The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Delilah Learns the Secret
Judges 16:15–22 — Delilah Learns the Secret. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
15“How can you say, ‘I love you,’” she asked, “when your heart is not with me? This is the third time you have mocked me and failed to reveal to me the source of your great strength!”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’êḵ wat·tō·mer ’ê·lāw ’ă·haḇ·tîḵ tō·mar wə·lib·bə·ḵā ’ên ’it·tî zeh šā·lōš pə·‘ā·mîm hê·ṯal·tā bî wə·lō- hig·gaḏ·tā lî bam·meh kō·ḥă·ḵā ḡā·ḏō·wl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-she-said unto-him: How sayest-thou, I-have-loved-thee — and-thy-heart is-a-non-thing with-me? This three times thou-hast-trifled-with me, and-thou-hast-not-told me wherein thy-strength is-great.”
Where the English smooths the original
When thine heart is not with me; when thy love consists only in outward expression, not in affection
Samson had undergone all these wiles before, and experienced their hollowness ( Judges 14:16 ), yet he had not learnt wisdom.
After this triple deception, Delilah said to him, "How canst thou say, I love thee, as thine heart is not with me
16Finally, after she had pressed him daily with her words and pleaded until he was sick to death,
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî kî- hê·ṣî·qāh lōw kāl- hay·yā·mîm ḇiḏ·ḇā·re·hā wat·tə·’a·lă·ṣê·hū nap̄·šōw wat·tiq·ṣar lā·mūṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-it-came-to-pass, because she-pressed-hard upon-him with-her-words all-the-days and-she-plagued-him — and-his-soul was-shortened to-die.”
Where the English smooths the original
He at last reveals the secret, because he is wearied—literally, his soul is shortened —to death.
With such words as these she plagued him every day, so that his soul became impatient even to death
When it came to testing the higher kind of strength, Samson failed.Cambridge is drawing the unit's sharpest distinction: the man who never lost a contest of muscle had no corresponding strength of will. The half-line Cambridge appends is Milton's, not Scripture's.
could hardly bear to live, but wished to die, being in the utmost perplexity what to do
17Samson told her all that was in his heart: “My hair has never been cut, because I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, my strength will leave me, and I will become as weak as any other man.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·yag·geḏ- lāh ’eṯ- kāl- lib·bōw way·yō·mer lāh rō·šî lō- mō·w·rāh ‘ā·lāh ‘al- kî- ’ă·nî nə·zîr ’ĕ·lō·hîm ’im·mî mib·be·ṭen ’im- gul·laḥ·tî ḵō·ḥî wə·sār mim·men·nî wə·ḥā·lî·ṯî wə·hā·yî·ṯî kə·ḵāl- hā·’ā·ḏām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-he-told her all his-heart, and-said to-her: A-razor has-not-come-up upon my-head, for a-Nazirite-of-God am-I from-the-womb-of my-mother. If I-were-shaven, then-would-turn-aside from-me my-strength, and-I-should-be-worn-weak and-be like-all the-man.”
Where the English smooths the original
Not that his hair was in itself the cause of his strength, but because it was the chief condition of that covenant whereby God was pleased to engage to fit him for and assist him in that great work to which he had called him. But upon his violation of the condition, God justly withdraws his help.
His herculean powers did not arise from his hair, but from his peculiar relation to God as a Nazarite. His unshorn locks were a sign of his Nazaritism, and a pledge on the part of God that his supernatural strength would be continued.
The heart in the O.T. is the seat not merely of the affections, but of the mind and will;
Thus his immoderate affections toward a wicked woman caused him to lose God's excellent gifts, and become a slave to those whom he should have ruled.The 1599 marginal note reads the whole episode as forfeiture: gifts held on condition, lost by contempt of the ordinance that conditioned them. Geneva repeats the point at v. 19.
