Now she had liers-in-wait abiding in the inner chamber. She said to him, The Philistines are on you, Samson. He broke the cords, as a string of tow is broken when it touches the fire. So his strength was not known.
"Grinding a hand mill was the hardest and lowest kind of slave labour (compare Ex. xi. 5 with xii. 29); and both Greeks and Romans [later] sentenced their slaves to this as a punishment . . ." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, pp. 423-24.] 