Judges 16:25

25. When their hearts were merry By songs and dances, eating and drinking. “They were in high spirits over a victory for which they had not fought.” Cassel.

Made them sport Probably by exhibitions of strength, but especially by the awkward movements caused by his blindness, and exhibitions of his natural wit and buffoonery. “The closing scenes of his life,” observes Stanley, who gives special prominence to this characteristic of Samson, “breathe throughout the same terrible yet grotesque irony. When the captive warrior is called forth, in the merriment of his persecutors, to exercise for the last time the well known raillery of his character, he appears as the great jester or buffoon of the nation; the word employed expresses alike the roars of laughter and the wild gambols with which he made them sport; and as he puts forth the last energy of his vengeance, the final effort of his expiring strength, it is in a stroke of broad and savage humour that his indignant spirit passes away. ‘Strengthen me now, only this once, O God, that I may be avenged of the Philistines (not for both of my lost eyes but) for one of my two eyes.’ That grim playfulness, strong in death, lends its paradox even to the act of destruction itself, and overflows into the touch of triumphant satire with which the pleased historian closes the story: ‘The dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.’”

Set him between the pillars To rest awhile from the fatigue of his exertions.