18When Delilah realized that he had revealed to her all that was in his heart, she sent this message to the lords of the Philistines: “Come up once more, for he has revealed to me all that is in his heart.” Then the lords of the Philistines came to her, bringing the money in their hands.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
də·lî·lāh wat·tê·re kî- hig·gîḏ lāh ’eṯ- kāl- lib·bōw wat·tiš·laḥ wat·tiq·rā lê·mōr lə·sar·nê p̄ə·liš·tîm ‘ă·lū hap·pa·‘am kî- hig·gîḏ lå̄h ’eṯ- kāl- lib·bōw sar·nê p̄ə·liš·tîm wə·‘ā·lū ’ê·le·hā way·ya·‘ă·lū hak·ke·sep̄ bə·yā·ḏām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-Delilah saw that he-had-told her all his-heart, and-she-sent and-she-called to-the-lords-of the-Philistines, saying: Come-up this-time, for he-has-told her all his-heart. And-there-came-up to-her the-lords-of the-Philistines, and-they-brought-up the-silver in-their-hand.”
Where the English smooths the original
She could not mistake the accent of truthfulness, nor was Samson so far gone as to be able to reveal the great secret without some sense of awe and shame.
See one of the bravest men then in the world bought and sold as a sheep for the slaughter! How does this instance sully all the glory of man, and forbid the strong man ever to boast of his strength!
So the Keri; but the written text has her instead of me, which is favoured by the tense of the verb came up.
This last clause is not to be understood as having been spoken by Delilah to the princes themselves, as it is by the Masorites and most of the commentators, in which case להּ would have to be altered into לי; but it contains a remark of the writerK&D and the Pulpit Commentary are on opposite sides of this crux, and both are quoted here on purpose: the reader should see that the speaker of the last clause is genuinely disputed, not settled.
19And having lulled him to sleep on her lap, she called a man to shave off the seven braids of his head. In this way she began to subdue him, and his strength left him.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wat·tə·yaš·šə·nê·hū ‘al- bir·ke·hā wat·tiq·rā lā·’îš wat·tə·ḡal·laḥ ’eṯ- še·ḇa‘ maḥ·lə·p̄ō·wṯ rō·šōw wat·tā·ḥel lə·‘an·nō·w·ṯōw kō·ḥōw mê·‘ā·lāw way·yā·sar
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-she-made-him-sleep upon her-knees, and-she-called to-the-man, and-she-shaved-off the-seven braids-of his-head; and-she-began to-humble him — and-his-strength turned-aside from-upon-him.”
Where the English smooths the original
But the hair of Samson was no magical amulet. It was only a sign of dedication to God. While he kept his vow the strength remained; it only departed when the vow was shamefully broken.
She made him sleep, by some sleepy potion, which it is like she gave him upon other pretences, agreeable enough to his present and vitiated inclination.Poole's “sleepy potion” is inference, not text: the Hebrew says only that she made him sleep. Several commentators reach for the same explanation because the shaving would otherwise be implausible.
The Greek reads he began to be afflicted or humbled ; his strength began to ebb away as the hair fell.
Not for the loss of his hair, but for the contempt of the ordinance of God, which was the reason God departed from him.
20Then she called out, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” When Samson awoke from his sleep, he thought, “I will escape as I did before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the LORD had departed from him.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wat·tō·mer šim·šō·wn pə·liš·tîm ‘ā·le·ḵā way·yi·qaṣ miš·šə·nā·ṯōw way·yō·mer ’ê·ṣê kə·p̄a·‘am bə·p̄a·‘am wə·’in·nā·‘êr wə·hū lō yā·ḏa‘ kî Yah·weh sār mê·‘ā·lāw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-she-said: Philistines upon-thee, Samson! And-he-awoke from-his-sleep and-said: I-will-go-out as-time in-time and-shake-myself-loose — and-he knew not that YHWH had-turned-aside from-upon-him.”
