042 The Birth of Samson

042 The Birth of Samson 13.1-24

This session will deal with the birth of Samson but it focuses on Samson’s parents. The most important aspect of this first section of the Seventh Cycle, will be Samson’s “prenatal calling.” The writer wastes no time getting into the continual downward spiral of Israel’s spiritual condition and introducing us to God’s agent of punishment.

Israel’s Canaanization Continued: 13.1a

“Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord,”

Israel continues to practice evil in the eyes of Yahweh. Israel’s sin was the continual serving of Baals and other local gods and turning their back on Yahweh.

The Agent of God’s Punishment: 13.1b

"So the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years."

This time God chooses the Philistines to be His agent of punishment for Israel. As it was noted in our last session, this is the third time, in the Book of Judges, that the Philistines become a problem for Israel; the two preceding times were in 3:31 and 10:7.

The Samson Cycle represents a transition from the Philistines being dealt with by a judge to the Philistines being dealt with by a king. So, while the Ammonites were pressing Israel on the east side of the Jordan with Jephthah fighting against them, the Philistines were pressing Israel on the west side of the Jordan as Samson began his wars and his twenty years of judgeship during the Philistine oppression. The final breaking of Philistine power only came with David in II Samuel 5. The duration of the Philistine oppression of Israel was forty years. All Samson’s time as “deliverer” took place within the forty year oppression of the Philistines.  This period of Philistine oppression ended when Israel defeated the Philistines under Samuel in I Samuel 7. It was David, in a series of battles before he became king and after he was he was named king of Israel, that finally resolved Israel’s problems with the Philistines.

In the narrative of Samson, there is no reference to Israel crying out to God for deliverance from her oppressor, the Philistines. In the Samson cycle there is scant evidence that Israel is in great discomfort or is seriously seeking deliverance from the Philistines. We will see in this narrative that: 1) Manoah and his family are happy to just avoid the Philistines (14:3; 16:31); 2) our deliverer, Samson, socializes with the Philistines; 3) Judah has lost its aggressive attitude of conquering the land (cf. 1:1-2); and 4) are willing to allow the Philistines to rule over them without a fight (15:9-13). Yahweh is seen to be the aggressor by stirring up Samson against the Philistines (13:25) and by provoking discontent between Israel and the Philistines (14:4).

The Agent of God’s Deliverance: 13.2-24

Judges 13:2-24 is classified as a birth narrative which traditionally has four basic elements: 

1) A godly but barren woman (who longs for a child) is introduced. 2) She receives a divine revelation/visitation announcing the conception of a special child and/or the special destiny of the child.  3) The birth of the child is announced. 4) The child is named.

In the Samson cycle, the birth narrative acts as a substitute for the announcement of a deliverer that Yahweh has raised up. Verse five is the key verse in our text.  Unlike most “calling narratives” where the call is made directly to the person being called, in the Samson cycle, the call is made to the parents of Samson and they are told of the divine service that Samson will perform. In essence, like Jeremiah after him, Samson is called to his role of deliverer before his birth. Interestingly, throughout the Samson cycle everyone, Manoah and his wife, the writer, and the reader, know of Samson’s divine calling but does Samson know of his divine calling? As we will see, if Samson does know of his divine calling then he demonstrates little respect for it.  The writer calls our attention to Samson’s “repeated deliberate violation of the call (14:8, 10; 16:17).” In fact, in verse 16.17, we see Samson admit for the first time that he is aware of his calling, and this admission, before the Philistine Delilah, becomes his undoing and he loses the calling (cf. 16:20).

The birth narrative of Samson “is framed by themes of problem and resolution, promise and fulfillment.” In v. 2, the writer introduces us to a woman who is barren, yet in v24 we see her giving birth to a son. In v. 3, the Angel of the Lord tells the woman that while she is barren now, she will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and v. 24 the angel’s promise is fulfilled. The writer gives us a picture of Samson’s mother that depicts her as calm, cool, and collected, who is knowledgeable of the importance of the events from both a practical vantage point as well as from a theological viewpoint. Block says that: “By thrusting this woman into the foreground the narrator has set the stage for the following episodes. If a woman is the key to Samson’s birth, women will also be the key to his death.”

Much of this chapter is filled with dialogue and most of it involves Manoah’s wife, Samson’s mother. The first speech in the chapter is one given by the Angel of the Lord to Samson’s mother, telling her of her current circumstances (her barren womb) and how that will immediately change ( she will conceive and deliver a son). An interesting factor of this speech is that Samson’s mother never speaks to the Angel of the Lord but goes home and immediately tells Manoah all that the Angel said (v2-7).

