Catholic Commentary
Third Deception: The Loom and the Pin
13Delilah said to Samson, “Until now, you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me with what you might be bound.” He said to her, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the fabric on the loom.”14She fastened it with the pin, and said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He awakened out of his sleep, and plucked away the pin of the beam and the fabric.
Judges 16:13–14 depicts Delilah's third attempt to discover the source of Samson's strength by manipulating him emotionally and weaving his hair into a loom while he sleeps. When he awakens and effortlessly escapes, the narrative reveals his spiritual deterioration as he grows increasingly comfortable with proximity to his own betrayal.
Samson falls not in a moment of weakness, but through the slow erosion of spiritual vigilance—each false answer draws him closer to revealing the truth he's sworn to guard.
The Typological Sense Patristic readers, including Ambrose (De Spiritu Sancto) and Augustine (City of God XVIII.19), read Samson as a figure of Christ and also of the People of God seduced by worldly allurements. The loom itself becomes, in this typological reading, an image of entanglement in earthly concerns — the seven locks of hair pointing to the fullness of spiritual gifts (the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit in Isa 11:2–3) that the soul progressively surrenders through sinful accommodation. The pin that should hold fast instead serves the enemy's plan: spiritual gifts misused become instruments of our downfall. The three failed attempts before the fatal fourth parallel the structure of temptation described by John Cassian in the Institutes — the enemy persists, gradually wearing down resistance through repeated assault on the same weakness.
Catholic tradition interprets Samson through two interlocking lenses: the moral-spiritual and the typological-Christological, both of which converge powerfully in this passage.
The Nazirite Consecration and Baptismal Grace: The Catechism teaches that Baptism configures the Christian to Christ and confers gifts that can be weakened — though not destroyed — by sin (CCC 1272, 1420). Samson's Nazirite vow, which dedicates him entirely to God from birth (Judg 13:5), is the Old Testament analog of this consecration. His progressive near-disclosure to Delilah is, for the Fathers, an image of how the baptized soul negotiates away its consecrated identity through incremental concession to temptation. St. Ambrose writes that Samson "had strength not from his own virtue but from a gift above nature" (De Spiritu Sancto II.7) — a direct parallel to the Christian's supernatural grace.
The Threefold Temptation: St. John Cassian (Institutes V) and later Aquinas (ST I-II, q. 80) analyze how the enemy tests repeatedly, wearing down the will. The three deceptions of Samson map onto this schema: each escape breeds complacency, not vigilance. The Church's tradition of frequent Confession (CCC 1458) addresses precisely this — not only mortal sin, but the gradual dulling of spiritual senses that precedes it.
The Fathers on Delilah: Origen and Ambrose read Delilah typologically as concupiscentia carnis — disordered desire that seduces the soul away from God — not to condemn women but to identify the inner enemy of every believer. Her persistent questioning mirrors the way temptation, once entertained, never fully departs but returns with heightened emotional leverage.
This passage speaks with uncomfortable precision to the contemporary Catholic experience of gradual spiritual erosion. Samson does not fall all at once. He falls through repetition — through treating dangerous spiritual territory as manageable, through the slow normalization of intimate proximity to what threatens him. Contemporary Catholics face this pattern not in Philistine bedchambers but in the incremental compromises of digital life, in relationships that slowly reshape our moral convictions, in the habit of rationalizing what began as a clear boundary.
Notice what Samson does not do: he never prays in this entire sequence. He relies entirely on his natural-supernatural strength, having apparently ceased to relate it to its Source. The practical lesson is concrete: when a particular temptation recurs — and recurs — the Catholic response is not another clever evasion, but honest examination and sacramental recourse. The Sacrament of Reconciliation exists not only for those who have fallen completely, but for those who recognize, in themselves, a Samson sleeping too comfortably near a loom.
Commentary
Judges 16:13 — The Accusation of Mockery Delilah's opening words carry the full weight of repeated frustration: "Until now, you have mocked me and told me lies." The Hebrew verb תָּלַל (talal), here rendered "mocked," suggests not merely deception but contemptuous trifling — treating someone as a fool. This is dramatically ironic: Delilah herself is the deceiver, paid by the Philistine lords (16:5) to extract Samson's secret. Yet she deploys the language of wounded intimacy to destabilize him. Her accusation is psychologically astute. Having failed twice, she escalates the emotional stakes, reframing Samson's evasions as personal betrayals of their relationship. This is the rhetoric of manipulation par excellence — shaming the victim through the very love he has given her.
Samson's third false answer involves his hair. He tells Delilah to weave the seven locks of his head into the web of a loom (מַסֶּכֶת, massekheth) and fasten them with a pin. This answer is telling: for the first time, Samson invokes his hair — the actual seat of his Nazirite consecration (cf. Num 6:5). He is drawing dangerously close to the truth. His first two fabrications involved external binding — cords and bowstrings; now he gestures toward his own body. Commentators from Origen onward have noted this as a moral deterioration: each false answer reveals not cleverness, but weakening resolve. He is, as it were, rehearsing his own undoing.
Judges 16:14 — The Test and the Escape Delilah acts while Samson sleeps. This detail — her weaving his hair into the loom while he is unconscious — is laden with symbolic weight. Sleep in biblical narrative frequently figures spiritual vulnerability (cf. 1 Kgs 19:5; Jon 1:5; Mark 14:37). Samson sleeps in the house of his enemy while she literally entangles him in her craft. The word for "pin" (יָתֵד, yathed) is the same used for tent pegs and stakes of the Tabernacle (Exod 27:19) — a sacred instrument here profanely deployed in a scheme of betrayal.
The cry "The Philistines are on you, Samson!" echoes identically across all three testings (16:9, 12, 14), becoming an almost liturgical refrain that underscores the grinding repetition of Samson's compromise. Each time he "awakens out of his sleep," the verb suggests more than physical rousing. The Septuagint renders his response with urgency — he tears away the pin and the woven fabric — and the sheer ease of his escape might tempt the reader to conclude that no real danger has occurred. But the narrative's tone warns otherwise. Samson is not growing stronger through these escapes; he is growing weaker through the habit of flirting with revelation.