Where the English smooths the original
Samson, fresh from his coarse debauch, and shorn of the locks which he had vowed to keep, strides out into the air, and tries his former feats; but his strength has left him because the Lord has left him; and the Lord has left him because, in his fleshly animalism, he has left the Lord.Maclaren's sermon sets this verse beside Exodus 34:29, where Moses also “wist not” — one man unaware of glory, the other unaware of its loss.
A deeply tragic clause. Men do not know how much they are changed “when the Lord departs from them” until they feel the effects of that departure in utter shame and weakness.
The superhuman strength of Samson did not reside in his hair as hair, but in the fact that Jehovah was with or near him.
The practical lesson against the presumption of self-dependence, and the all-importance of a hearty dependence upon God's Holy Spirit, must not be overlooked.
21Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze shackles and forced to grind grain in the prison.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
p̄ə·liš·tîm way·yō·ḥă·zū·hū way·naq·qə·rū ’eṯ- ‘ê·nāw way·yō·w·rî·ḏū ’ō·w·ṯōw ‘az·zā·ṯāh way·ya·’as·rū·hū ban·ḥuš·ta·yim way·hî ṭō·w·ḥên bə·ḇêṯ hå̄·ʾă·sī·rīm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-the-Philistines seized him and-bored-out his-eyes, and-they-brought-him-down to-Gaza, and-they-bound-him with-the-two-bronzes; and-he-became a-grinder in-the-house-of the-bound-ones.”
Where the English smooths the original
Pitiable as the loss was, Samson was better blind than seeing. The lust of the eye had led him astray, and the loss of his sight showed him his sin.
God also ordering things thus, that where he first sinned, Judges 16:1 , there he should receive his punishment.
‘His degeneration began at Gaza, therefore he was punished at Gaza,’ runs the Rabbinic commentCambridge is reporting a Talmudic reading (Sota 9b), not making a claim of its own; the narrator gives no stated reason for the choice of Gaza.
There Samson was obliged to turn the mill in the prison, and grind corn (the participle טחן expresses the continuance of the action). Grinding a handmill was the hardest and lowest kind of slave labour
22However, the hair of his head began to grow back after it had been shaved.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
śə·‘ar- rō·šōw way·yā·ḥel lə·ṣam·mê·aḥ ka·’ă·šer gul·lāḥ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-the-hair-of his-head began to-sprout, according-as he-had-been-shaven.”
Where the English smooths the original
It is probable that he had now reflected on his folly; and becoming a sincere penitent, renewed his Nazarite vow. "His hair grew together with his repentance, and his strength with his hairsJFB is quoting Bishop Hall in the second half, and the repentance it assumes is inference: the verse itself reports only that the hair began to grow.
Yet he did not regain his strength, till he had called on God and reconciled himself.
there is an indication that Samson only remained in his ignominious captivity till his hair began to grow again
Samson's afflictions were the means of bringing him to deep repentance. By the loss of his bodily sight the eyes of his understanding were opened; and by depriving him of bodily strength, the Lord was pleased to renew his spiritual strength.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens not with an army but with a sentence. Delilah's charge is built on a perfect tense — אֲהַבְתִּיךְ, “I have loved thee,” a finished claim — set against a particle of sheer non-existence, אֵין: your heart is not. Poole puts it exactly: love that “consists only in outward expression, not in affection.” Ellicott records the reader's exasperation on the page: “Samson had undergone all these wiles before, and experienced their hollowness (Judges 14:16), yet he had not learnt wisdom.” K&D simply counts — “after this triple deception.”
Verse 16 then supplies what no single scene could: time. כָּל־הַיָּמִים, all the days, joined to two verbs of pressure — tsûwq, to compress, and the hapax ʼâlats, which K&D can gloss only from Aramaic as “to press or plague.” JFB describes the method without excusing it; Gill describes the result, a man who “could hardly bear to live, but wished to die.” The Hebrew's own phrase is stranger and better than any of them: his nephesh was shortened to death — trimmed, docked, reaped. Cambridge draws the conclusion the whole unit exists to make: “When it came to testing the higher kind of strength, Samson failed.”
