16:6 So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me what makes you so strong and how you can be subdued and humiliated.” 10
16:10 Delilah said to Samson, “Look, you deceived 11 me and told me lies! Now tell me how you can be subdued.”
1 tn Or “certainly.”
2 tn Heb “You will strike down Midian as one man.” The idiom “as one man” emphasizes the collective unity of a group (see Judg 20:8, 11). Here it may carry the force, “as if they were just one man.”
3 tn Heb “Peace to you.” For a similar use of this idiom to introduce a reassuring word, see Gen 43:23.
4 tc Heb “threw his life out in front,” that is, “exposed himself to danger.” The MT form מִנֶּגֶד (minneged, “from before”) should probably be read as מִנֶּגְדּוֹ (minnegdo, “from before him”); haplography of vav has likely occurred here in the MT.
5 tn Heb “hand.”
6 tn Heb “in your time of trouble.”
7 tn Heb “Why do you ask for my name, for it is incomprehensible?” The Hebrew adjective פִּלְאִי (pile’iy, “wonderful, incomprehensible”) refers to what is in a category of its own and is beyond full human understanding. Note the use of this word in Ps 139:6, where God’s knowledge is described as incomprehensible and unattainable.
8 tn The Niphal of נָקָם (naqam, “to avenge, to take vengeance”) followed by the preposition ב (bet) has the force “to get revenge against.” See 1 Sam 18:25; Jer 50:15; Ezek 25:12.
9 tn Heb “and afterward I will stop.”
10 tn Heb “how you can be subdued in order to be humiliated.”
11 tn See Gen 31:7; Exod 8:29 [8:25 HT]; Job 13:9; Isa 44:20; Jer 9:4 for other uses of this Hebrew word (II תָּלַל, talal), which also occurs in v. 13.