Having had
his fill of murder, Samson takes off “to Gaza, where he saw a
prostitute and went in to her” (Judg. 16:1) to drown his sorrows after
murdering Philistines. I choose to believe that murder made him depressed,
because if it excited him to the point he needed female companionship, this is
one disturbed individual (well, more disturbed than we’ve already gone over).
Now,
to be clear, this prostitute is not Delilah. He meets Delilah afterwards. In
fact, it makes a point of saying “After this he fell in love with a woman in
the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah” (Judg. 16:4). The prostitute was
in Gaza, he went to Hebron after that, then into the valley of Sorek. Nowhere
does it mention that Delilah is a prostitute. The story goes out of its way to
introduce her as a woman with a name.
Furthermore,
the lord of Philistines offer to “each give [Delilah] eleven hundred pieces of
silver” to discover the secret of Samson’s strength (Judg. 16:5). The nobility
do not treat prostitutes this way. If she was a common prostitute, they would
have threatened to kill her if she didn’t cooperate, as was done to Samson’s
wife. Clearly, then, Delilah is something different.
The
amount of money they’re offering her is staggering, which is both a show of
their desperation, confidence in her ability to get the information, and a clue
that Delilah must have a certain status among the lords.
Sadly,
the only other information we have about her is how she manipulates Samson,
which is next. Oh, and btw, we can add adultery to Samson’s list of broken
commandments.