⚙ What Samson tells her is, word for word, the terms of his own conception. מוֹרָה, “razor,” stands in only three verses of the canon: here, in the angel's announcement to his mother at Judges 13:5, and in Hannah's vow over Samuel at 1 Samuel 1:11. The Verifier confirms the shared lexeme. He is not divulging a technique; he is reciting a birth-oracle and pricing it.
Benson and Poole, in almost identical words, refuse the magical reading: the hair was “not in itself the cause of his strength, but… the chief condition of that covenant.” JFB says the same from the other side: “His herculean powers did not arise from his hair, but from his peculiar relation to God as a Nazarite.” Ellicott, at v. 19, is blunter still — “the hair of Samson was no magical amulet.” Geneva alone moves from mechanics to motive: “his immoderate affections toward a wicked woman caused him to lose God's excellent gifts.”
Verse 18 is where the seams show. The text as written says he told her; the Masoretic margin says he told me. Cambridge prefers the margin. K&D argues at length for the written text, since the following perfect only parses if the clause is the narrator's aside, and calls the alternative critically worthless. Pulpit goes the other way. The FSSB keeps both in view. Meanwhile one verb ties the verse together: ʻâlâh, to come up — the razor that never came up on his head (v. 17), the lords summoned to come up, the lords coming up, the silver brought up. Ellicott and Pulpit both insist on the article: not money, but the silver, the price already fixed at 16:5. Benson's line is the right one to end on: “See one of the bravest men then in the world bought and sold as a sheep for the slaughter!”
The narrator has already written the sentence once. In v. 19: his strength סָר מֵעָלָיו, turned aside from upon him. In v. 20, the same verb, the same preposition, a new subject: יְהוָה סָר מֵעָלָיו — and this is the only place in the unit where the covenant name appears. K&D lays the two clauses side by side deliberately: Samson said his strength would depart; “the historian observes, on the other hand, that ‘Jehovah had departed from him.’”
Ellicott calls it “a deeply tragic clause.” Barnes converts it into doctrine — “the practical lesson against the presumption of self-dependence… must not be overlooked.” JFB supplies the picture of a man “scarcely awake to the wretchedness of his fallen condition.” But Maclaren does the most with it, by pairing the phrase with Exodus 34:29, where Moses likewise “wist not”: one man unconscious of borrowed glory, the other unconscious of its withdrawal. ⚙ The Hebrew adds one more turn that the sermons pass over: the verb of not-knowing, yâdaʻ, is defined by Strong's as ascertaining by seeing — and the man who does not know is one verse from having his eyes bored out.
Everything in v. 21 is a reversal stated in the chapter's own vocabulary. The verb ʼâsar, to bind, has failed three times in this chapter — withes, new ropes, the loom — and now succeeds in bronze, and the place-name of his imprisonment is built from the same root: בֵּית הָאֲסִירִים, the house of the bound ones. The participle ṭôḥên makes grinding not an event but an identity; Cambridge: “It was his continual task, as the tense indicates.” K&D and Barnes both note that the work was slaves' and women's work; K&D adds Zedekiah, blinded and bronze-bound at 2 Kings 25:7, as the exact parallel sentence carried out on a king.
Poole sees the geography as judgement — “where he first sinned… there he should receive his punishment.” Cambridge reports the Rabbinic version of the same instinct without adopting it. Henry finds the retribution in the organ itself: “Samson's eyes were the inlets of his sin… and now his punishment began there.” Maclaren, who refuses to sentimentalise the man, says the hard thing plainly: “Samson was better blind than seeing.”
