Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were on the roof about three thousand men and women, who saw while Samson made sport.
We might suppose that the Philistines would have been careful to keep their captive’s hair cropped. Whether because they considered their blind slave incapable of escaping, or because they failed to recognize the importance of his hair, they did not. They were in their own way as blind as Samson. Along with his hair, Samson’s dedication to Yahweh, which his hair symbolized, began to return (cf. Judges 16:28). This was the real reason his strength returned.