Judges 16:16-31 ▼

16 And it comes to pass, because she distressed him with her words all the days, and urges him, and his soul is grieved to death,

17 that he declares all his heart to her, and says to her, “A razor has not gone up on my head, for I [am] a Nazarite to God from the womb of my mother; if I have been shaven, then my power has turned aside from me, and I have been weak, and have been as all of mankind.”

18 And Delilah sees that he has declared all his heart to her, and she sends and calls for the princes of the Philistines, saying, “Come up this time, for he has declared all his heart to me”; and the princes of the Philistines have come up to her, and bring up the money in their hand.

19 And she makes him sleep on her knees, and calls for a man, and shaves the seven locks of his head, and begins to afflict him, and his power turns aside from off him;

20 and she says, “Philistines [are] on you, Samson!” And he awakens out of his sleep and says, “I go out as time by time, and shake free”; but he has not known that YHWH has turned aside from off him.

21 And the Philistines seize him, and pick out his eyes, and bring him down to Gaza, and bind him with two bronze chains; and he is grinding in the prison-house.

22 And the hair of his head begins to shoot up when he has been shaven,

23 and the princes of the Philistines have been gathered together to sacrifice a great sacrifice to their god Dagon, and to rejoice; and they say, “Our god has given our enemy Samson into our hand.”

24 And the people see him, and praise their god, for they said, “Our god has given into our hand our enemy, and he who is laying waste to our land, and who multiplied our wounded.”

25 And it comes to pass, when their heart [is] glad, that they say, “Call for Samson, and he entertains for us”; and they call for Samson out of the prison-house, and he entertains their faces, and they cause him to stand between the pillars.

26 And Samson says to the young man who is keeping hold on his hand, “Let me also feel the pillars on which the house is established, and I lean on them.”

27 And the house has been full of the men and the women, and all the princes of the Philistines [are] there, and about three thousand men and women [are] on the roof, who are watching Samson entertain.

28 And Samson calls to YHWH and says, “Lord YHWH, please remember me and please strengthen me only this time, O God; and I am avenged—vengeance at once—because of my two eyes, on the Philistines.”

29 And Samson turns aside [to] the two middle pillars, on which the house is established, and on which it is supported, [to] one with his right hand and one with his left;

30 and Samson says, “Let me die with the Philistines,” and he inclines himself powerfully, and the house falls on the princes, and on all the people who [are] in it, and the dead whom he has put to death in his death are more than those whom he put to death in his life.

31 And his brothers come down, and all the house of his father, and lift him up, and bring him up, and bury him between Zorah and Eshtaol, in the burying-place of his father Manoah; and he has judged Israel [for] twenty years.