The fallen pillars and walls, of what was once a pagan temple, rests increasingly heavy on my lungs. By now, I'm sure that, the dust has settled from all of the commotion.
Behind my dark, empty, eyelids I see. Images come to me in my mind's eye. The only eye my captors couldn't pry from me. Places and faces eternally embedded in my mind. My last moments with her played in my head. Bittersweet memories that haunt me as I lay here broken, my soul ebbing, slowly, from this sinfully embellished world.
'Delilah..."
She wrapped her soft, warm, arms around his shoulders as he reclined to lay his head in her lap.
Samson's eyes beheld the sweetest things he was ever to see as he searched Delilah's countenance. She looked back at him with large hazel eyes that could flicker, at a moment's notice, from warm and seductive to cold and guarded and back again. Her full, dark, lips offset her smooth olive-colored skin. He listened to her enjoyable voice as it carried him through the darkening evening. Samson watched her beautiful, heart-shaped, face fully animated with emotion after emotion flitting across the surface.
"I would hate to be a soldier in battle against you" She was saying nonchalantly. "What with your immense power being greater than any normal man."
"And I would hate for you to be any other being than what you are." The man's deep voice rang out. A smile hung from the corners of his lips as he twirled her long, lustrous, black hair around his fingers. Her locks were darker than the deepest night with the intoxicating scent of rosewater.
"Tell me, for I wish to know every fact about you, wherein lies the source of your great strength?" She asked ignoring his playful demeanor. "What is the one thing that will render you helpless ?"
Samson thought and thought as he looked into her shifting hazel eyes.
"If I were to be bound with seven fresh bow strings that have never been dried, I would be pathetic like any other man."
"Surely that is not all it takes to subdue your might."
"Many have fallen by way of much less."
The next night the leaders of the Philistines, Samson's enemies who sought to lay their hands upon him, brought to Delilah seven fresh bow strings which had not been dried. They laid in waiting near her chamber door, with the promised payment of a hundred silver pieces each, as she bound a sleeping Samson with the materials. Once they were secure, she stepped back and conjured up tears to fall from her eyes.
"Samson," She cried out. "The Phillistines are upon you!"
He woke from his slumber to search for his enemies. As he stood from the divan, he broke the bow strings as easily as the wind shakes the leaves of a tree.
The men surrounded him and attacked from all sides. Samson shook free and fought well. The Philistines retreated quickly from the warrior carrying the badly wounded.
Delilah gazed at him with both wonder and resentment, for she had not discovered from where his strength originated or how it could be taken away.
I hear the sound of footsteps as people searched their way through the ruins of the temple looking for their loved ones. They called out names in vain. The commotion of rummaging around in the debris mixed in with the yelling out names flood my ears.
"My Lord..." I beg. "Remember me."
I can feel my forehead become wet and slick with warm liquid that rolls down the side of my head. The sharp, steely, smell of blood reaches my nose. I lay helpless as the blood pools around my head and soaks into my dark wild hair.
"Have you found any more survivors?" A demanding voice asked above the clamor. A man stood only a few feet away from my broken body.
"No, m'lord. I believe we have moved all of the survivors to safety." replied a lesser voice.
"Get more men and sweep through here once more. I want to know how this happened." The first man commanded. His voice came out as a snarl from deep within his throat.
Feet quickly shuffled away in the opposite direction.
"Samson," He heard Delilah call to him in a sing-song voice. Her footsteps and words echoed through the corridors as she approached the room he occupied.
He looked up from a scroll as she entered the room.
"There you are." Her affectionate smile brightened the area. "I've been looking for you." She took a seat on the floor at his feet, rested her head on his knee and looked up at him adoringly.
"You have found me." He returned a genuine smile as he looked down into her eyes. They held a sparkle that could rival the brightest star in the blackest sky.
"My sweet, dear, love." She spoke softly. "There is something that I cannot understand. It has been plaguing me for the past two nights."
