How-be-it the Hair of His Head Began to Grow Again

Primary Text — Judges 16:22: “Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven.”

Key Supporting Text — Micah 7:8: “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.”

Failure can be serious without being final. Delilah had the power to cut Samson’s hair, but she never had the power to cut off his head. What was cut was not what was ultimately destroyed. This teaching is written for anyone who has fallen, failed, been humiliated, lost something precious, or quietly concluded that their life, marriage, ministry, family, or dream has moved beyond the reach of God’s mercy — and it is written to say, carefully and honestly, that this conclusion is very often premature.

There is a verse in the middle of one of Scripture’s most tragic chapters that most readers pass straight over without noticing. Judges 16 records Samson’s betrayal by Delilah, the loss of his strength, his capture, the gouging out of his eyes, and his imprisonment — a chapter so devastating that it is tempting to close the book there and assume the story of Samson has effectively ended. And then, quietly, almost as an aside, verse 22 says something the reader is not expecting: “Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven.”

Nobody in the narrative seems to notice this happening. The Philistines certainly do not — they are too busy celebrating their victory. Samson himself, blind and grinding grain in a Gaza prison, may not even have been able to feel it happening in any way that felt significant. And yet the Holy Spirit, inspiring the writer of this book, thought this detail important enough to record. Something was growing back in the dark, unnoticed, while everyone assumed the story was finished.

This teaching exists to ask a single, searching question of every person reading it: what has been cut in your life that you have mistakenly concluded has been completely and permanently destroyed?
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