JUDGES 13
Read Judges 13:1-24
We start off with that same old, sad old refrain, ‘Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years’. Again God is going to raise up someone, a saviour, but again, this saviour is not the final answer, Verse 5 tells us that he will ‘begin the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines’, and this is perhaps the best known of all the judges, Samson, but this chapter is not about Samson himself, rather it is about the events leading up to his birth.
We are introduced to Manoah and his wife (whose name we never learn), who we discover is barren. The motif of a barren woman becoming a mother is common in the Bible, we can think of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Hannah, all of whom gave birth to people who served God to great effect. So Samson’s mother is both barren and obscure, but that is often how God, in his grace works, by using people who are not known and not in any position (humanly speaking) to achieve anything. No-one is too obscure for God to use mightily, not even you and me!
God honours Manoah and his wife with the promise of a son and gives them instructions on his upbringing which involve taking the Nazirite vow which includes avoiding alcohol and haircuts – Samuel and (possibly) John the Baptist were under a similar vow. The idea is that the child is dedicated to the service of Lord, and visibly so. God has singled Samson out for special service to him from before he was born. And that makes us marvel at the sovereignty and power of our God. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians reminds us that God chose us before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1:5).
Samson’s parents are given great help and encouragement from an angel of the Lord who visits first Samson’s mother and then, at Manoah’s request, both parents. Manoah seems to have his heart in the right place, praying to the Lord and asking for another visit from the angel to teach them how to bring up their son in the right way. But he does remind me a bit of Peter. Manoah recognises that God is doing something special here but gets a bit flustered in the presence of the angel. He is concerned to offer hospitality to the angel and to get his name so that when the child is born they can honour the messenger. His reaction is a bit like Peter’s on the Mount of Transfiguration wanting to build booths for Moses and Elijah – trying to do something helpful but ordinary when in the presence of something extraordinary. Then Manoah panics – again, a bit like Peter. He realises that he has been in the presence of God and knows that you cannot see the face of God and live – he and his wife are going to die! Thankfully, his wife has a bit more common sense than Manoah. She realises that God has come to them for a purpose – to raise to manhood the one who will begin to save Israel – God is not going to kill them when he has just called them into service.