Hard-hearted Woman

Hard-Hearted Woman

Delilah

Read: Judges 16:21-27

It was one of those stories that made me sorry I had turned on the evening news. Police had discovered a half-starved, teenage girl confined to a cage in the basement of her adoptive mother’s house. The girl weighed only forty-five pounds, lived in filth, and had no contact with outsiders. As I looked at the woman’s face, I wondered how she could be so cruel to a child. Did she feel anything at all when the girl looked up at her with eyes filled with misery and hunger?

How did Delilah feel when the Philistines rushed into the room and gouged out the eyes that had gazed at her in adoration? Was her heart filled with remorse when she saw Samson humiliated and grinding grain in prison? Was she overwhelmed with sorrow when the man who had once amazed people with his strength now amused them like a pitiful circus performer? It’s hard to imagine Delilah not struggling with guilt, when her actions had reduced the man who loved her to a life of degradation. Yet the Bible makes no mention of repentance on her part. She must have been a cold, hard-hearted woman interested only in cold, hard cash.

Delilah is the type of person described in Ephesians 4:18-19. The hearts of people who refuse to believe in God can become so petrified by sin that they lose the ability to feel shame when they do something evil. Jesus warned that when our hearts become hardened, it is difficult for us to see and hear the truth (see Matthew 13:15). Even believers need to watch constantly for signs in themselves of the gradual process of hardening toward wrongdoing. We need God’s help to remain sensitive to the effects of our behavior. Otherwise, we may experience hardened hearts, as Delilah did.

Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him.

Ephesians 4:18