong passions for a strong character, but the truth is that he who is mastered by his passions is a weak man.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 567
