Betrayed by Delilah, Samson — strongman of Israel — had had his hair cut and his eyes put out. The Philistines used him as a slave grinding grain at Gaza. As they made sport of him at a great festival of Dagon, the Philistine sea-god, with three thousand on the roof and uncounted nobility within, Samson asked the boy leading him to let him touch the two central pillars of the temple.
Standing between the pillars, Samson prayed: 'O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray; strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged upon the Philistines for one of my two eyes.' He bowed with all his strength against the pillars. The temple fell upon the lords and all the people in it. 'So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life' (Judges 16:30). His body was recovered by his brothers and buried in his father Manoah's tomb.