Verses 8-18 present us with another situation where the writer is engaged in contrasting the personality between a man and a woman, and predictably the woman is shown to be the better and wiser person. Manoah is unable to control the dialogue between him and his wife, as his wife “has both the first and last word.”

Some have concluded that the writer was interested in marginalizing Manoah’s wife as the writer leaves her nameless. Yet Block and others have built a strong case that it was in fact Manoah who was deliberately being minimized. Block provides us with a list of reason for this belief. Manoah is deliberately minimized by the writer by: “(1) introducing him with the seemingly superfluous expression, “a certain man” (13:2); (2) referring to his tribe, Dan, as a “clan” rather than a “tribe”; (3) leaving his identification by name to the end of the note in 13:2; (4) noting that the divine messenger appears not once but twice to his wife, even after Manoah had summoned him; (5) characterizing Manoah as a skeptical person throughout, unlike his wife, who takes matters at face value; (6) keeping the focus on Manoah’s wife and emphasizing particularly how she, the woman, is to act, even though Manoah seeks to control the actions and the conversations; (7) describing how, in the end, Manoah’s reaction to the visitation is fear of death, while his wife reassures him with a reasoned explanation of what has transpired (v. 22); (8) noting that Manoah’s wife, not Manoah, names Samson (v. 24).

If we get caught up in skill of the writer, his dialogue, his characters, his uses of a variety of literary tools to make his point, we may simply miss the point that he is trying to make. The primary purpose of this chapter is to describe how Yahweh raised up a deliverer (from before the womb) to deliver His people from the oppression of the Philistines.   The writer’s intent is not to focus on the human characters but to focus our attention on Yahweh who is the “divine force behind the events.”

Do not make the mistake of reading this narrative as just another birth narrative; it actually functions as a call narrative demonstrating Yahweh’s concern to provide Israel with a deliverer who will deal with the Philistines. It is clear from the text that the messenger and the writer realize that Samson is the beginning of the solution but that he is not the complete solution to the oppression of the Philistines. “The completion of the agenda will await another day and another man.”

   The Angel of Yahweh and the Wife 13:2-7

Verse 2 provides the background for the narrative, beginning with the husband: “A certain man of Zorah.”  With his opening phrase the writer begins introducing the cast, if you will, in an unusual manner. In the Hebrew, the male character is introduced by genus, geographic origin, tribal affiliation, and by name. The intent of the writer is to convey the idea that in the context of Samson’s life, his identity as to where he came from geographically and tribally, are more important issues than whom his parents were. His father came from Zorah, which as described in Joshua (15.33; 19.41) would have been a small border town, located in both the territories of Judah and Dan. The identification of the man as a Danite prepares us to better understand the issues between Samson and the Philistines to the west, as well as the Judahites, located to the “south and east of Sorek.” It also sheds some light on events portrayed in chapters 17-18. The last thing we find out about this man is his name, Manoah (“resting place.”)

An important aspect in the life of Manoah is the fact that he was married to a barren woman. This barren wife, who remains nameless, is the most important human character in this chapter of the story. Her barrenness reminds us of the barrenness of Sarai, the wife of Abram, before the birth of Isaac. Here Yahweh, working on behalf of His people, will raise up a deliverer for them, even from a barren womb, nothing is impossible for Yahweh.

We must remember that barrenness, in ancient Israel, was understood as being visible evidence of sin in the life of the husband or wife, more likely the wife. The opposite was also true, that children were seen as a blessing from Yahweh and the more children the greater the blessing. “In Israel children were a mark of the blessing of God, and barrenness was the sign of divine reproach, displeasure, his curse.” As we recently saw with Jephthah, continuation of the line after one’s death depended on having children. With Jephthah, in particular, we saw that his future was cutoff because of his sacrificing his daughter. With Manoah and his wife, their futures appear to be cutoff because they don’t even have child because of the barrenness of the marriage. Block reminds us that this “indicates that the oppression at the hands of foreign enemies was not the only covenant curse that was being fulfilled in Israel because of their apostasy.

Without any background or insight into how the woman or her husband view her barrenness, or whether or not they have taken the barrenness of the marriage before Yahweh in prayer, asking for His divine intervention, the writer abruptly tells us of the messenger’s arrival before the woman. First, the messenger begins his announcement to the woman by stating the obvious, she is barren. Perhaps the purpose of such an obvious statement was to make the woman aware that Yahweh was aware of her circumstances. Secondly, the messenger then tells her the “good news,” that she will conceive and not only will she conceive but that she will have a son, making the “good news” that much better. Thirdly, the messenger tells her that this birth will require a special obligation to Yahweh on her part, she cannot drink anything fermented and she cannot eat anything unclean. It will also require an obligation on the part of the child that he can never have his hair cut and he must live as a Nazirite. As a special gift from Yahweh, Yahweh has the right to make these demands upon their lives. Block suggests that it is “Reflective of the biblical conviction that a child is a special creation of God from the moment of conception, the same standards that will govern his postnatal life will apply to his prenatal condition as well. Accordingly, she must watch her diet, abstaining from wine, alcoholic drinks of any kind, and food that Israelite laws forbade as defiled (ritually unclean) and defiling.” 

