Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

The Adventures of Samson continue today as we read about the man who isn't allowed to touch dead people,

but who is appointed by God to kill people. What an interesting juxtaposition.

He starts off our reading today by visiting a prostitute in Gaza, which is a Philistine city.

So this is a wicked decision for a lot of reasons, but that hasn't stopped him before.

The men of the town find out he's there and mount an attack against him. They plan to ambush him

when he leaves in the morning,

but he leaves in the middle of the night instead,

and takes part of the city gate with him on his way out.

I picture the men of Gaza crouched outside the city gates

waiting for him to leave,

then seeing him do that and having a sudden change of heart about their ambush.

Next, Samson meets another Philistine woman, Delilah, and word gets out that

he is into her. There's nothing in the text to indicate that she loves him back. She's just a hired,

covert agent. The five Lords of the Philistines offer her 1,100 pieces of silver each to find out

the secret of his strength. First of all, that's 5,500

pieces of silver. Scripture doesn't give us the weight of each piece, but if each piece weight

a shekel, this would be about $35,000 in today's money. Second of all, the fact that they want to know

the secret of his strength might suggest that he wasn't super muscular. Otherwise,

they'd know it was because of the muscles. The fact that they're all like, how is he this

strong? Suggests that he probably wasn't built like Thor. That way, his feats of strength

could really serve to glorify God, not his own body. Just a theory, but I thought it was worth

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