"Speak your thoughts and maybe I can help you acquire a solution."
"The other night, when I asked you about your strength, you told me a falsehood. Why was that?" She asked. "Do you not have any trust in me?" Delilah fixed her face into a heart rendering expression.
"Do not look so distressed. I have never told anyone the secret of my power." Samson caressed her disappointed face.
"Let me be the first and only one to hear such a secret." Her face brightened slightly. "You love me. Let there be no hidden things between us."
Samson sighed as he stared into her pleading features. He couldn't plainly deny her when her face expressed such yearning and desire to know him.
"If I were to be bound by ropes that have never before been used," Came his reply. "my strength shall leave me and I will become fragile like any other man."
The night after last, Delilah took new ropes that have never before been used. She crept into Samson's chamber as the Phillistines stood quietly in the shadowy corners with each of their pockets full of silver pieces. As he slept she secured his long, muscular, arms and legs tightly with the rope and knotted them twice for extra measures.
She stepped back and looked at the men hiding in the shadows. They nodded their heads satisfactorily and motioned for her to continue with the plan.
"Oh, Samson." She shrieked, distress filled her voice. "The Phillistines are upon you." Tears fell from her eyes once again as she ran to his bedside.
The sleeping man woke from his dreams to hear her terrified screams. As he stood to his full height he broke the fastened ropes, as easily as if they were merely sticky cobwebs, and threw them to the floor.
"Where are they?" His voice thundered icily through the room reaching every corner. The Philistines, petrified, shook in the shadows.
"They...they.." She stuttered helplessly. "I saw them coming from afar. They were coming for you." She cried into the sheets of the bed. "They were numerous and armed with swords."
"Do not fear." He reassured her as he gathered her into his strong embrace. "They will not be able to take me on; for the Lord is with me."
"Maybe..." Delilah peeked over her shoulder at the open chamber door, she spoke as if she was thinking aloud. "Maybe I imagined it. Perhaps it was simply a night terror invading my dreams. Yes, that could have been it."
"Really?" Some of the edge in his voice dissolved at these words.
"Yes, it had to be." She replied more definitely. "I do not hear their approaching footsteps along the path any longer. I had to be simply a terrible dream."
His tensed muscles relaxed as he held her tightly to his chest. Showering her head with kisses, Samson whisper loving words into her dark hair to chase away the terror from her dreams that shook her body.
Delilah stood there letting him mistake the anger that shuddered through her body for fright from a imaginary dream. She turned into his embrace and sighed impatiently.
"All of the statues are utterly demolished." I hear a woman's voice announce. Only sadness and outrage could be detected within her sobbing voice.
"What should we do now, priestess?" A timid young woman inquires. She is, most likely, a novice.
"You should go seek a healer's attention. You have lost a great deal of blood and you have cuts all over your body." Replied the pagan priestess trying to gather her composure.
"What would you have us to do?" From underneath the rumble I could hear the other novices ask.
The heavy stones on my hands and arms cut off the blood circulation to my body. Fortunately, my limbs became numb and I can no longer feel the searing pain of the sharp rubble piercing through the flesh and tendons on my arms. Neither could I feel the throbbing discomfort of my broken shoulders and wrists.
"Try to gather what remains you can of the statues." The priestess continued. "We have to get a new sacrifice for another offering to please Dagon. Obviously he is unpleased with us. The people must have provoked his wrath somehow, and now we must please him again."
Fools, your false pagan idol cannot save you from the one true God.
"Half of you go over there, and we will go over here." The priestess assigned work areas to the apprentices. I listen to the rustling of their garments, which signaled their departures.
Fools.
"How i dare /i you say that you love me. You tell me nothing but one untruth after another." Delilah cried one night. A snarl crept into her speech. Her eyes were dark and cold. Tonight they held no room for warmth or tenderness.
"I do love you - " Samson began.
"Then tell me the truth. Tell me what you have been hiding from me for so long." She commanded angrily through clenched teeth.
