Oh, Delilah!

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
October 4, 2015

What is the historical context of the story of Samson and Delilah? Samson is the man whose strength was in his hair, and Delilah is the one he let cut that hair off.

Children’s time:

Long ago the Jewish people were living in a land where their enemies were ruling over them. Whenever people you don’t like are telling you what to do, you long for a superhero who can rescue all of the people out of that situation. In that time of oppression, a superhero was born to the Jewish people. His name was Samson. He was amazingly strong, but no one knew why. It was a secret. He fought a mean lion with his bare hands, and won! Some bad guys were waiting for him out on the street when he was visiting a lady friend, and when they tried to attack him, he just pulled up the whole doorway of the town up out of the ground and walked away with it, just to show how strong he was.

When he was grown, he fell in love with a woman named Delilah. He loved her, but she didn’t love him. The rulers of the bad guys asked her to find out what the secret of his strength was. She asked him and he said “I’m not going to tell you that, I haven’t even told my mother and father that secret.” But she kept asking. She nagged him. Do you ever do that? 3 fake stories. 3 times she betrayed him. Why did he keep going back? Finally after lots of tears and nagging, he told her the truth. His strength was in his hair. She waited until he was fast asleep and shaved his hair all off. The bad guys came in and captured him. They did all kinds of mean and hurtful things to him, and made him do work for them. Then — his hair began to grow back! He was getting strong again, but he didn’t let anybody know that. The bad guys, called Philistines, had him working in the jail, but they wanted to celebrate having captured him. They brought him to their temple and made fun of him. He said he was tired and leaned against one pillar holding up the temple roof, where about 3000 Philistines were sitting, laughing at him. He pushed on them, summoning all his strength, and the pillars cracked and everyone fell down and hurt themselves. He got hurt too, though. He got in trouble by letting someone nag him into doing something he knew wasn’t right.

Sermon notes:

You heard the main part of the story, but let me tell you some background. The area of the world where Israel is now was divided into Judah in the south and Israel in the north. The Philistines, who, along with the Canaanites, were long time enemies of the Jews, were in the ascendancy and ruled the land from their five main cities, one of which was Gaza, which is still there with the same name. The Philistines were a sea faring people, probably from Greece by way of Crete. They worshiped a god named Dagon, and built temples with big flat roofs held up by columns. The Jews were governed by women and men called by a word that’s translated “Judges” in the Hebrew Scriptures. Some of them did actually judge the people in the way we would think of it, but most ruled like kings or advisors. Samson had been born to a woman who couldn’t have any children. She was visited by an angel several times who talked to her and then to her husband about the child. She was to drink no wine or strong drink while she was pregnant, and the boy was to be a Nazirite. That was a person who kept extra pure, no drinking, no grapes or raisins, nothing from the vine, and never never cutting his hair. It was a miraculous birth, and the boy was miraculously strong.

He fell in love with a Philistine woman. He asked his parents to go do the negotiations. They told him they’d a lot rather him marry within his own people, not among the enemy. He was in love, and he wouldn’t be swayed. On the way down to the negotiations, Samson was attacked by a lion. He tore it apart with his bare hands. Later, on the way to the seven day wedding feast, he detoured to check out the lion’s carcass, and saw that some bees had made a hive in there and there was honey. He scooped out some with his hands and ate it, and gave some to his parents too without telling them where it came from. As a Nazirite he wasn’t supposed to have any contact with corpses, and he wasn’t supposed to eat anything unclean. He broke the vow by doing this.

Now comes the first time nagging worked on him. At the feast, there were thirty men from the town who were his groomsmen. He told them a riddle. “Out of the eater comes something to eat: out of the strong comes something sweet.” He told them if they could guess it within the seven days of the wedding feast, he’d give them thirty linen garments. If not, they would give him thirty. From their backs. They couldn’t guess. They said to the wife, “You’ve got to get Samson to tell you the answer to this so we don’t have to give him our clothes. Also, if you don’t, we’ll kill you and your family. She asked him, wept, nagged, said “you hate me, you won’t tell me the answer to the riddle” for seven days until he broke down and told her. She told the men, who guessed the answer. Samson was mad, and went to another town, beat up thirty guys, took their clothes, gave them to the men, and went back home without his bride. Her father gave her to one of the wedding groomsmen. So now she was married to a guy who had threatened to kill her and her family.

Samson came down there one day, came in the house, and said “I’m going into my wife’s room.” Her dad said “I thought you hated her, so I gave her to someone else.” Samson was mad. I’m really going to hurt you people, he said, and he tied the tails of 300 foxes together and sent them out, crazed, into the fields, where all the crops burned up. The Philistines were so mad and that family that they killed them and burned down their house. Samson was so mad about that, that he made war on those guys and killed a lot of them. He ran down to take shelter in a canyon. Three thousand men from Judah came to him and said What are you doing? Those guys rule over us, and now they are going to make a war with us. I was just doing to them what they did to me.

We have to take you to them.

Promise you won’t kill me yourselves?

We promise.

So they bound him with ropes and took him to the Philistines. They came at him shouting, and he broke out of the ropes, picked up the jawbone of a donkey and killed a thousand Philistines. When he was through, he called out to God and said he was thirsty. God made water gush out of the rock for him there. He led the Israelites there for 20 years.

Then he fell in love with Delilah.

It doesn’t say whether she loved him. You decide. The Philistines asked her to find out the secret of his strength. He didn’t want to tell, but she nagged. He told her, finally, that if he were tied with seven fresh bowstrings, he would be like any other man. When he was asleep, she tied him with the bowstrings. “Samson! The Philistines are upon you!” He snapped them like threads and fought off the men. She pouted that he hadn’t told her the truth. “You don’t love me. If you did, you would tell me.” He told her if they bound him with new ropes he would be weak. When he was sleeping, she bound him with two new ropes. “Samson! The Philistines are upon you!” He woke up, burst the ropes like thread in a fire, and fought the guys off. She pouted and cried, nagged until he told her “You have to weave the seven braids of my hair into that piece of cloth you’re making on the loom. While he was asleep, she wove his braids into the loom. “Samson! The Philistines are upon you!” He woke up and broke out of the weaving. She wept for days. Finally he told her. “No one has taken a razor to my hair since I was born. That’s the secret. If someone shaved my head, I’d be weak.” When he was asleep, she shaved off his hair. “Samson! The Philistines are upon you!” He couldn’t fight. They blinded him and dragged him off to prison. They shacked him and made him walk around moving the grindstone, like a donkey, grinding the grain. After a few weeks they decided to have an enormous celebration, make a sacrifice to Dagon. Samson was brought to the temple to entertain the crowd. They had their fill, laughing at him, the great superhero of the Jews. Not so strong now, are you? What they didn’t know was that his hair had started growing back. He didn’t say anything about it.

He told the boy who was leading him around that he was tired, that he wanted to lean against one of the pillars of the temple. He put one hand on one and the other hand on the other. He prayed for strength, and asked God to let him die with his enemies. Pushing, he collapsed the temple roof, killing the three thousand people on top. He went with them. His parents took his body home to bury him.

Why would he go back over and over? Sometimes people love like that. We make excuses for that lover, spouse, partner or friend. We make excuses for that church or that boss or that parent. We want to believe they love us. We want to believe so badly that we don’t let contrary information in. We just don’t believe it. Some people demand that you betray yourself in order to prove your love. Some churches demand that you betray your own good sense, your own heart or intellect in order to prove your loyalty. Some jobs demand that you betray yourself in order to keep the paycheck coming in.

Love has mutuality in it. You give and you receive. No one who loves you would ask you to give them your strength. No relationship should ask that you betray yourself.

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