The Judges & Ruth

"All it takes," he answered, "is to tie me up with new ropes that haven't been used. Then I'll become weak and be like anyone else."

So D'lilah took new ropes, tied him up, and said to him, "Shimshon! The P'lishtim have come for you!" (The people lying in wait were in the inside room.) But he broke the ropes from off his arms like a thread.

D'lilah said to Shimshon, "Till now you've been making fun of me and telling me lies. Tell me what it takes to tie you up." He said, "If you weave the seven locks of my hair across thread on a loom."

So she fastened her cloth work in the loom with a pin and wove his hair in, then said to him, "Shimshon! The P'lishtim have come for you!" He awoke from his sleep and pulled away the loom pin and the interwoven cloth.

She said to him, "How can you say you love me when your heart isn't with me? Three times you've made fun of me, and you haven't told me the source of your great strength."

Every day she kept nagging at him and pressing at him, till it bothered him to death,

so that he finally told her everything. He said to her, "No razor has ever touched my head, because I have been a nazir of God since I was born. If someone shaves me, then my strength will leave me; and I will be like any other man."

When D'lilah saw that he had really confided in her, she sent and summoned the chiefs of the P'lishtim with the message, "Come up this one last time, because he has finally told me the truth." The chiefs of the P'lishtim went up to her and brought the money with them.

She had him go to sleep in her lap and called for a man to shave off his seven locks of hair. Then she began tormenting him, but his strength had gone away.

She said, "Shimshon! The P'lishtim have come for you!" He awoke from his sleep and said, "I'll get out this time, just as I shook myself loose before." But he didn't know that ADONAI had left him.

So the P'lishtim seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to 'Azah. There they bound him with two bronze chains and put him to work grinding grain at the mill in the prison.

However, after the hair on his head had been cut off, it began growing back again.

The chiefs of the P'lishtim assembled to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon. As they celebrated they sang, "Our god has handed over to us our enemy Shimshon."

Upon seeing him, the people praised their god: "Our god has handed over to us our enemy, who destroyed our land and killed so many of us."

When they were in high spirits they said, "Summon Shimshon to amuse us." So they called Shimshon out of the prison, and he amused them. When they put him between the columns,

Shimshon said to the boy holding him by the hand, "Let me feel the columns supporting the building, so that I can lean on them."

The building was full of men and women; and all the chiefs of the P'lishtim were there; in addition to them, there were about three thousand men and women on the roof, watching, as Shimshon performed.

Shimshon called to ADONAI, "Adonai ELOHIM, just this once, please, think of me, and please, give me strength, so that I can take revenge on the P'lishtim for at least one of my two eyes."

Shimshon got a good hold on the two middle columns supporting the building and leaned on them, on one with his right hand and on the other with his left.

Then, crying, "Let me die with the P'lishtim!" he pushed with all his might; and the building collapsed on the chiefs and on all the people inside. So he killed more at his death than he had killed during his life.

His brothers and all his father's family came down, took him, brought him up and buried him between Tzor'ah and Eshta'ol, in the tomb of his father Manoach. He had judged Isra'el twenty years.

There was a man from the hills of Efrayim named Mikhay'hu.

He said to his mother, "You know the 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you - you pronounced a curse about it, and you told me about it? Well, the money is with me. I took it." His mother said, "May ADONAI bless my son,"

as he restored the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother. Then his mother said, "I solemnly dedicate this money of mine to ADONAI, in order for my son to make a carved image overlaid with silver. So now I'm giving it back to you."

But he returned the money to his mother, and she took 200 pieces of silver and gave them to the metalworker, who made a carved image overlaid with silver which was put in Mikhay'hu's house.