They were sitting out in the garden. The scent of jasmine washed over them as they basked outside under the moonlight in the warm air.
"Why are you so persistent on the subject?" He demanded.
"I love you and I am the only one, between the two of us, who has been completely truthful. I have told you i everything /i , and yet you tell me lies as if you do not trust me."
"Have you really been nothing but forthright?" He asked aggressively.
i "What?" /i Delilah shrieked with fury. "You mock me and you dare doubt my honesty? Samson, I -" She couldn't think of any other words to bring forth an overwhelming tide of guilt. Instead of continuing in her speech, she sought another form of attack at his remorse. She laid forth with a fresh onslaught of tears and renewed hysterics.
"Delilah," He sighed. Her performance was so splendid that it succeeded in it's task to pull at his caring heartstrings. "If it will mollify you and quench your irritation, I will tell you what you seek after so frenziedly."
He moved closer to her and wiped the readied tears from the restless woman's face.
"You will?" She asked holding back the growl in her voice, even though she wished to release her full temper on him.
"Yes, if it will satisfy you." He smiled.
"My love," She grinned cupping his cheeks with her hands and leaned her head against his. Her hair, unbound and smelling so memorably of rosewater, fell into her face brushing against his shoulder and arm, tickling his skin. "Please, tell me wherewith you might be bound." She tried to beg while keeping the anger from her voice.
Samson lovingly tucked the distracting strands of her dark, glossy, locks behind her ear and twirled them about his fingers.
"If you were to weave the seven locks of the hair on my scalp with the web, then I shall be weak like any other man."
The next night Delilah did exactly that to the slumbering Samson as the loathsome Philistines took their places in the shadowy corners once more. For reassurance she fastened his hair into the loom with the pin. Forcing herself into another state of distress, and thinking of the shiny coins lining the pockets of the Philistine men, she began speaking the same lines as before.
"Samson, the Philistines are upon you" She bellowed franticly.
He quit his sleep at the sound of her crying voice filling his chamber. He stood, ready to defend himself, and pulled the pin of the loom and the web from his hair.
Delilah, realizing that his strength was yet to be known, ran into his arms and collapsed gracefully.
"Break me of these nightmares. The Philistines...they, they" She panted breathlessly. "It seemed to me as if they were tangible. It was so frightening."
Samson gently laid her in his bed and sat with her throughout the rest of the night, as if she were a shaken infant. He busied himself with stroking her hair until she drifted peacefully into the world of dreams.
I hear the sinful idol worshippers all around me. Unable to block them from my ears, I listen to what they say to each other as my life, bit by bit, fades from my body.
"What are we to do?" A bewildered man asks. I imagine him pacing back and forth, his fallen brothers lay dead at his feet.
I strain to fix my mouth into a smile; I can only achieve a slight grin.
"Important men...our leaders, our generals, are dead or at least injured." Another voice said with the same excitement as the first man.
"How are we to fulfill our threat and march against Israel now?"
"We...we cannot. It is not possible for us to send our soldiers out now."
"Then what are we to do?" The question came again. Each word was pronounced with special care.
"We have to move people around, make arrangements. We have to gather ourselves and hold council. But the present moment is not the appropriate time to make rash decision about such important topics."
Their talk of fulfilling the positions of dead men bore me. It is not the thing I wish to listen upon during my last moments in this world.
"Delilah."
Her sweet, beautiful, face frequents my thoughts. My mind comes around, again, to my last night with her. Her warm, tender, hands caressing my face.
"Oh, Delilah."
Delilah, persistent in her ways, and determined to collect her payment from the Philistines, plagued and hassled Samson for days on end about his secret. She pressed him daily, irritating him so that his will would bend to her curiosity. The skillful woman cried her endless tears whenever he was near or in the same room as she. There were days when she refused to talk to him unless it was to ask him how he might be bound.
