DANGEROUS GAMES OF THE HEART! (Judges 16:4-14) Doesn’t it come so sudden! … Judges 16:4 And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. Previously, he been declaring his undying love to the woman he had married from Timnath (… that he hadn’t completely!), and now he has ‘fallen head over heels’ for another one! … Didn’t he make life awful complicated for himself! He was looking for love in all the wrong places. Before we see where he is now, let’s remind ourselves where he has been. At the very beginning, 13:25 the spirit of the LORD began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol, - he was doing the Lord’s work as the judge of Israel. He started off fine, but he became waylaid when he happened to go outside the localities of Zorah and Eshtaol and he made his way into the town of Timnath, - not too far, only about five miles down the road from his hometown of Zorah. After experiencing the trauma of a sham marriage, his frustration took him to Ashkelon, - about twenty-three miles from Timnath, - where he slew thirty of their men. He then returned the twenty-three miles or so to Timnath to consummate his marriage with his wife … only to find she had been given to someone else. He reeked his revenge by catching three hundred foxes, tying them in pairs tail-to-tail, fixing a torch to each pair and letting them loose in the grain fields of the Philistines. In retaliation, the Philistines burned his wife and father-in-law … to which Samson responded by killing more of them. He then went off to the top of a rock called Etam, - about eighteen miles south-east of Timnath, in rugged countryside. From Etam, he was taken by three thousand men of Judah to the Philistines camped at Lehi, about ten miles away. There he succeeded in killing one thousand of them with the jawbone of a donkey. From Lehi he travelled to Gaza … about forty miles along difficult sometimes terrain. In Gaza he was distracted by the Philistine prostitute. In our last study we left him having ripped the gate posts of the city out of their sockets, along with the posts and bar … and we left him somewhere out towards the city of Hebron, - with these things on his shoulders … after having walked about another forty miles or so. 2 So, it is not as if he was not able to do something substantial, it just happens that what he did was done for all the wrong reasons. After all his travelling, we find him again ‘dangling over the edge’ of another precarious relationship. He is in love again! … Let’s see what is happening now … SAMSON’S INFATUATION … v.4 he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. He is truly taken with Delilah. Notice again, though, the direction he has taken … he has once again gone down … this time into the valley. He is not as far from home, - from Zorah, - but he nevertheless has gone down again. The Valley of Sorek lay on the border of Judah and the Philistine country, - it is a dangerous thing to linger at the enemy’s border. Your defences are not the same. You are not far enough back from them to get a clear picture of what is going on … and he is about to get caught again … but this time it is going to end up more devastating than before. Look at what Judges 15:20 says about him, And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years. It is a verse that covers a significant length of time. There must be some reason we read in 13:24 that the Lord blessed him. It must have been during this period of relative peace and calm, prosperity and freedom. … Samson did have his good times … and it seems these twenty years was when he truly knew the Lord’s blessing. He would first have come on the scene when he was about twenty or so. Now, twenty years later, he’s ‘hitting’ middle age and he is starting to become restless again. He returns to wondering if there was more to life. Samson had a hankering for the world again … and we find him down in the valley laying himself wide open to the enemies of his people and the enemies of God. Really, during those twenty years (15:20) he hadn’t changed, - he simply had covered his old nature up . … The devil got the better of him when he was down in Gaza and the old serpent took him into the prostitute’s brothel, - this ‘man of God’. … You can always be sure the devil will lead you places you never ought to go! What do we know about Delilah’s background … this latest woman he ‘fell in love’ with? Some scholars think her name means “devotee, or darling”. They would go on to suggest she possibly was a temple prostitute. 3 Now, that is not altogether impossible but she is not referred to as such … as the woman in Gaza was. Nevertheless, Delilah was prepared to sell herself for the opportunity of learning the secret of Samson’s strength. That would put her on a level not too different from a prostitute. She is not actually referred to as a Philistine. Some other scholars reckon her name might have come from the Hebrew word dalal, which means “to weaken, to impoverish” … and she certainly managed to do that to Samson! She may have been a Philistine, she may not … and it doesn’t really matter … but Samson became infatuated with her. This was just a couple of miles outside his home town, - this was all very convenient and very familiar territory for him. In some ways, he might have found an added attraction, - something to smile about in his own wry type of humour, - if she had been a Philistine with a Hebrew name. He could have seen her as being ‘half and half’ … and such a peculiarity would have amused him. The word in the Hebrew that describes his love for her is the word ’ahab. It can mean having a ‘human love for another, having an appetite for them’. Samson certainly had an ‘appetite’ for this woman! The first woman he went for, - from Timnath, - he liked because of her good looks, 14:2 I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines. The second woman, - the prostitute in Gaza, - was pure lust. Delilah, though, … she was different, … he loved her (16:4). There is actually neither mention nor insinuation that she was, - or became, - his wife … It seems Samson has gotten himself mixed up again in another un-God-glorifying relationship. Satan was opening the door for another failure … and Samson runs right through it! You see, some people innocently put Samson and Delilah together and come up with husband and wife … but the Bible doesn’t say that … and, anyway, he would have brought her home if she was his wife … rather than moving in with her. … He was living with her … and it would not have bothered him because we saw earlier in Gaza he was no stranger to sexual promiscuity. Isn’t it sad when God’s people fall foul of the enemy’s attractions! Previously in Gaza, - in another woman’s bed, - the enemy nearly captured him … Here again, he does not seem to have learned! 4 He loved this woman, - whatever the true meaning of his love for her actually was … but there is no mention, or even the slightest hint, she loved him. He was out ‘for a good time’, but once again he got caught! … He simply drifted into becoming besotted, smitten, intoxicated, driven by the wrong emotions that had inflamed his passions. This was another disaster about to happen! Samson’s infatuation, v.4 he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. THE PHILISTINES’ INFILTRATION ... v.5 Entice him, and see wherein his great strength lieth, and by what means we may prevail against him, that we may bind him to afflict him: Samson is at great fault here. As we have noticed, he is again down in the valley … the Valley of Sorek. Nobody carried him there, and told him to stay. It was his decision. In the Jewish Midrash, - a rabbinical commentary on the Old Testament, - the sorek is an empty, fruitless tree. The rabbis used this to show us Samson is soon to find out the absolute humiliation of picking from a forbidden fruit whose name is Delilah. Some commentators would also tell us ‘Sorek’ means ‘choice vines’, - ‘the Valley of Choice Vines”. Yes, we can see that too … for Samson thought he had a ‘choice vine’ in Delilah … but Delilah was in the enemy’s employment. … He had been ‘playing’ with the two women … and now this woman is about to ‘play’ with him. And notice the direction the enemy came from, - v.5 the lords of the Philistines came up unto her. … He was already down in the valley of Sorek, and along comes more of the enemy that was from a place even further down! What chance had Samson among a crowd like this!! He would hardly have noticed the Philistines, - he would have been entranced with Delilah, - he ‘only had eyes for her’.