Why did Samson keep letting himself get tricked by Delilah?
Because he wasn't tricked. I'll say that again. He knew exactly what she was trying to do. Samson was not unintelligent. However, he was overconfident and arrogant. So people ask, “how did Samson not realise what she was up to, when it was so obvious?” The answer is that it was obvious and he did realise. He just didn't think that it mattered.
Individual events cannot be understood in isolation, which means that if we want to understand Samson's actions with Delilah, we need to read the whole story so we can understand them in context. Samson was conceived as a Nazirite (Judges 13:7), meaning that he had to live under three conditions (Numbers 6:1–21):
- Avoid alcoholic drink, or anything that is associated with alcoholic drinks (grapes, raisins, vinegar made from wine, etc.)
- Never cut their hair
- Never go near a dead body, so as to completely avoid becoming ceremonially unclean. This included the bodies of close relatives
The nazirite vow was normally voluntary and time-limited. In Samson’s case, it was neither. However, in return for this, he was given enormous physical strength. The full story of Samson is told in Judges 13 - 16
, and I will not recap it here. The main point is that Samson did not take his nazirite vow seriously, and the episode with Delilah was really the final straw.in Judges 14:1–9, Samson fights and kills a lion. Later, he returns and finds a beehive in the carcass, and helps himself to some of the honey. By doing this, he violates the command against touching dead bodies. However, he does not lose his strength.
Pictured: Samson fights a lion (sauce)
After this, Samson gets married. However, it is a Philistine girl he marries, and the wedding feast, which goes on for several days, happens in Philistine territory. Samson’s companions for the wedding are chosen from amongst the Philistines (Judges 14:10–11). This means that, while the account doesn’t specifically say that Samson drank alcohol, it is highly likely that he did. Still, his strength did not leave him.
Now, let’s fast forward to Delilah. Samson has really, really annoyed the Philistines by this point and they really, really want to kill him. But they can’t while he retains his strength (I presume there's more to this than just strength alone, because otherwise why not just shoot him with an arrow from a safe distance, or cut his throat in his sleep, or something?). By this point, Samson’s marriage has fallen through, and he’s shacked up with, but not married, Delilah. The Philistine leaders, desperate for a way to remove his strength, bribe Delilah into using her, um, feminine wiles to get him to tell her the secret of his strength. Samson knows exactly what she is doing and repeatedly lies to her, letting her think that she has the secret, only to then beat up the men she sends in. This happens a few times. The thing is, it is obvious that Samson is not fooled by her, he is playing games with her.
However, then he slips up. After she really goes in with the waterworks, he finally gets tired and tells her the truth. Why would he do this, when he knows exactly what she is going to do? Samson is not stupid, and will obviously have been told where his strength comes from. Why would he take such a stupid risk? Unless, in his mind, it isn't a stupid risk.
My theory is that at this point he had become overconfident and he didn’t believe that he would actually lose his strength. He’d already violated every other part of his nazirite vow with no consequences, so why would cutting his hair make any difference? Hence, telling her the truth would be harmless, given that he is in love (or at least in lust) with her and his mind would be pushing him in that direction anyway*.
Little did he know that the long-held-back consequences would finally hit him, all at once, with the force of an express train. His strength is gone, the Philistines capture him, blind him and enslave him. That appears to be that for Samson.
Ultimately, of course, he does eventually get his strength back for one final strike.
Pictured: Samson destroys the Temple (sauce)
So, that is the answer. Samson was not tricked. In some ways, it might have been better if he was. At least then the argument could be made that the consequences were not entirely his fault. As it was, he was simply corrupt, overconfident and took his gift for granted. There is a lot in his story that we can learn from.
*One thing that I've found is consistently true about people is that we have a tendency to choose our facts based on what we would like to be true
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