Then verse 22, five words in Hebrew, and the narrator declines to preach. No angel, no announcement, no return of the Spirit — only לְצַמֵּחַ, the verb of sprouting, and the participle-clock of kaʼăsher gullāḥ. JFB, following Bishop Hall, reads repentance into it; Geneva refuses to go that far, insisting he did not regain his strength “till he had called on God and reconciled himself”; Henry says the affliction itself was the means. ⚙ The verse itself says less than all of them, and its reticence is its power.
⚙ Read under Scripture alone, this unit is not finally about a haircut, and it is not even finally about lust. It is about the difference between a sign and the thing signified, and about how a man can keep possession of the sign long after he has stopped meaning it. Samson's seven braids were true for twenty years and empty on the last night of them — and the text is careful to tell us he did not feel the moment they went hollow. The most frightening line in the passage is not that the Philistines bored out his eyes; it is that he rose, and shook himself, and expected it to work. Verse 19 and verse 20 are the same sentence twice — turned aside from upon him — with strength in the first slot and the LORD in the second, which is the narrator's way of saying that the gift and the Giver were never two things. Samson could name the condition precisely (v. 17) and still believe the power was his; that is not ignorance, it is the specific self-deception of the long-consecrated. And yet the last verse, which could easily have been a moral, is instead a sprout. The hair begins — the same verb with which Delilah began to humble him — and nothing else is promised. Not restoration; a clock. God's mercy in this chapter does not arrive as a reversal of the sentence but as time added to the sentence, which is what mercy usually looks like from inside the mill. This is offered to be tested against the text, not received from it.
The gift and the Giver were never two things — which is why the same three Hebrew words carry away the strength in one verse and the LORD in the next. (This line is the tool's reading, not Scripture.)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
Samson's disclosure in v. 17 is not new information invented for Delilah; it is the angel's word to his mother, repeated. מוֹרָה (môwrâh, H4177, “razor”) stands in only three verses of the entire Hebrew canon — Judges 13:5, where the messenger says “no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite of God from the womb”; 1 Samuel 1:11, where Hannah vows over Samuel that “no razor shall come upon his head”; and this verse, where a grown man recites the formula to the woman being paid to break it. The Verifier confirms the shared lexeme in all three, and Judges 13:5 additionally shares beṭen (womb, H990) and nâzîyr (H5139) with our verse — Samson is reproducing the oracle nearly clause for clause. ⚙ The canon gives this rare noun to exactly two consecrated births, and one of the two men keeps his vow.
Judges 13:5 · 1 Samuel 1:11
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H4177 môwrâh, a very rare noun occurring in only 3 verses of the canon (Judges 13:5, 1 Samuel 1:11, Judges 16:17); Judges 13:5 additionally shares H990 beṭen (72 vv) and H5139 nâzîyr (16 vv). Judges 16:17 reproduces the wording of the angel's oracle in Judges 13:5 within the same book and narrative — a quotation within the narrative, not merely a motif.
The Nazirite law knows a shaving too. At Numbers 6:18–19 the Nazirite gâlach-s his consecrated head at the door of the tent of meeting when the days of separation are fulfilled, and the shorn hair goes into the fire under the peace offering. The Verifier confirms that our unit shares both governing words with that passage: gâlach (H1548, 18 vv) and nâzîyr (H5139, 16 vv). ⚙ The two scenes are the same ritual with every coordinate inverted — sanctuary door for bedroom, priest for a hired barber, completion for betrayal, fire on the altar for silver in the hand. Ellicott's insistence that “the hair of Samson was no magical amulet” is the necessary guard here: the hair mattered because Numbers 6 said it did, and for no other reason. The same root reaches further still, to the cleansed leper shaved and readmitted (Leviticus 14:8–9) and to Isaiah 7:20, where the LORD Himself shaves Judah with a hired razor — judgement and cleansing carried by one verb.
