12. So Delilah took new ropes and tied Samson. Some men were hiding in another room. She called out to him, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” But he broke the ropes as easily as if they were threads.
13. Then Delilah said to Samson, “Again you have made a fool of me. You lied to me. Tell me how someone can tie you up.”He said, “Using the loom, weave the seven braids of my hair into the cloth, and tighten it with a pin. Then I will be as weak as any other man.”While Samson slept, Delilah wove the seven braids of his hair into the cloth.
14. Then she fastened it with a pin.Again she said to him, “Samson, the Philistines are here!” Samson woke up and pulled out the pin and the loom with the cloth.
15. Then Delilah said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you don’t even trust me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me. You haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.”
16. She kept bothering Samson about his secret day after day until he felt he was going to die!
17. So he told her everything. He said, “I have never had my hair cut, because I have been set apart to God as a Nazirite since I was born. If someone shaved my head, I would lose my strength and be as weak as any other man.”
18. When Delilah saw that he had told her everything sincerely, she sent a message to the Philistine rulers. She said, “Come back one more time, because he has told me everything.” So the Philistine rulers came back to Delilah and brought the silver with them.
19. Delilah got Samson to sleep, lying in her lap. Then she called in a man to shave off the seven braids of Samson’s hair. In this way she began to make him weak, and his strength left him.
20. Then she said, “Samson, the Philistines are here!”He woke up and thought, “I’ll leave as I did before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.
21. Then the Philistines captured Samson and tore out his eyes. They took him down to Gaza, where they put bronze chains on him and made him grind grain in the prison.
22. But his hair began to grow again.
23. The Philistine rulers gathered to celebrate and to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon. They said, “Our god has handed Samson our enemy over to us.”
24. When the people saw him, they praised their god, saying,“This man destroyed our country.He killed many of us!But our god handed overour enemy to us.”