Num 6.1-8 provides us with the background behind the Israelite Law of the Nazirite. A Nazerite took a vow to abstain from: 1) Wine or any other intoxicating drink; 2) from having his hair cut; and 3) from contact with a corpse. Numbers tells us that the person would voluntarily take a vow to be a Nazerite as an act of dedication to Yahweh. This would be done for a specified period of time. In the case of Samson, the vow is imposed by Yahweh rather than being voluntary and secondly, it begins at conception obligating his mother to take the vow of a Nazerite until his birth, and for Samson the period of the vow is to last a life time, revocable only upon his death. 

In verse 5c we are told that Samson is to be a deliverer, a judge, who will “begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” This statement announces what Yahweh knows to be the final outcome of Samson’s life, that his role is to begin the task and that it will ultimately be someone else’s role to free the Israelites from the oppression o f the Philistines (this will not happen until David’s reign as reported in 2 Sa 5.17-25).

13:6 reveals the woman’s response to the news and to the bearer of the news – she rushes off to tell her husband. In this verse the woman describes the bearer of the news to her husband before she even tells him what the news is. She calls him “a man of God,” who “looked like an angel of God,” and was “very awesome.” She continues, telling her husband that she didn’t ask who he was or where he came from. The lack of detail by the writer’s is surprising and supports the idea that he wants the reader to focus Yahweh’s intervention in providing a deliverer for Israel and not the characters.

In v. 7 Manoah’s wife repeats the angel of Yahweh’s message to for her husband, but there are some differences in her version. She omits the angel’s comments regarding her barrenness and that no razor maybe used on his head. She adds that the child will be a Nazerite not only from birth but also “until the day of his death.” It is ironic that her omission of the prohibition of a razor on his head was the violation that leads to his death.

The Promise Repeated (13:8-14)

In v8-14 and v15-23, the writer turns his attention to the woman’s husband, Manoah. In this first section we find Manoah trying to learn as much about the” angel’s announcement” as his wife, while in the second section Manoah is seen trying to learn more about the “man of God.” He fails at both. He ends up knowing no more than his wife but does realize it is his wife that is the “focus of God’s activity.”  In the end it is left to his wife to explain to him the workings of God rather than the other way around.

In v. 8 introduces us to Manoah for the first time and the picture of Manoah we are given is not flattering. Manoah’s reaction to his wife’s report is perplexing. On the surface it might seem to be the reaction of a godly man as he prays to Yahweh to send the angel back to them that the angel might teach them how to raise up their child. This begs the question what else does he need to know in addition to what he has already learned? Is it that he doesn’t know the laws of the Nazerite? Perhaps is it is a matter of being jealous of his wife’s being the center of attention of God’s activity as Block suggests. “The repeated use of the pronoun “us” suggests that in the author’s mind he was jealous because the messenger had approached his wife instead of him. If knowledge is power, then he is determined to recapture the power in this household.”

13:9-11 tells us that God responds to Manoah’s plea to allow the “man” to return to them, but not in a way that Manoah expected. The angel returns but it is to the woman when she is by herself in the field. We are treated to another scene of Manoah’s wife telling him of the angel’s arrival. Manoah and his wife quickly return to the field where the angel had waited for them.

Manoah’s first question (v. 11b) was intended to verify the messenger’s identity.  “Are you the one who talked to my wife?” The angel’s answer was short and sweet: “I am.” Manoah’s second question in v12 was intended to verify the message of the messenger. "When your words are fulfilled, what is to be the rule that governs the boy’s life and work?" The response of the messenger in v13-14 confirms the original message given to Manoah’s wife, but if Manoah was hoping to glean something in addition to the original message he was sadly disappointed.

The Meal (13.15-23)

In 13:15 Manoah responds to the messenger and his good news of the conception of a son by asking the messenger to stay and eat with them. It is apparent that Manoah may have considered the messenger to be an important person; he did not recognize the messenger as an angel of the Lord (v16). In v16, the messenger suggests that rather than provide a meal for him that Manoah prepare an offering for the Lord. There may be more to the messenger’s rejection of Manoah’s offer to stay for dinner than meets the eye. Perhaps the messenger was trying to help Manoah recognize that the messenger was actually not a man but rather an angel of the Lord. The messenger’s rejection may have been a commentary on Manoah’s spiritual state. If Manoah was so spiritually dense that he couldn’t tell the difference, between a man and an angel then “since table fellowship assumes oneness, that is, shalom between the parties, by rejecting the invitation to a meal the visitor comments on the spiritual condition of the nation as a whole and this household in particular. The Israelites are in no state to fellowship this way with him, an envoy from the holy courts of heaven. Whole burnt offerings presented as sacrifices to Yahweh must come first.”

