Samson | Bible, Hair, Weakness, Delilah, & Facts (2024)

Samson, legendary Israelite warrior and judge, or divinely inspired leader, renowned for the prodigious strength that he derived from his uncut hair. He is portrayed in the biblical Book of Judges (chapters 13–16).

Samson’s incredible exploits, as related in the biblical narrative, hint at the weight of Philistine pressure on Israel during much of Israel’s early, tribal period in Canaan (1200–1000 bce). The biblical narrative, only alluding to Samson’s “twenty years” activity as a judge, presents a few episodes, principally concerned with the beginning and the end of his activity. Before his conception, his mother, a peasant of the tribe of Dan at Zorah, near Jerusalem, was visited by an angel who told her that her son was to be a lifelong Nazirite—i.e., one dedicated to the special service of God, usually through a vow of abstinence from strong drink, from shaving or cutting the hair, and from contact with a dead body.

Samson possessed extraordinary physical strength, and the moral of his saga relates the disastrous loss of his power to his violation of the Nazirite vow, to which he was bound by his mother’s promise to the angel. He first broke his religious obligation by feasting with a woman from the neighbouring town of Timnah, who was also a Philistine, one of Israel’s mortal enemies. Other remarkable deeds follow. For example, he decimated the Philistines in a private war. On another occasion he repulsed their assault on him at Gaza, where he had gone to visit a harlot. He finally fell victim to his foes through love of Delilah, who beguiled him into revealing the secret of his strength: his long Nazirite hair. As he slept, Delilah had his hair cut and betrayed him. He was captured, blinded, and enslaved by the Philistines, but in the end God granted Samson his revenge; through the return of his old strength, he demolished the great Philistine temple of the god Dagon, at Gaza, destroying his captors and himself (Judges 16:4–30).