Numbers 6:18 · Numbers 6:19 · Leviticus 14:8 · Isaiah 7:20
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H1548 gâlach (18 vv) and H5139 nâzîyr (16 vv) with Numbers 6:18–19; H1548 gâlach plus H8181 sêʻâr (27 vv) with Leviticus 14:8–9 and Isaiah 7:20. Real verbal contact within a shared institution and motif — deliberately NOT tiered as quotation, since Judges 16 cites no words of Numbers 6 and makes no citation claim.
Verse 20's clause is סָר מֵעָלָיו, and the Verifier confirms the same lexeme çûwr (H5493) at 1 Samuel 16:14: “the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul.” Cambridge reaches for the same passage, adding 1 Samuel 28:15–16; Ellicott cross-references Numbers 14:43 and 1 Samuel 16:14 for the identical phenomenon. ⚙ Two men, both raised up for Israel, both leave the same way: not cast down in a scene of judgement but quietly vacated, and in both cases the man carries on for a while as though nothing has changed. Barnes turns it to use — the case against “the presumption of self-dependence.” Çûwr is a common verb (281 verses), so the link here is not lexical rarity but the exact repetition of subject, verb and preposition in two parallel biographies; that is why this is tiered structural and not verbal.
1 Samuel 16:14 · 1 Samuel 28:15
basis: Verifier pair check on Judges 16:20 ↔ 1 Samuel 16:14 returns shared lexeme H5493 çûwr (in 281 vv) — a common verb, so the weight rests on the shared narrative pattern (a divinely given power withdrawn from a leader who does not at once perceive it), not on rarity. 1 Samuel 28:15 is added on Cambridge's citation, not on a Verifier lexeme count.
Two of this unit's uncommon verbs meet in one verse elsewhere in Scripture. Delilah's accusation uses hâthal (H2048, “to deride,” 9 verses), and v. 20 uses yâqats (H3364, “to awake,” 11 verses). The Verifier finds both together at 1 Kings 18:27, where Elijah mocks the prophets of Baal: “perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” ⚙ The irony is not one the narrator states, and it should not be over-pressed — but the vocabulary is there: the judge accused of mockery is the one found sleeping, and the God he served needed no waking, having simply left. Within the chapter itself the Verifier also confirms hâthal at Judges 16:10 and 16:13 — Delilah's threefold refrain, of which v. 15 is the last.
1 Kings 18:27 · Judges 16:10 · Judges 16:13
basis: Verifier: Judges 16:15/16:20 share H2048 hâthal (9 vv) and H3364 yâqats (11 vv) with 1 Kings 18:27; H2048 hâthal also shared with Judges 16:10 and 16:13 within the chapter. Both lexemes are uncommon, but there is no quotation and no citation claim in either direction, so the tier is thematic rather than verbal; the reading of the irony is ⚙ synthesis.
The Piel nâqar (H5365, “to bore out, to quarry”) of v. 21 is rare — six verses in the canon. The Verifier's candidate list pairs our verse with Proverbs 30:17: “The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother, the ravens of the valley will bore it out” — the pair sharing both nâqar and ʼêm (mother, H517). Samson's parents objected to the Timnite woman at Judges 14:3, and he overruled them with the words “she is right in my eyes.” Cambridge records that the Talmud (Sota 9b) drew exactly this line. ⚙ We record it as a resonance the lexicon genuinely supports and the narrator never states: Judges 16:21 gives no motive for the blinding beyond Philistine policy, and Poole, Benson and Barnes all explain it first as military prudence.
Proverbs 30:17 · Judges 14:3
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H5365 nâqar (rare — 6 vv) and H517 ʼêm (202 vv) between Judges 16:21 and Proverbs 30:17. The rare lexeme is real, but Proverbs 30 is not cited by Judges and the retributive reading is a Rabbinic and ⚙ inference, so the tier is held at thematic rather than raised to verbal.
