Judges 16:15 (DBY)

Passage

Then she said to him, How canst thou say, I love thee, when thy heart is not with me? these three times hast thou mocked me, and hast not told me in what is thy great strength.

Nearby Context

Judges 16:13 And Delilah said to Samson, Hitherto thou hast mocked me and told me lies. Tell me with what thou mightest be bound. And he said to her, If thou shouldest weave the seven locks of my head with the web.

Judges 16:14 And she fastened it with the pin, and said to him, The Philistines are upon thee, Samson! And he awoke out of his sleep, and tore out the pin of the beam, and the web.

Judges 16:15 Then she said to him, How canst thou say, I love thee, when thy heart is not with me? these three times hast thou mocked me, and hast not told me in what is thy great strength.

Judges 16:16 And it came to pass when she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, that his soul was vexed unto death;

Judges 16:17 and he told her all his heart, and said to her, There has not come a razor upon my head; for I am a Nazarite of God from my mother's womb; if I should be shaven, then my strength would go from me, and I should be weak, and be like all mankind.

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "said", "canst", "thou", "love", "thee", "heart", "three", and "times". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "said" and "canst", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 14's "And she fastened it with the pin..." into verse 16's "And it came to pass when she...", so "said" and "canst" belong inside that flow. In Judges context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.

A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "said" and "canst" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.