Woman of means

Judges 16:15-22

Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me three times now and have not told me what makes your strength so great.” Finally, after she had nagged him with her words day after day, and pestered him, he was tired to death. So he told her his whole secret, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head; for I have been a nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, then my strength would leave me; I would become weak, and be like anyone else.”

When Delilah realized that he had told her his whole secret, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, “This time come up, for he has told his whole secret to me.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her, and brought the money in their hands. She let him fall asleep on her lap; and she called a man, and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. He began to weaken, and his strength left him. Then she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” When he awoke from his sleep, he thought, “I will go out as at other times, and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. So the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles; and he ground at the mill in the prison. But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

Delilah

A woman of means

A woman of mystery

A woman loved

A woman who persisted

until she found the way

to undermine the power

of the man who loved her

A woman who disappeared

as stealthily as she entered

with her haul of silver

and a challenge completed.

We may want to condemn her

for her betrayal

for her duplicity 

and deceit

Yet we do not know her story

We cannot grasp the context

in which she operated

or the motives

that drove her actions

We can only marvel

at her resourcefulness

her persistence

and her strength

in the midst of a culture 

whose decline into depravity

is manifest in the treatment

and status of its women

a culture in which women

are usually the victims of violence

rather than the perpetrators.

Delilah - 

A woman who escaped the bondage

of her place in society 

and modelled strength

every bit as powerful

as her lover’s.