Samson went to Gaza, where people waited at the gate through the night to kill him. At midnight he rose, pulled up the city gate with its posts and bar, and carried it to the hill facing Hebron. Later he loved Delilah in the Valley of Sorek.
Philistine rulers promised Delilah eleven hundred pieces of silver each if she learned the source of Samson’s great strength and how to bind him. Samson said seven green cords that had never dried would make him weak. Delilah bound him while men lay in ambush, but he snapped the cords. He then said new ropes that had never been used would weaken him; he snapped those as well when she cried that Philistines were upon him.
For a third answer Samson said his seven locks must be woven into the loom. Delilah did so while he slept, but he pulled free the pin and the web. She pressed him day after day, asking how he could claim love while withholding his heart. At last he was worn down to death.
Samson told her that no razor had touched his head because he had been a Nazirite, dedicated to God from birth. If shaved, he said, his strength would leave him. Delilah called the rulers. She put him to sleep on her knees and had his seven locks shaved. His strength left him. When she called again, Samson thought he would shake himself free, but he did not know that the LORD had left him.
The Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, took him to Gaza, bound him with bronze chains, and made him grind in prison. His hair began to grow again. The rulers gathered to praise Dagon for giving them their enemy. When they wanted amusement, Samson was brought out and placed between the pillars of the temple.
Samson asked the boy leading him to let him feel the pillars so that he could lean on them. The temple was full of men and women, and all the Philistine rulers were there. About three thousand men and women watched from the roof. Samson prayed that God would remember him and strengthen him once more, so that he could take vengeance on the Philistines for his two eyes. He grasped the two central pillars, one with his right hand and the other with his left.
Samson asked to die with the Philistines and bent with all his strength. The temple fell on the rulers and all the people inside. He killed more in his death than during his life. His brothers and father’s household carried him back and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burial site of Manoah. He had judged Israel for twenty years.