DELILAH
The
Woman Who Betrayed Her Husband for Silver
Scripture References—Judges 16:4-21 (Read Proverbs 5)
Name Meaning - Delilah is a
sweet-sounding name which any vain woman would covet, for it means “delicate”
or “dainty one.”
Because of the foul deed of which
Delilah was guilty, no other female in Scripture appears with such a tarnished
name.
In fact, it is rare indeed to find a
woman bearing this name.
Family Connections—The Bible gives
us no knowledge of her parentage and background save that she came from the
valley of Sorek which extended from near Jerusalem to the Mediterranean, and
which entrance was beautiful with rare flowers perfuming the air with sweet
odors.
The record of Delilah, the heartless
wrecker of a mighty man, is given in eighteen verses; and the description of
Samson’s betrayal, fall, bondage and death is one of the most graphic in the
Bible.
We cannot, of course, write of Delilah
without mentioning Samson.
What a contrast they present, and how
symbolic they are of characters in the world today!
Samson was physically strong but
morally weak. Although able to rend a lion, he could not fight his lusts.
He could break his bonds, but not his
habits. He could conquer Philistines but not his passions.
Delilah was a woman who used her
personal charm to lure a man to his spiritual and physical destruction, and she
stands out as one of the lowest, meanest women of the Bible—the female Judas of
the Old Testament.
This Philistine courtesan was a woman
of unholy persistence and devilish deceit, who had personal charm, mental
ability, self-command, and nerve, but who used all her qualities for one
purpose & - money.
She and womanly honor and love had
never met, for behind her beautiful face was a heart as dark as hell, and full
of viperous treachery.
“Her supreme wickedness lay not in betraying Samson to his enemies but
in causing him to break faith with his ideals.”
Deluding Samson into believing she
really loved him, Delilah sold him to blindness, bondage and death.
The ease with which she betrayed her
husband revealed that she belonged to the enemies of God’s people, the people
of whom Samson was the recognized leader at that time.
The Philistines did not like Samson
around because he was the champion of Israel and as such interfered with their
practices.
Therefore he must be got rid of, and in
Delilah, the Philistine prostitute, the Philistines had one who was willing to
be bribed to act as their agent.
She had one purpose and that was to
secure money, and had no qualms of conscience to trifle with love for the sake
of wealth.
Samson became a traitor to himself
because he could not resist a woman’s charm. First one woman and then another
took advantage of this deep-seated weakness and basic sin of his, and Delilah
was the most effective in destroying him.
She remains as a warning to all men to
beware of the charm and wiles of a wicked, scheming woman. As one unknown
writer puts it—
The women of the Bible pass before the
imagination in the vision of antiquity, like pure and radiant stars, their
frailties scarcely more than the wing of a transparent cloud upon these
beautiful spheres.
Delilah rises suddenly from darkness,
as a glorious meteor, describes an arc of romantic and fatal light, and goes
down in a horizon of awful gloom.
The lords of the Philistines offered an
enormous sum as a bribe, namely, 1,100 pieces of silver. Jesus was sold by
Judas for only 30 pieces of silver.
Such a fortune was no small temptation
to Delilah, and sharing her tempters' passion for revenge, she set about, in a
subtle way, to earn the price of blood.
She tried four times in her cunning,
evil way to get Samson to reveal the secret of his supernatural power.
The first three times Samson humorously
lied in answering Delilah’s question by enumerating the green withs or twigs,
the new ropes, and the weaving of the hair.
Thrice deceived, Delilah the enchantress
employed her final weapon—tears.
Sobbing, she said,
“How canst thou say I love thee, when
thine heart is not with me? Thou hast mocked me these three times, and hast not
told me wherein thy great strength lieth.”
Samson was conquered. A weeping woman
melted his heart, and he confessed the truth of his Nazarite vow, and how, if
shorn of his long hair, his strength would depart and he would become like any
other normal man.
Recognizing that the truth had been
told, Delilah lulled Samson to sleep. As he slept, the waiting Philistines
destroyed the sign of the vow, and when Samson awoke, although he tried to
exert his power as before, he found it had deserted him.
The rest of the tragic story belongs to
Samson. His foes gouged out his eyes, bound him in fetters and in Gaza, where
his God-given strength was manifested, he was made to grind corn.
But out of the depths Samson cried unto
the Lord, and, as we read, his hair began to grow. Forsaken by all, there was
One near at hand, and the God of grace
restored unto His sinning and now repentant servant, the power he had lost.
Samson’s extremity became God’s opportunity.
While Samson was in prison, in the
palace, three thousand Philistines gathered to honor their god Dagon for
victory over their feared enemy.
As hearts beat high and warm, with
banquet wine and dance, the cry goes up to have blind Samson brought in to be
made the butt of their jests and ridicule.
A lad brings the giant in and places
him between the pillars of the heathen temple where all eyes could see him. The
mockery of the drunken crowd begins.
They ask for a
riddle and Samson acted one they did not expect. With his arms around the
pillars, and deeply penitent for his sins, he prayed, “O Lord, remember me and give me strength only this once.”
Then shaking himself as of old, he
threw his arms around the pillars, the massive temple tottered and the 3,000
Philistines, including the treacherous Delilah perished.
It was a victory that cost Samson his
own life, and we find that he slew more at his death than he had in the heyday
of his power.
But a woman like Delilah did not know
how to repent; and as Judas went out and hanged himself, so it would seem as if
Delilah, gloating over the price received for Samson’s betrayal, died a
terrible death when buried beneath the frightful ruins of the temple her
husband’s restored, divine strength had caused.
What are the lessons to be gathered
from Samson and Delilah, whose record Hollywood could not resist turning into a
sexy movie with box-office appeal?
The question may be asked, How can we
learn any lesson from such an unpleasant story? Why is this sordid record to
the last degree in the Bible?
The reading of the man under a vow to
God and of great physical strength and mental agility choosing a woman of no
morals may be deemed unfit for inclusion in Holy Writ.
Yet all Scripture is
given by inspiration of God, and the writer of the Book of Judges was guided by
the Spirit to set forth the details of the amorous life of Samson.
Our answer is that the Bible would not
be true to life and to its mission in the world if it did not hold up the
mirror and reveal to us, in restrained language, workings of evil, and the
boundless love and grace of God toward those whose lives are so bankrupt of
virtues pleasing to Him.
Delilah was not concerned about the
weakness of Samson, but his strength. Once a man betrays his strength, he has
no reserve, and courts disaster.
A further lesson to be learned from the
story before us is that true feminine charm and the appeal of love are gifts
received from the Creator, and that when these fairest and most effective of
gifts are misused or deliberately trifled with, divine retribution overtakes
those who prostitute such gifts.
Another lesson to be gleaned from the
ancient record before us is that of the folly of being unequally yoked.
Samson married outside his own country,
people and religion.
Had Samson, hero of Israel, married an
Israelitish maiden, the tragedy overtaking him would never have happened.
But he took to wife a devotee of a
heathen god which, for a judge of Israel, was against the divine decree, and he
paid the fatal price of his action.
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