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Bible Dictionaries
Delilah
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or ("the languishing one".) A Philistine harlot, of the valley of Sorek, whom the five Philistine lords, when they found Samson loved her, bribed for 1,100 shekels each to be their political emissary, to find out from Samson the secret of his strength. On four different occasions she tempted him to tell the secret. On the third occasion Samson trifled so presumptuously with the divine gift committed to him as to suggest that his seven consecrated locks should be woven with the web; when we go to the edge of temptation our gall is near. This "languishing" prostitute, with her vile challenging of his "love," "How canst thou say, I love thee, when thine heart is not with me?" and by daily vexing importunity, wrung the secret from him at the fourth time.
His strength lay in dedication to God, of which his Nazarite locks were the sign. Laying down his head in her lap he lost them, and with them lost God in him, the spring of a strength which was not his own. Lust, severing from God the source of strength, makes the strongest powerless; only by waiting on the Lord, we, like Samson, renew the strength which was lost by self-indulgence and self-reliance. Contrast Daniel 1:8-16; Isaiah 40:30-31; Proverbs 7:6-27. So Israel, strong while faithful to Jehovah, incurs the curse which Balaam, however wishing it, could not inflict, the moment that the people commits whoredom with the daughters of Moab (Numbers 25:1; Numbers 25:6; Numbers 31:15-16).
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Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Delilah'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/d/delilah.html. 1949.
