1. Once Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute and visited her.
2. The people of Gaza were told, “Samson has come here,” and they surrounded him with an ambush at the city gate all night long. And all the night they waited, saying, “At morning light we will kill him.”
3. Samson lay there until midnight. Then he rose at midnight, seized the doors of the city gate and the two gateposts, and tore them loose, bar and all. He hoisted them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the ridge opposite Hebron.
4. After that he fell in love with a woman in the Wadi Sorek whose name was Delilah.
5. The lords of the Philistines came up to her and said, “Trick him and find out where he gets his great strength, and how we may overcome and bind him so as to make him helpless. Then for our part, we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.”
6. So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me where you get your great strength and how you may be bound so as to be made helpless.”
7. “If they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings that have not dried,” Samson answered her, “I shall grow weaker and be like anyone else.”
8. So the lords of the Philistines brought her seven fresh bowstrings that had not dried, and she bound him with them.