What Does Judges 16:13 Mean in the King James?
And Delilah said unto Samson, Hitherto thou hast mocked me, and told me lies: tell me wherewith thou mightest be bound. And he said unto her, If thou weavest the seven locks of my head with the web.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Samson describes restraint as a weave that draws his own locks into the structure meant to hold him.
THE MEANING
Here deception and disclosure share one conversation: Delilah names the lies, then asks for the precise means of binding, and Samson describes his locks drawn into a woven web. His strength is already being placed inside the very structure that can restrain him. That uneasy closeness between trust and entanglement remains present wherever a request for candor also seeks the means of control.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that danger announces itself as open force: here the route toward restraint runs through a question and an answer.
THE ROOT
תֵּאָסֵר
tēʾāsēr
GROWS FROM
אָסַר
ʾ-s-r
to bind, tie, or imprison
“bound” in this verse is tēʾāsēr. The same seed grows into both the act of binding and the state of being a prisoner. Beside the image of weaving, restraint takes shape as a structure drawn around someone.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsīr: prisoner, captive
אָסִיר
This branch shows binding as a condition Samson is being asked to make possible.
maʾasār: bondage, imprisonment
מַאֲסָר
This branch names the state toward which the proposed binding leads.
תַּאַרְגִּי
taʾargî
GROWS FROM
אָרַג
ʾ-r-g
to weave or interlace
“weavest” in this verse is taʾargî. Samson’s answer is more than a list of materials: the verb names interlacing, and his locks are drawn into the web itself. The restraint is imagined as a made structure that incorporates what belongs to him.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōrēg: weaver
אֹרֵג
This branch makes visible the person who constructs the woven structure.
ʾarīgāh: weaving
אֲרִיגָה
This branch names the process that turns strands into a connected web.
דְּלִילָה
Dəlîlāh
GROWS FROM
דָּלַל
d-l-l
to hang low, languish, or be brought low
Delilah’s name is commonly associated with this seed of being brought low or weakened. In a scene organized around the means of binding, the name echoes the exchange’s movement toward diminishment.
ALSO GROWS
dal: lowly, poor, weak
דַּל
This branch echoes the weakening toward which the conversation turns.
dallût: lowliness, poverty
דַּלּוּת
This branch gives the root’s downward movement the form of a diminished condition.
THE PATTERN
Entrapment takes shape when someone is drawn into a net or snare already arranged to hold them.
The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net by the wayside; they have set gins for me. Selah.For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.THE THREAD
But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.The Hebrew root for “bound” here appears again when the Philistines bind Samson with fetters. This verse offers the imagined method; the later verse shows the binding made real.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us