Scripture Daily

Context No. 938 of 4322 · Judges

Context · Reflection

Judges 16:16-20: in context

16When she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, his soul was troubled to death. 17He told her all his heart and said to her, “No razor has ever come on my head; for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will go from me and I will become weak, and be like any other man.” 18When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up this once, for he has told me all his heart.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hand. 19She made him sleep on her knees; and she called for a man and shaved off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. 20She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” He awoke out of his sleep, and said, “I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free.” But he didn’t know that the LORD had departed from him.

Delilah has been pressing Samson day after day to tell her the secret of his strength, and finally, worn down to death by her nagging, he tells her everything: he is a Nazirite, no razor has ever touched his head, and if he is shaved his strength will leave him. She lulls him to sleep on her knees, has his seven locks shaved off, and begins to torment him. Then she cries, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. He wakes and says, I will shake myself free as before. But the text delivers the saddest line: he did not know that the LORD had departed from him.

The tragedy is in that last sentence. Samson wakes up expecting to be the man he has always been, ready to shake himself loose as he had every time before, and he has no idea that the source of it all is gone. He thought his strength was his own, a personal trait, when all along it had been the presence of the LORD, and he had traded that presence away one compromise at a time. The hair was never magic; it was the outward sign of a consecration to God, and Samson had been treating the sign carelessly for years, playing games with the secret, drifting closer and closer to the edge, presuming the power would always be there. The frightening part is that he did not feel it leave. There was no dramatic moment; he simply woke one day and the God he had taken for granted was no longer with him, and he did not even know. Grace presumed upon can quietly withdraw.

Where am I presuming on God's presence, treating it as a possession I own rather than a gift I could grieve away, so that I might not even notice if it left?

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