She pouted, “How can you tell me, ‘I love you,’ when you don’t share your secrets with me? You’ve made fun of me three times now, and you still haven’t told me what I want to know!” She tormented him with her nagging day after day until he was sick to death of it.
One the face of it, this sounds like the man in the scenario is at least being partially to blame for being insensitive to the needs of his companion. Yes, she was wrong to nag him, but it was obvious she thought he drove her to it. After all he was making fun of her, and who likes that!
That would be one way to look at this short scene. But this also illustrates the danger of listening to just one point of view. However, don’t worry, the plot gets murkier, times three!
By peeling back the next layer we learn that the young woman was not as “put upon” as it appeared from her version of the story. She actually intended to make a large amount of money at her boyfriend’s expense with the information she was attempting to extract from him. So, now, she becomes less sympathetic to our eyes. The pouting and challenging his love for her are a little less convincing once we a get peek at her true motives.
The second layer of additional information to be revealed is that the data she was seeking would be used to take her boyfriend prisoner. Now, the complaints of this young woman are totally ridiculous! We see her as self-serving and devious, even ruthless!
But now for the third layer of new data. Remember that she said that three times he had made fun of her by not telling her the truth. Well, each of those three times she had arranged for men to come attack her boyfriend, subdue him and take prisoner! AND her boyfriend knew that the reason she wanted his secrets was so that she could betray him and send him to prison! And still he stayed with her. If your were starting to feel some compassion for the boyfriend – that just vanished. What was he thinking! He was being as stupid as she was being deceptive.
Obviously, this is a story about two people who cared only about themselves. And, just as obviously, the names of the characters in our story are Delilah and Samson. Delilah was a Philistine and had no intention of honoring Israel’s God. But Samson knew that what he was doing was wrong before God in so many ways, yet all he cared about was what his flesh wanted.
The moral of this story: no matter how smart you think you are, no matter how strong you think you are, no matter how much you think you want something, there is one inescapable reality:
Sin makes you stupid!