Eventually she wore away Samson's tolerance. Finally, he caved in to her pestering and spoke the secret upon his heart.
"Never has a razor come upon the hair on my head; from my mother's womb, I have been a Nazarite unto God. If the hair on my head is shaven, then my strength shall leave me and I will be fragile as any other man."
Her eyes lit up with elation. The woman realized the truth once the words fell from his mouth.
"My love," She smiled naturally as she rested her head against his chest and thought of the numerous silver pieces she would reap. "That is all I wanted to know from the beginning."
The very next day she called upon the lords of the Philistines and told them to come once more and promised to deliver the Nazarite into their hands that night.
Later, when the sun disappeared behind the cover of darkness, Delilah made Samson rest his head upon her lap. The Philistines, eager to seize this man, stood waiting in the shadows, once again.
He looked up into her smiling face. Her deep, brown, eyes gleamed with happiness.
He smiled back at her, happy for the peace in his house and pleased that she had kept her promise that she wouldn't nag him about his strength anymore. Samson inhaled the scent of the rosewater on her hair and closed his eyes.
She sang a slow melody softly into his ear. Stroking his hair, she coaxed him into a peaceful sleep. Once she was sure he was slumbering soundly, she summoned for a man to cut off the seven locks of his head.
"Samson," She shouted as she shook him from his sleep. "The Philistines are upon you."
Samson stood as the men came forth to capture him.
"Do not worry, they shall not take me."
He met with them in a brutal fight. As he tried to defend himself, and failed, it dawned on him that the Lord was not with him any longer.
The Philistines captured him and took him from his home. He looked back through them at Delilah. She followed them and stood off to the side, by herself, watching the whole scene intently. Her unbound hair flapping furiously all about her in the wind.
"Delilah." He cried out to her.
His captors brought him to Gaza and secured him with irons of brass. They tortured him by stabbing out his eyes and left him without food for several days as he was forced to grind in the prison house. As the days passed, the hair on Samson's head began to grow again.
"Bring him forth!" A triumphant voice shouted out a command from far away.
I felt the hands of the soldiers pull at me and drag me up a small flight of stairs and into a room filled with celebrating people. I could hear the laughing, cries of joy, and the light music that caused people to dance. The strong smell of hot meat and sweets filled the air. Drunken folk bash into my escorts and I; they tighten their grip on my arms.
The crowd filling the temple was at the height of their merriment and excitement.
The great lords and leaders of the Philistine called everyone together to make a grand sacrifice unto their god, Dagon.
They spent a great deal of wasteful care and time praying to idol. I listened as they praised him for delivering me, their enemy, into their hands. An uproar of approval seized the crowd.
"Our god has allowed us to take hold of our enemy, and the destroyer of our state, who slew many of us and punish him." A man announced to the audience.
The soldiers forced me to entertain the laughing, taunting, crowd as they whipped the skin from my back. Each lashing beat the breath from my body, I stumbled with every step I took. The open cuts throbbed with pain as the blood covered my tattered flesh, sweat drenched my forehead and fell into my face. After long enough, they were satisfied with my suffering and allowed me to rest.
A young lad let me rest upon his shoulders for a moment as the soldiers focused their attention elsewhere.
"Permit me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house rests." I whispered into his ear as my air came out in shallow huffs.
My blind hands were laid upon the two middle pillars that supported the house.
"Lord, I pray that you remember me. Please, just this once, give me strength to avenge my enemies for my two eyes." I took one last deep breath. "Let me perish with the Philistines."
The Lord listened to my prayer and granted me my strength. I pushed with all of my might until the pillars tumbled and the house fell. Everything collapsed, just like my beautiful Delilah had when she came running into my arms.
Now, I lay here a broken man being haunted by my love. Remembering, all too well, the scent of her hair and the color of her eyes. Thinking of nothing other than rosewater, brown eyes, and her smile.
"Delilah." Her name fell from his starved lips as his last breath escaped his crushed lungs.