The movie summary that I read on Wikipedia said that while Delilah was reluctant to leave because of her sense of guilt, she eventually does. However, I saw the movie on TV not long ago and I looked carefully at the scene where Samson causes the temple to fall down on the Philistines, and the last that I saw of Delilah was her clinging onto a pillar while the temple collapses.
Did Delilah die along with Samson or not?
I would say that she most definitely did die. When she is clinging to the pillar, she does not reply to Samson when he calls out her name, although it is clear that she wants to do so. You can tell by the anguish on her face that she still loves him and feels guilty. Although we do not actually see her being crushed, I think that it is strongly implied. DeMille, with his genius for dramatic story-telling, based his treatment of the Biblical story not only on Judges 13-16, but also on a novel called "Judge and Fool," which is presumably where he got the idea of making Delilah the sister of Samson's wife (and thus giving her a motive to bring about his death). Also, Delilah's motive for ensnaring Samson, as described in the Bible, is pure greed (and after the betrayal, she is not mentioned at all), while DeMille and his scriptwriters fleshed out a rather complex character; and her death at the end is only fitting, since she was willing to leave all her wealth behind and flee to Egypt with Samson because she loved him so much. Thus she would have been willing to die with him; she had no other reason to live if he died.
sharethe last that I saw of Delilah was her clinging onto a pillar while the temple collapses.At that time, shots of characters being spattered across screens in an explosion of technicolor gore was not the done thing, so seeing Delilah clinging onto a pillar while the building was collapsing around her was understood to signify that she was a goner.
Also, remember the shot of Delilah's maid servant, sitting on the steps of the temple as it is crumbling. She is holding in her arms Delilah's peacock cloak and weeping over it. I think that is pretty telling that she has just watched her mistress crushed by the falling rubble.
Spin
"If you crushed the life out of me I'd kiss you with my dying breath."
And he did. And while we don't see it, I'd be willing to bet they want us to think she did.
However, in the Bible, she did not. The next story after Samson's in Judges is about her and her son.
Let's just say that God doesn't believe in me.
The next story after Samson's in Judges is about her and her son.
Interesting question. I'm curious how she arrived at that.
shareOne midrash posits that Delilah was Micah's mother, based on two stories in the Bible that mention Delilah and Micah immediately after one another. However, Rashi argued that the timelines of Delilah and Micah's lives meant that they could not be related.
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/mother-of-micah-midrash-and-aggadah
Delilah has a son via Samson in apocryphal texts
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