15 Then 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 where your great strength is." 16 It came about when she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, that his soul was annoyed to death . 17 So he told her all that was in his heart and said to her, "A razor has never come on my head , for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother's womb . If I am shaved , then my strength will leave e me and I will become weak and be like any other man ."
18 When Delilah saw that he had told her all that was in his heart , she sent and called the lords of the Philistines , saying , "Come up once more , for he has told me all that is in his heart ." Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands . 19 She made him sleep on her knees , and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his hair . Then she began to afflict him, and his strength left him. 20 She said , "The Philistines are upon you, Samson !" And he awoke from his sleep and said , "I will go out as at other times and shake myself free ." But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Judges 16:15-20
Commentary on Judges 16:4-17
(Read Judges 16:4-17)
Samson had been more than once brought into mischief and danger by the love of women, yet he would not take warning, but is again taken in the same snare, and this third time is fatal. Licentiousness is one of the things that take away the heart. This is a deep pit into which many have fallen; but from which few have escaped, and those by a miracle of mercy, with the loss of reputation and usefulness, of almost all, except their souls. The anguish of the suffering is ten thousand times greater than all the pleasures of the sin.
Commentary on Judges 16:18-21
(Read Judges 16:18-21)
See the fatal effects of false security. Satan ruins men by flattering them into a good opinion of their own safety, and so bringing them to mind nothing, and fear nothing; and then he robs them of their strength and honour, and leads them captive at his will. When we sleep our spiritual enemies do not. Samson's eyes were the inlets of his sin, verse 1, and now his punishment began there. Now the Philistines blinded him, he had time to remember how his own lust had before blinded him. The best way to preserve the eyes, is, to turn them away from beholding vanity. Take warning by his fall, carefully to watch against all fleshly lusts; for all our glory is gone, and our defence departed from us, when our separation to God, as spiritual Nazarites, is profaned.