13:17 shows us Manoah responding to the angel’s denial of breaking bread with him by asking him “What is your name?” This again seems to be further proof of Manoah’s spiritual denseness. Manoah “seems to accept that this “man of God” is a prophet whose words will be fulfilled in due course, but too obtuse to recognize that when a barren woman conceives it must be a miraculous work of God.”

In v18 the messenger rebukes Manoah for his spiritual blindness by responding to Manoah’s question of what is his name with a curt “Why do you ask my name?” Rather than give Manoah his name, the messenger describes it by saying “it is beyond understanding” which may be better translated as “extraordinary.” The noun derivative of this word was frequently used in identifying “God’s miraculous acts of judgment and salvation,” especially in the Exodus narrative. This would point both Manoah and the reader to the “saving acts God has placed on His agenda.” It is interesting to note we find this word used in Ps139.6 where it describes the marvelous knowledge of God. It is also the psalm that expresses wonderment at God’s deliberate and amazing creation of a baby in the womb (v13-16). Because of Manoah’s spiritual immaturity he would not have understood the name of the angel any more than he could understand the incredibleness of God bringing life into a barren womb. Yet Manoah obediently takes a young goat and presents it to the Lord as “tribute offering” for His works of wonder in 13:19. (c.f. ex 15.11)

In 13:20-21 Manoah and his wife watch in amazement as the flames rise from the altar towards heaven carrying the angel of the Lord with them. When Manoah and his wife witness this amazing event, they both fall to the ground. We are told in v21 realizes the messenger was not a man but an angel of the Lord. When Manoah stopped asking questions and was simply obedient his questions were answered.

Verses 22-23 continue to demonstrate Manoah’s wife being ahead of him in spiritual development. While Manoah’s response to what they had just witnessed, falling prostrate and his declaration that they would die because they had seen God were theologically correct it was his wife that understood the ways of the Lord. His wife understands that they would not die at God’s hands now because: 1) Yahweh accepted the tribute they offered Him; 2) Yahweh would not have shown them all that He did if His intent was to kill them; and 3) why would Yahweh have give them this oracle which would never be fulfilled if He killed them now. “With impeccable logic and according to the Israelite laws of evidence, Manoah’s wife presents incontestable proof that they will not die. God has spoken cultically, visually, and orally, declaring to them the future, which obviously depends upon their continued living.” 

The Birth of Samson (13:24)

13:24 Concludes the first phase of the Samson cycle with a birth announcement consisting of four factual statements:  (1) The woman gave birth to a boy; (2) The woman named him Samson; (3) The boy grew; and (4) Yahweh blessed him.

Conclusion

The Samson cycle is the last of the “apostasy-oppression-appeal-deliverance” cycles, where we watch Israel progressively sinking to new lows. But this was not just a national problem; it was also reflected in the lives of the men Yahweh raised up to be judges, the men who were to deliver the people from the oppression of their enemies. These chapters, as well as the previous ones we have read, are designed to show us the dark days of judges. These were serious times in the nation of Israel as reflected by the thoughts of the writer of 1 Samuel that “the word of Yahweh was rare in those days, visions were infrequent, and the lamp of God was in danger of going out.” In this environment is it any wonder that Manoah appears to be spiritually dense, and even a person who knows the ways of Yahweh as his wife does, can still be blind enough to name her son, a true miracle from God, after the Canaanite sun god. We are left to conclude that these people just did not know any better.

In this chapter we are shown a glimpse of family life in the time of Judges and the fact that Yahweh’s grace was still being poured out upon the nation of Israel. The commentator Daniel Block summarizes it best: “In the days of the judges, when the light of genuine piety was in danger of being extinguished, and from the darkest tribe of Dan, where evidences of faith were rare, Yahweh raises a “sun.” Israel may be moribund in its apostasy, but God is at work, graciously intervening, breaking in and preparing his agent of deliverance.” This calling narrative is evidence that Yahweh has again refused to abandon His people to their just deserves. More than just giving us a glimpse of the state of the nation of Israel, the writer gives us a view of Yahweh refusing to walk away from Israel. We are given view of God doing what is necessary to preserve Israel, His honor and His grace. Will God be so generous to us today?