Samson 2 - Judges 13

Samson’s story starts like many in the Bible, but he is the only judge who starts this way, and that is with an angelic announcement to his barren mother of his miraculous birth. An angel appears to an unnamed woman who is barren and she is promised that she will bear a son and that that son will bear a Nazarite vow for his entire life which consists of not consuming any grape products, not cutting his hair, and to never touch a dead body. We’ve talked about Nazarite vows before when they were prescribed in the Torah, but the IM summarizes it saying, “The primary meaning of the Hebrew verb nazar is to separate. Hence the nazir (Nazarite) is ‘the separated,’ ‘consecrated’ ‘devoted’. A Nazarite, therefore, was one who was separated from others by a special vow of self-dedication to Jehovah. The term ‘set apart’ is used to mean that one has been given a special calling or position and is thus separated from others.” If I recall correctly, the Nazarites often worked in the temple assisting the Levite priests. This vow was taken on voluntarily and for a temporary amount of time so Samson’s association with the Nazarites is unusual in that he isn’t volunteering and it is for life, whereas it’s usually temporary.

The woman, I’m sure, is thrilled by the news that she will have a child and goes to tell her husband. The husband wants to talk to this guy, so they go back and the angel is still there, the husband’s name is Manoah, and he asks the angel to explain what he told his wife. The angel does kind of but mostly it’s just “what I told her was…” Manoah asks the angel his name, which TB explains is because anciently, especially in Israel where religious worship of Jehovah was mixed with the surrounding Pagan religions and an important part of worshipping those gods was knowing their name because if you knew the name of the god, then you could control them and ask them for specific favors, that’s why it’s significant that the angel didn’t give Manoah his name because he didn’t want to be worshipped.

Manoah takes the lamb and grain that he brought as a present for the angel, and performs a sacrifice, and “when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar.” So the angel went up in the flames and Manoah was scared and told his wife “we shal surely die, because we have seen God.’” The wife has a level head and tells him, “if God wanted to kill us, why did he promise us that we would have a son and give us all these instructions on how to raise him?” Makes sense. One question I had was why was this random Danite performing burnt offerings to God when it was only allowed to be done by Levite priests? TB had and answered this same question, saying, “How is this act proper and legal? God had long ago decred that there was to be but one place for sacrificing, that it had to be officiated by a Levite Priest, and it had to happen on the Bronze Altar that was ordained by the Lord. People were NOT to build their own private altars and themselves officiate as the pagans often did. But the reality is that the Priesthood was practically defunct now. The Priests in Samson’s time held only limited power and operated by the leave of the various Israelite tribes. The people paid little attention to them, and even less to the regulations of the Torah. At the end of the book of Judges and then on into Samuel we’re going to get a pretty good picture of how fallen and foreign the Priesthood of Israel had become since those golden days of Joshua.” That answers my question.

The woman conceives and bears a son that they name Samson like they were commanded, “and the child grew and blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan.”

Just as a side note, today was the 4th of July, and the last two 4th of Julys have been pretty brutal for me, especially the last one because it was right after my family’s tragedy and I was still deep into the grieving stage, I mean I still am to be honest. But this year, I stood watching the fireworks, reflecting on the last year and I feel like, through the grace of God, I’m in a better place. It’s very tenuous, and on a knife edge and it varies by the hour, but I’m in a better place that I was last year. I think July 4th of last year was the lowest point in my entire life, and I’m up from where I was there, not by much, but I am up. And the only way that happened was because God has brought me through every moment of every day for the last year plus. I have learned and grown so much spiritually, and I know that I have a long way to go but at least I am up from where I was last year, and I have no idea what life will look like next year, but we’ll see. I am so grateful for the constant presence of God in my life for the last year, I would not have survived without it.