Samson Trivia
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49 free Samson trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Samson tore a lion apart, torched Philistine fields with three hundred foxes, carried off a city gate and died pulling a temple down on three thousand people, and he lost it all to a haircut. This quiz covers the whole story from Judges 13 to 16: the angel's visit to Manoah's wife, the Nazirite vow, the wedding at Timnah, the honey riddle and its thirty-garment wager, Ashkelon, the burned bride, the men of Judah, the jawbone, Gaza, the valley of Sorek, Delilah's three false answers and the servant with the razor. It then covers the afterlife of the tale: the tribe of Dan and the tomb at Tel Tzora, the Beth Shemesh seal, rabbinic legends of sixty-cubit shoulders and Bedan, Christian typology and the Quran's silence, Milton's Samson Agonistes, Handel's oratorio, Saint-Saëns's opera and 'Softly awakes my heart', DeMille's Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr, Rembrandt and Giambologna, and Israel's Samson Option. Easy questions suit anyone who knows the Sunday-school version; the expert tier asks for valleys, rocks and rabbis. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Samson, Delilah, the Book of Judges and the works they inspired, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on the Old Testament and on Bible heroes.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which book of the Bible is the story of Samson told?
Judges
Judges. The book's judges were crisis leaders rather than courtroom figures, and Samson never leads an army, fighting only his own private feuds.
Q 02What is the Hebrew name Samson usually taken to mean?
Man of the sun
Man of the sun. The name is probably built on shemesh, Hebrew for sun, which once led scholars to read Samson as a sun myth, a theory now largely set aside.
Q 03What was the name of Samson's father, an Israelite from Zorah?
Manoah
Manoah. Having missed the angel's first visit to his wife, he prayed for the messenger to return and teach them how to raise the boy.
Q 04From which tribe of Israel was Samson descended?
Dan
Dan. Part of the tribe later left its allotted land west of Jerusalem for the far north, where it took the city of Laish and renamed it after itself.
Q 05Samson was dedicated from birth under which special vow?
Nazirite
Nazirite. The angel put Samson's mother under its rules too: while she carried him she was to drink no wine and eat nothing unclean.
Q 06Numbers 6 sets three rules for the vow Samson was born under: no wine, no haircuts and no contact with what?
Corpses
Corpses. Numbers 6 bars anyone under the vow from going near a dead body, even a parent's, so a family funeral was off limits.
Q 07How did the angel who foretold Samson's birth depart from his parents?
In the altar flame
In the altar flame. Asked his name, the angel said it was beyond understanding, then rose with the fire of their sacrifice, and Samson's father feared they would die for having seen God.
Q 08From which Philistine town did Samson choose his first wife?
Timnah
Timnah. His parents begged him to marry among his own people, but the story says the match was God's way of picking a quarrel with the Philistines.
Q 09What animal did Samson tear apart with his bare hands on his way to court his future wife?
A lion
A lion. The story says the Spirit of the Lord rushed on him and he tore it apart as easily as a young goat, with nothing in his hands, then told no one.
Q 10What did Samson later find in the carcass of the beast he had killed?
Bees and honey
Bees and honey. He ate some, shared it with his parents without saying where it came from, and later turned the secret into a riddle for his wedding guests.
Q 11What did Samson and his wedding guests stake on whether they could solve his riddle?
Sets of fine clothes
Sets of fine clothes. The loser owed thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothing, and when the guests won by leaning on his bride, Samson paid with what he stripped from thirty men he killed.
Q 12How does Samson's wedding riddle begin?
'Out of the eater came something to eat'
'Out of the eater came something to eat' goes on 'and out of the strong came something sweet'; the guests only cracked it by threatening his bride until she coaxed the answer out of him.
Q 13To which Philistine city did Samson go to kill thirty men after losing his riddle bet?
Q 21What was Samson's first false answer about how he could be bound?
Fresh bowstrings
Fresh bowstrings. Delilah tied him with seven of them while Philistines hid in the next room, and he snapped them like a thread singed by fire.
