- 129-
to give Delilah 1000 and 100 shekels, or 5500 in all, about 700 pounds, as the reward of
her treachery. Three times has Samson eluded her persistency to find out his secret.
Each time she has had watchers in an adjoining apartment ready to fall upon him, if he
had really lost his strength. But the third time he had, in his trifling with sacred things,
come dangerously near his fall, as in her hearing he connected his strength with his hair.
And yet, despite all warnings, like Israel of old, he persisted in his sin.
At last it has come. He has opened all his heart to Delilah, and she knows it. But
Scripture puts the true explanation of the matter before us, in its usual emphatic manner,
yet with such manifest avoidance of seeking for effect, that only the careful, devout
reader will trace it. The facts are as follows: When Samson betrays his secret to Delilah,
he says (16:17): "If I be shaven, then my strength will go from me," whereas, when the
event actually takes place, Scripture explains it: "He wot not that Jehovah was departed
from him." In this contrast between his fond conceit about his own strength and the fact
that it was due to the presence of Jehovah, lies the gist of the whole matter. As one
writes: "The superhuman strength of Samson lay not in his uncut hair, but in this, that
Jehovah was with him. But Jehovah was with him only so long as he kept his Nazarite
vow." Or, in the words of an old German commentary: "The whole misery of Samson
arose from this, that he appropriated to himself what God had done through him. God
allows his strength to be destroyed, that in bitter experience he might learn, how
without God's presence he was nothing at all. And so our falls always teach us best."
But, as ever, sin proves the hardest taskmaster. Every indignity is heaped on fallen
Samson. His eyes are put out; he is loaded with fetters of brass, and set to the lowest
prison work of slaves. And here, also, the history of Samson finds its parallel in that of
blinded Israel, with the judgment of bondage, degradation, and suffering, consequent
upon their great national sin of casting aside their Nazarite vow.
But, blessed be God, neither the history nor its parallel stops here. For "the gifts and
callings of God are without repentance." The sacred text expressly has it: "And the hair
of his head began to grow, as it was shorn" - that is, so soon as it had been shorn. Then
began a period of godly sorrow and repentance, evidenced both by the return of God to
him, and by his last deed of faith, in which for his people he sacrificed his life; herein
also following the great Antitype, though "afar off." We imagine,^320 that "the lad" who
led him to the pillars on which the house of Dagon rested was a Hebrew, cognizant of
Samson's hopes and prayers, and who, immediately after having placed him in the fatal
position, left the temple, and then carried the tidings to Samson's "brethren" (16:31).
It is a high day in Gaza. From all their cities have the princes of the Philistines come up;
from all the country around have the people gathered. The temple of the god Dagon -
the fish-god, protector of the sea - is festively adorned and thronged. Below, the lords of
the Philistines and all the chief men of the people are feasting at the sacrificial meal;
above, along the roof, the gallery all around is crowded by three thousand men and
(^)