15. She said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have deceived me these three times and have not told me how your strength is so great.”
16. Every day she nagged him with her words and pleaded with him until he was tired to death.
17. So he told her all his secrets and said to her, “No razor has touched my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I were shaven, my strength would leave me, and I would become weak and be like all other men.”
18. Delilah saw that he had told her all his secrets, so she sent for the Philistine rulers, saying, “Come up this time, for he has told me all his secrets.” So the Philistine rulers came up to her and brought the money in their hands.
19. Delilah lulled Samson to sleep on her knees and called for a man to shave off the seven locks of his hair. Then she began to humiliate him, and his strength left him.
20. She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson.”Then he awakened from his sleep and thought, “I will go out as before and shake myself free of them.” He did not know that the Lord had left him.
21. The Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They took him down to Gaza, bound him with bronze chains, and he ground grain in prison.
22. Yet after it had been shaven, the hair on his head began to grow back.
23. The Philistine rulers gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate. They said, “Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hands.”
24. The people saw him and praised their god, for they said, “Our god has given into our handsour enemy,the one who ruined our landand killed many of us.”
25. When their hearts were merry, they said, “Call for Samson, so he can entertain us.” So they called for Samson from the prison, and he entertained them.They placed him between the pillars.
26. Samson said to the young man who held his hand, “Let me rest and touch the pillars on which the temple is set, then I can lean against them.”
27. The temple was full of men and women, and all the Philistine rulers were there. There were about three thousand men and women on the roof watching Samson entertain.
28. Samson called out to the Lord, “Lord God, remember me, I pray! Please strengthen me just this once, God, so that I may get full revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes!”