Q 22What was Samson's third false answer, before he confessed the truth to Delilah?
Weaving his hair into a loom
Weaving his hair into a loom. Delilah wove his seven locks into the web as he slept and pinned it tight, and he woke and tore away pin, loom and all.
Q 23In most English Bibles, who shaves off Samson's hair as he sleeps in Delilah's lap?
A man she called in
Ashkelon
Ashkelon. He went down to the coast in a rage to settle his debt; the port, Ascalon to the Romans, later gave its name to the scallion and the shallot.
Q 14Which animals did Samson tie tail to tail with torches to burn the Philistines' crops?
Foxes
Foxes. He caught three hundred, tied them in pairs with a torch between each pair of tails and loosed them in the standing grain, in revenge for his bride being given to another man.
Q 15What did the Philistines do to Samson's wife and father-in-law in retribution for the torched crops?
Burned them to death
Burned them to death. It was the very fate the wedding guests had threatened her with to get the riddle's answer, so betraying Samson saved her only for a while.
Q 16Who bound Samson with two new ropes and handed him over to the Philistines?
Men of Judah
Men of Judah. Three thousand came to his hideout, afraid of Philistine reprisals, and he let them tie him up only after they swore not to kill him themselves.
Q 17With what weapon did Samson kill a thousand Philistines?
The jawbone of an ass
The jawbone of an ass. He snatched up a fresh one where he stood, and the story says the spot was afterwards named Ramath Lehi, the hill of the jawbone.
Q 18What did Samson tear off and carry to a hill facing Hebron after visiting Gaza?
The city gate
The city gate. His enemies lay in wait there all night, meaning to kill him at dawn, so he got up at midnight and walked off with the doors, posts and bar on his shoulders.
Q 19In which valley did Samson fall in love with Delilah?
Sorek
Sorek. The name means 'choice vine', fitting ground for the undoing of a man whose birth vow banned wine.
Q 20What did the Philistine lords each promise Delilah for the secret of Samson's strength?
Pieces of silver
Pieces of silver. Each lord promised her eleven hundred, and they came back with the money in hand once she had finally worn the truth out of him.
A man she called in. The Hebrew verb can also be read as 'she shaved', so some scholars think Delilah did it herself, but most English Bibles have her summon a man to cut the seven locks.
Q 24What labour did the Philistines force on the blinded Samson in prison at Gaza?
Grinding grain
Grinding grain. They put out his eyes, shackled him in bronze and set him to the prison mill, and while he worked there his shaved hair quietly began to grow back.
Q 25The temple Samson pulled down was dedicated to which Philistine god?
Dagon
Dagon. The Philistine lords had gathered to thank the god for handing Samson over, and their mistake was sending for the blind prisoner to entertain them.
Q 26Where were some three thousand Philistines watching from when Samson brought the temple down?
On the roof
On the roof. About three thousand men and women had climbed up to watch him perform, so when he pushed out the two middle pillars the house came down on the lords below and the crowd above alike.
Q 27After Samson died in the ruins at Gaza, where did his family bury him?
In his father's tomb
In his father's tomb. His brothers and his father's household came down for the body and carried it home to the hills between Zorah and Eshtaol, closing his twenty years as Israel's leader.
Q 28Which figure of Greek myth do scholars often set beside Samson as a version of the same folk hero?
Heracles
Heracles. Each hero is brought down through a woman, Delilah for one and Deianira for the other, and the Greek's story ends on a funeral pyre.
Q 29Jewish legend gives Samson shoulders sixty cubits broad and says he could rub together two of what?
Mountains
Mountains. In the Talmud he uproots two of them and rubs one against the other, yet the same pages make this giant lame in both feet.
Q 30Which other Israelite deliverer does the New Testament's roll of heroes of faith set beside Samson?
Gideon
Gideon. Hebrews 11 names him, Barak, Samson and Jephthah in one breath among those who triumphed 'through faith', for all Samson's brawls and broken vows.