Recovery Insights from Bible Personalitiesናሙና

My Name Is Delilah

Delilah was devoted to a life of deception. Her greatest “accomplishment” was the destruction of a man who loved her—a man named Samson. Samson was an easy target for her trickery, since women were this strong man’s greatest weakness. Delilah’s con was paid for by the Philistine rulers in the staggering amount of “eleven hundred shekels of silver” (about 28 pounds) each (see Judges 16:5).

Isn’t it amazing the degree to which living a lie makes us susceptible to the lies of others? Three times Samson misled this wily woman, and each time she complained, “You have made a fool of me” (vv. 10, 13, 15).

In reality, Delilah needed no help in the area of foolishness. She prostituted herself to land a fortune in silver, a ruse that included lying to a man who was in love with her. After her successful betrayal of Samson, Delilah disappears from the biblical account. Her inheritance: the knowledge that the man who loved her was maimed, humiliated, and enslaved by her deception and greed. By the time Samson awakened to his blindness to the truth, his eyes had been physically gouged out (see v. 21).

How often do deception and addiction go hand in hand? Like Delilah, the addict will weave a web of deception in order to continue feeding his insatiable habit. And, sadly, it’s often easiest to go on deceiving those who love us, over and over again. The end product is a life wasted—our own—and all too frequently other lives are devastated—those we love, or at least those who love us.

The only escape from a life of dishonesty is an encounter with the truth—his name is Jesus. He’s the one who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). If we’ve wasted our lives in self-deception and in the manipulation and betrayal of those who love us, there’s still a way back to God. He can break the pattern of deception. Recovery forces us to face the truth in order to end the insanity that has taken over our life. David voiced a simple prayer that we may wish to make our own: “Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God” (Psalm 31:5).