The only place the New Testament names Samson is Hebrews 11:32–34, where he stands in a list of those who “out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.” ⚙ That verdict is startling read against this unit, which is the record of the opposite motion: a strong man made weak, defeated, and set to a woman's work in a mill. The writer to the Hebrews is not commenting on Judges 16:15–22 — he is reading past it to 16:28–30, where a blind man prays and dies pulling down a temple. Note what that means for how the canon handles this passage: the faith Hebrews credits to Samson is not the faith of his best years but of his last hour, after everything recorded here. ⚙ This is a cross-Testament link and therefore cannot rest on a shared Strong's number: Hebrews is Greek, Judges is Hebrew, and no lexeme is shared or claimed. What is confirmed is the explicit naming of the person, which is a stronger and cleaner basis than any word-count.
Hebrews 11:32 · Judges 16:28
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek ↔ Hebrew): shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition, and none is asserted. The basis is the explicit naming of Samson (Σαμψών) in Hebrews 11:32 — a direct NT reference to this narrative's protagonist, though not a quotation of any words from Judges 16. Tiered structural, never verbal.
The chapter is organised around a verb. ʼâsar (H631, “to yoke or bind,” 63 verses) is the verb of Delilah's repeated attempts to tie him down — Gill lists the sequence, “binding him with green withs, and then with new ropes, and a third time by weaving his locks into the web” — and it is the verb of the bronze that finally holds in 16:21. The place he is taken to is named from its passive participle, בֵּית הָאֲסִירִים, the house of the bound ones (H615). A Verifier pair check on Judges 16:21 ↔ 16:12 returns the shared lexeme directly. ⚙ The pun is the argument: rope never held him and bronze does, but nothing changed about rope or bronze. Gill notes that the Philistines only dared lay hands on him once Delilah had verified the loss — they were never fighting a man, and they knew it.
Judges 16:12 · Judges 16:8
basis: Verifier pair check on Judges 16:21 ↔ Judges 16:12 returns shared lexemes H631 ʼâçar (63 vv) and H6430 Pᵉlishtîy (244 vv). Same book, same chapter, same narrative — a genuine verbal chain, but an internal repetition rather than a quotation, so tiered structural. Judges 16:8 is listed as part of the narrated sequence of bindings (reported by Gill), not on a computed lexeme of its own.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
Judges 16 is the Old Testament's starkest picture of a deliverer whose rescue of Israel comes only through his own death (16:30), and the church has long read Samson's end that way. But the type breaks at precisely the place this unit sits. Samson's strength failed because he broke the consecration; ⚙ the Lord Jesus is the consecrated One whose separation was never profaned — “him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world” (John 10:36). Samson slept on the lap of the woman who had sold him, and did not know that the LORD had departed; Christ, in Gethsemane, was awake while His friends slept, and went to a cross where the departure — “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” — was real, deserved by others, and borne on purpose. Henry's warning that “all our glory is gone… when our separation to God, as spiritual Nazarites, is profaned” is the exact need that the second Deliverer meets. The Samson-as-type reading is ancient and widely held (Hebrews 11:32 already places him among those who “out of weakness were made strong”); the specific contrast drawn here between an unwitting forsaking and a willing one is the tool's own framing, offered to be tested.
Judges 16:30 · Hebrews 11:32 · John 10:36 · Matthew 27:46
⚙ The vocabulary of v. 21 reads like a list of what was done to Christ, with one decisive difference at every point. Samson was seized (ʼâchaz) and bound (ʼâsar) — Jesus was seized and bound and led away (John 18:12), and no one could hold Him before the hour came (John 7:30). Samson's eyes were bored out; Christ was blindfolded and struck and told to prophesy who hit Him (Luke 22:63–64) — and the verb Delilah uses of Samson, hâthal, “to mock,” names in Hebrew what the soldiers did to Jesus in Greek — an echo at the level of sense only, since no Strong's number crosses between the Testaments and none is claimed here. Samson was humbled (ʻânâh, v. 19), the verb of Israel's affliction in Egypt and of Isaiah 53:7, where the Servant “was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.” Samson opened his mouth and told everything to the wrong person for silver; the Servant kept silent and was sold for it. The correspondences are real but they are inverted at the moral centre, and the FSSB marks this as a reading built by juxtaposition rather than by any New Testament citation of Judges 16.
