So the lords of the Philistines sent word to the keeper of the prison-house that Samson should be brought into the temple, and the tumult sank down into a profound hush. But when, shuffling and groping, Samson was led in by the lad who had charge of him and appeared in the midst of the temple, a wild prolonged yell of hate and triumph went up from the throats of all assembled there. The walls trembled at sound of it. And Samson, mighty even in ruin, goaded on like a beast by whip and cry, was compelled like some poor mountebank to make sport for them all until they were weary.

At length even the most pitiless of his persecutors were sated of it, and Samson stooped himself low, sick and exhausted. Then he turned to the lad who was at his side and asked him to lead him a little nearer to the two central columns or pillars which held up the roof. ‘I pray thee,’ he muttered, ‘let me abide there unseen and rest a while, for I am spent and can make sport no more.’

And the lad did as Samson asked of him.

The people ceased to watch him, for the priests of Dagon were at their frenzied dancings again, to the sound of drum and cymbal and instruments of music. And Samson, laying his great hands upon the pillars, stood there alone in the midst of the temple. He heard about him the shouts and clamour of this great concourse of Philistines, and the wild barbaric pealings of their brazen instruments. The noise of the multitude was like the noise of a sea in storm breaking on a rocky shore. And as he listened, his heart in sullen fury beating heavily in his body, the spirit of the Lord as of old began to move in him. And he lifted up his sightless face and prayed.

‘O Lord God,’ he said, ‘I pray thee remember me, and have compassion upon me. Give me back my strength again this once, O Lord God, and for but a little while, that I may take vengeance on these Philistines—thy enemies and mine—if only for but one of my two eyes!’

With his prayer, his life revived within him and a still splendour of light filled his mind like the radiance of the sun. And he laid hold upon the two main pillars of the temple, one with his right hand and the other with his left hand, and he cried suddenly in a great voice, ‘Lord God of Israel, let me perish with thine enemies!’

Then he bowed himself, and with all his might thrust against the pillars on which the roof of the temple was borne up.

A dreadful silence fell upon the host at his shout, and even while, appalled, they watched, the pillars began to bend and crack and topple beneath the thrust of his mighty shoulders. There came a rending and a crash that resounded up into the cloudless dome of heaven like the tumult of an earthquake. And the walls and the roof of the great temple of the Fish God lurched inwards and downwards and descended upon his image and his priests and upon all who were assembled there, in a horror of lamentation and confusion.

So the dead that Samson slew at his death were for might and number more than all those he had slain during his life. And when dark was come, his kinsmen and the friends of the house of his father, Manoah, came down secretly, and bore his broken body away, and buried it in a sepulchre hewn out of the rock between Zorah and Eshtaol. There lies the dust of Samson to this day.