Study Desk

When Delilah saw that he had told her all that was in his heart, she sent word and called the governors of the Philistines, saying, "Come up once more, for he has told me all that is in his heart." Then the governors of the Philistines came up to her and brought up the money in their hands.

And she made him sleep on her knees, and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to humble him, and his strength left him.

She said, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson!" And he awoke from his sleep and said, "I will go out as at other times and shake myself free." But he did not know that the LORD had departed from him.

Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza and restrained him with bronze chains, and he became a grinder in the prison.

However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it was shaved off.

Then Samson said to the boy who was holding his hand, "Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, so that I may lean against them."

Then Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and braced himself against them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left.

And Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" And he pushed outwards powerfully, so that the house fell on the governors and all the people who were in it. And the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed during his lifetime.

Then his brothers and all his father's household came down and took him, and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. So he had judged Israel for twenty years.

And he said to his mother, "The 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse and also spoke it in my hearing, behold, the silver is with me; I took it." And his mother said, "Blessed be my son by the LORD."

He then returned the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, "I wholly consecrate the silver from my hand to the LORD for my son to make a carved image and a cast metal image; so now I will return them to you."

So when he returned the silver to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave them to the silversmith, who made them into a carved image and a cast metal image, and they were in the house of Micah.

And the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household idols, and consecrated one of his sons, so that he might become his priest.

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Then the man left the city, Bethlehem in Judah, to stay wherever he would find a place; and as he made his journey, he came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah.

The Levite agreed to live with the man, and the young man became to him like one of his sons.

So Micah consecrated the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in the house of Micah.

He said to them, "Micah has done this and that for me, and he has hired me and I have become his priest."

So the sons of Dan went on their way; and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his house.

The sons of Dan set up for themselves the carved image; and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.