Luke 22:63 · John 18:12 · Isaiah 53:7
Samson is נְזִיר אֱלֹהִים מִבֶּטֶן אִמִּי — a Nazirite of God “from my mother's womb” (v. 17), the formula the angel gave before his conception (Judges 13:5) and the same shape of calling God speaks over Jeremiah (“before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,” Jeremiah 1:5) and Paul claims for himself (Galatians 1:15). ⚙ Each of these is a life set apart before it could consent or refuse, and each of them, Samson included, is a shadow of the One whose consecration was not a condition He could forfeit. And the last word of this unit makes the smallest possible gesture toward Him: tsâmach, to sprout (H6779) — the root behind tsemach, the Branch, the messianic title of Jeremiah 23:5 and Zechariah 3:8, and behind Isaiah 53:2's “he shall grow up before him as a tender plant.” The FSSB does not claim the narrator of Judges intended a messianic pointer in a verb about hair; it records that the canon's word for life coming up out of a cut-down stump is the word this ruined man's story ends on, and that the shoot from the stump of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1) is the place that image finally goes.
Judges 13:5 · Jeremiah 1:5 · Isaiah 11:1 · Isaiah 53:2
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. The one substantive textual issue in the unit is at 16:18. The consonantal text (Kethib) reads לָהּ, “he has told her”; the Masoretic margin (Qere) reads lî, “he has told me.” BSB follows the Qere and puts the clause inside Delilah's speech. Cambridge prefers the Qere; K&D defends the Kethib at length, arguing that the following perfect wᵉʻālû is otherwise unparsable and calling the Qere “without any critical worth”; Pulpit sides with the Qere while acknowledging that the tense favours the Kethib. The FSSB reports the dispute and takes no side. A second, smaller crux stands at 16:19: the Hebrew has “she shaved,” which Pulpit explains as action through an agent and which Cambridge reports has been emended by editors to “he shaved”; the Greek of that verse also reads the following verb passively (“he began to be afflicted”).
Lexicon. וַתְּאַלֲצֵהוּ (H509, v. 16) is a hapax legomenon — a single occurrence in the Hebrew Bible. Every English rendering of it rests on cognate Aramaic and on context. K&D notes the Piel is irregular. Readers should treat “pleaded,” “urged” and “tormented” as informed guesses at one word.
What the text does not say. The Hebrew gives no drug, no potion and no explanation of how the shaving did not wake him; Ellicott, Poole and Gill each supply a sleeping draught by inference. It gives no stated reason for the blinding beyond the Philistines' own interest; the retributive readings (Henry on the eyes, Poole and Cambridge on Gaza, the Talmudic comment Cambridge relays from Sota 9b) are commentary, not narration. It gives no report of repentance at v. 22; JFB (quoting Bishop Hall), Benson, Poole and Gill infer it, Geneva pointedly limits it, and the verse itself says only that the hair began to sprout.
Sources. Scripture text is the Berean Standard Bible (CC0); interlinear surface forms, transliterations, Strong's numbers and parsings are from the Berean interlinear as supplied in the brief. All ✦ commentary is quoted verbatim from public-domain works and named by author. Cross-reference bases marked “Verifier” are computed shared-lexeme counts; two pairs (Judges 16:20 ↔ 1 Samuel 16:14, and Judges 16:21 ↔ Judges 16:12) were checked directly for this unit and their returned bases are recorded as given. Where a link rests on a commentator's citation rather than a computed lexeme, the badge says so. Everything marked ⚙ is the tool's own fallible synthesis and carries no authority; it is offered to be tested against the Word.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)