Time passed. This idol was worshipped, this tribe invaded, this hero rose up, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. One day, God lost a really big game of poker, the Tournament of Middle-Eastern Divinities. This band of roving pirates from across the Mediterranean reached the shores of Canaan, and the Israelites were decimated. They were called the Philistines, and they would be a bigger pain-in-the-butt than anyone in Israel had ever experienced before, with the exception of Joseph while with the Ishmaelites.
There was a boy named Samson. He was raised to hate the Philistines, and did so with a passion. Each morning he would wake, and would spend the day following an exercise regime so intense, it would put Richard Simmons to shame. As a result of this constant, dawn to dusk exercise, he had no time for the niceties of life, like haircuts or wine.
One day Samson was walking in the meadows when his eyes fell upon a beautiful woman. She was stunning, although her waist-length hair was shorter than his own. He spoke to her, and fell in love with her, and then learned that she was a daughter of a Philistine. He wept and gnashed his teeth, and pulled out his prized hair, for how could he, who hated the Philistines, ever marry one?
Time passed, and Samson realized he didn't care. He wanted this woman, and he would have her, and nuts to Israel! So then they were wed, and at the wedding feast, Samson gave a riddle to his guests, that they had to solve in two weeks or they'd have to give him thirty bedsheets, thirty outfits, and thirty boatfuls of gold. The riddle was this: I am the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, on two at midday, and on three in the evening. What am I?
Samson's guests were baffled, and they implored his wife to find out the answer for them, for she, like them, was a Philistine, and so she owed it to her country. Plus, they said, they'd kill her and her family if she didn't comply. Nothing like playing on patriotism to get a job done.
She wept before Samson, saying how they were man and wife and so should have no secrets from each other. She would beg him to tell her the answer to the riddle. She withheld sexual favors from him. This last got him right where it counts, and he told her. She told the guests, they told Samson, who realized he had been duped and not only killed all thirty of the guests, but their donkeys and families, and his wife as well. No one complained of course; cheating at games of riddles was just wrong, as any hobbit will tell you.
Samson continued to harass the Philistines, and his hair grew and grew. God had told him that his strength was in his hair, and so he must never cut it or dye it, and couldn't even get a perm. Samson did many wondrous deeds, killing a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, cleaning out the Aegean Stables, leaping over buildings in a single bound, and so on. This all changed when he met Delilah.
Delilah put his previous wife completely out of Samson's mind. I mean, you could take Cindy Crawford, combine her with Heather Locklear and Jessica Rabbit, and you still wouldn't have a woman as beautiful as Delilah. Miss Middle East at the age of 18, she was well on her way to becoming Miss Mediterranean when she met Samson.
Samson fell in love with Delilah. At first, he'd been attracted to her jubilant personality, but as he got to know her better, he came to his senses and loved her for her 'skills' in the bedroom instead. Samson had learned his lesson from his first Philistine love affair, and so wasn't going to get married to this one. She wasn't that bright anyway, and they had a mutually acceptable sex-only relationship, so why wreck a good thing?
So Delilah the Philistine and Samson the Non-Philistine spent their nights together, and all the while Samson spent his days murdering Philistines with various bones of various animals and Delilah spent her days plotting with her fellow Philistines on how to rob Samson of his Herculean strength.
"What makes you so big and strong?" she asked one night after they were finished their usual dalliance.
"Oh, egg yolks, watching Jane Fonda, the Abdominizer, you know, the usual." It was the biggest secret of his life, his hair was, and he wasn't going to give it to anyone no matter how good she was at... well, never mind.
"But Samson," she purred, "you are so strong. Surely there must be something more." She kissed his lips softly, then his neck, then his chest, and just kept working her way downward until she stopped just below the belt. She lifted her head to ask again. "What makes you so strong?" Then she went back to 'kissing'.
Samson let out a deep breath. "Ah, well, you see, ah, oh! I was a very, ah, pious young boy, and, oh yeah, God liked me for that, so he, oh yeah, baby yeah, gave me magic, mmm, right there, gave me magic hair, and told me to never, uh, cut it, or I'd, uh, lose, all my, ah, strength." He let out a huge groan.
She stopped what she was doing, scurried across the room, opened her dresser drawer, and told Samson to close his eyes. "I have a surprise for you," she murmured as she came toward him. She lightly tongued his ear as she slowly snipped away at his hair.
Samson soon fell asleep, and Delilah called in some of her Philistine friends, who tied the Israeli strong man in chains. When Samson came to and found himself all tied up, he was thoroughly unhappy, and was even more so when he realized he was thoroughly bald as well.
He glared at Delilah who was leering evilly at him. "My mother warned me about girls like you," he snarled. She only smiled as she gouged out his eyes. He did not, it is important to note, give her the satisfaction of his screaming.
Samson was made to serve the Philistines and their god Dagon, another like Baal whom Yahweh loathed. Sure, Lucifer was annoying, even evil, but Baal and Dagon and others like them were real jerks. So Samson in his blindness waited hand and foot upon his overlords. So Samson in his baldness served without question his masters. And eventually, his hair grew back.
It came to pass that the Philistines were having a great festival to worship Dagon. To mock him, the Philistines brought Samson into the temple with them. Samson laid his mighty hands upon two pillars, carved as they wore in the likeness of Lot's wife. His strength had returned in full, and as the festival reached its frenzied climax, he pushed upon the support pillars of the temple, and brought the structure crashing down upon all the Philistines within. Of course, he was totally squashed as well, but such is the price of revenge.