Delilah

Delilah (/dɪˈlaɪlə/; Hebrew: דלילה‎ Dəlilah, meaning "[She who] weakened") is a character in the Hebrew bible Book of Judges, where she is the "woman in the valley of Sorek" whom Samson loved, and who was his downfall. Her figure, one of several dangerous temptresses in the Hebrew Bible, has become emblematic: "Samson loved Delilah, she betrayed him, and, what is worse, she did it for money," Madlyn Kahr begins her study of the Delilah motif in European painting.

The story of Samson in Judges 13–16 portrays a man who was given great strength by God but who ultimately loses his strength when Delilah allows the Philistines to shave his hair during his slumber (Judges 16:19). Samson was born into an Israelite family, the son of Manoah and his wife who is never named. Both are visited by the Angel of the Lord and told that their child will be a Nazirite from birth.

Biblical narrative

Delilah was approached by the lords of the Philistines, to discover the secret of Samson's strength, "and we will give thee, every one of us, eleven hundred pieces of silver." Three times she asked Samson for the secret of his strength, and all three times he gave her a false answer. The first time, he told her, "If they bind me with seven green withes that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man." Then he told her, "If they bind me fast with new ropes that never were occupied, then shall I be weak, and be as another man." The third time, he told her, "If thou weavest the seven locks of my head with the web...." On the fourth occasion, he gave her the true reason: that he did not cut his hair in fulfillment of a vow to God; and Delilah, when Samson was asleep on her knees, called up her man to shave off the seven locks from his head, then betrayed him to his enemies: "The Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house."