1. he saw there a whore-woman. This is a precise verbal echo of his first encounter with a Philistine woman, only the professional designation “whore” being added. There is a certain parallel with the story of the two spies who came to Jericho to Rahab the whore, but Samson comes only for his own pleasure, avails himself of the woman’s services, and does not have to hide or flee because he can rely on his strength.

2. And it was told. Those words are added from the Septuagint.

3. seized the doors of the town’s gate. In this provocative act, he not only asserts his invulnerability but also leaves the town exposed.

4. he loved a woman in Nahal Sorek. In this climactic episode in the series of three women with whom Samson is involved, we are told that he actually loves the woman, and of the three, only Delilah is given a name. Nahal Sorek (Wadi of the Vine) is in Israelite territory, and Delilah may well be an Israelite woman.

5. the Philistine overlords. The term seranim always appears in the plural and is the title of the rulers of the five towns that make up the Philistine pentapolis. Many scholars think it is cognate with the Greek tyrranos. The fact that the overlords themselves should come to make the appeal to Delilah reflects the importance they attach to the capture of this deadly Israelite adversary.

bind him to torture him. They are frank about their brutal intentions toward Samson: instead of killing him on the spot, they want him rendered helpless so that they can torment and abuse this despised enemy who has wreaked such havoc among them.

eleven hundred silver shekels. This is a vast sum—5500 shekels all told—and so more than enough to appeal to her mercenary impulses.

6. with what could you be bound to be tortured. In repeating the words of the overlords, Delilah does not hesitate to speak openly of torture. Presumably, she is putting this to Samson as a merely hypothetical condition, although the talk of binding and torture also makes this sound like a perverse sex game they are playing.

7. moist thongs. These are either animal tendons or cords plaited from leather—in either case, still moist so that they are very hard to tear apart.

9. when it touches fire. The fire motif returns in the simile.

12. Delilah took new ropes. Here the aid of the Philistine overlords is not mentioned, though it may be implied.

13. If you weave my head’s seven tresses together with the web. Only now do we learn how Samson wears his uncut hair (and one should note the magical number seven). In the third of his three false explanations, he edges toward the real secret because his hair is involved. This version also comes close to his actual predicament because it conjures up entanglement in a woman’s instrument, the loom.

and drive them with a peg into the wall, I would be weakened and become like any man. Both these clauses are absent in the Masoretic Text, which is manifestly incomplete here, but they appear in the Septuagint, in the Targum Yonatan, and in the Peshitta.

14. And she drove them with a peg into the wall. “Into the wall” is supplied from the Septuagint. The driving of the peg recalls Jael and Sisera, but in this instance the woman’s deadly intent is not realized.

15. You only say “I love you.” She uses the same feminine argument as Samson’s first wife.

Three times now. The folktale pattern of three times—in this case, three times with a fourth time that swerves to a new outcome—is made an object of deliberate attention. The story as a whole is organized around threes—three women, and the multiples of three killed by Samson.

17. all that was in his heart. Literally, “all his heart.”

19. she put him to sleep on her knees. This is, of course, necessary so that his hair can be cut, but it is also a powerful image of the seductive woman lulling the mighty hero and reducing him to a baby in her lap.

called the man and shaved his head’s seven tresses. The verb “shaved” is conjugated in the feminine. Some emend it to a masculine form; others claim, with little philological warrant, that it means “caused him to be shaved.” It makes more sense to assume that Delilah, who can’t very well move with Samson asleep on her knees, calls the man to bring her a razor so that she can then shave Samson’s head. Her performance of the act herself is thematically and psychologically apt: the seductress cuts away the source of Samson’s potency.

she began to torture him. She is the very first to torment him in an appropriately sadistic move.

20. as all the other times. The times motif recurs here (the Hebrew, kefaʿam befaʿam, doubles the word “time”).

21. gouged out his eyes. A Freudian would see an upward displacement of castration in this act, but it should be noted that these were the eyes that saw the women who led to all the trouble. Gouging out the eyes was also a punishment for a rebellious vassal (compare the blinding of Zedekiah by the Babylonians, 2 Kings 25:7).

25. that he may play for us. The playing might be dancing or, more likely, blindly stumbling about, while the audience laughs (the same Hebrew verb as “play”).

26. Let me rest. This might also be construed to mean “lead me.”

27. all the Philistine overlords were there. So that Samson’s vengeance may be complete, the rulers of the five Philistine towns, the very men who plotted his blinding and captivity, are present.

on the roof about three thousand men and women. Again, we have a multiple of three. It is clearly implied that there are many more people in the main space of the temple.

28. just this time. At the penultimate moment of the story, the thematically fraught word pa‘am, “time,” appears again. It shows, pointedly, the same root as the verb “drive” or “pound” in 13:25 that marks the beginning of Samson’s narrative.

that I may avenge myself in one act of vengeance from the Philistines. It is true that Samson in his last moment turns in prayer to God—perhaps feeling that his great strength has returned but not being quite sure and in any case recognizing that its ultimate source is God. But even now, his motive is personal vengeance: one sees why the messenger of the LORD prophesied that Samson would no more than “begin” to rescue Israel from the Philistines.

30. And the dead that he killed in his death were more than he had killed in his life. Samson’s career as an Israelite champion ends in an act of wholesale destruction in which he, too, dies, like fire that consumes everything in its path and eventually itself as well.