Then his brothers and all the house of his father came down, and took him, and brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burying-place of Manoah his father. He judged Israel twenty years.
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.