Judges16:15–22

The razor that never came up — a birth-oracle quoted and sold verbal / quotation — confirmed

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.

Numbers 6 run backwards: the shaving that ends a vow and the shaving that breaks one structural / thematic — confirmed

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.

“He wist not” — the Spirit withdrawn from Saul structural / thematic — confirmed

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.

Mocked, and asleep — hâthal and yâqats on Carmel structural / thematic — confirmed

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 eye that mocked a father — nâqar in Proverbs 30 structural / thematic — confirmed

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.

“Out of weakness were made strong” — the New Testament's one verdict on Samson structural / thematic — confirmed

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.

Every binding failed but this one — ʼâsar across Judges 16 structural / thematic — confirmed

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.

The deliverer who saves by dying — and the One who was not overtaken ancient/widely-held

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

Bound, blinded, mocked, and set to the mill novel

⚙ 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

Consecrated from the womb, and the sprout that follows the cutting novel

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