The task of grinding grain was normally reserved for slaves, women, and animals (Exodus 11:5; Judges 9:53; Jeremiah 52:11; Lamentations 5:13). Samson had wanted to be like any other man
(Judges 16:18), to have the life of a normal person, but this is nothing like that. He goes from a high calling to an embarrassing low in prison. For the first time in the book of Judges, God’s judge has been taken down. He forsook his office, and now he is paying dearly for it. His sun has set.1 He has been blackened by the night. Israel is without a deliverer.
21 And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison.