I’ve been reading through Judges lately, and it occurs to me that no judge starts off stranger than Samson. Most of the others show up suddenly, right in the middle of a crisis. But Samson’s story starts before he’s even born — before his parents even have him.
There was a man named Manoah from the tribe of Dan. His wife couldn’t have children. Then an angel of the LORD shows up and tells her:
“Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son… for lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb.”
What’s interesting is that this woman never gets a name in the whole chapter. She’s just “Manoah’s wife.” And yet she comes across as far more level-headed than her husband, and honestly more spiritually mature.
She tells her husband everything. Manoah prays that the “man of God” would come again, so they could learn how to raise the child properly. Fair enough — he wanted confirmation. But when the angel does appear a second time, it’s the wife who notices first and runs to get him.
There’s a moment where Manoah asks the angel his name. “What is thy name, that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honour?” The answer is a bit unsettling.
“Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret?”
That word — “secret,” sometimes translated “wonderful” — sounds familiar, right? It’s the same word used in Isaiah 9:6 to describe the Messiah (“His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God…”). Scholars still argue over whether this was simply an angel or some kind of appearance of God the Son. What’s clear is that this was no ordinary messenger.
Later, as Manoah offers a sacrifice, the flame rises toward heaven and the angel goes up in the flame with it. That’s when Manoah panics: “We shall surely die, because we have seen God.” And once again, his wife talks him down with much steadier logic — if the LORD meant to kill them, He wouldn’t have accepted their offering or shown them all of this.
The child is born. They name him Samson. “And the child grew, and the LORD blessed him. And the Spirit of the LORD began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.”
This chapter, honestly, isn’t really Samson’s story yet — it belongs to his parents, especially to his unnamed mother. Once Samson actually steps onto the stage in the next chapter, he turns out to be almost nothing like the careful, composed people who raised him. That gap is probably what makes everything that follows sting a little more.
Tags: #Judges13 #BirthOfSamson #Secret #ConnectionToIsaiah9 #FaithOfTheUnnamedMother #NaziriteVow #Judges #BibleDevotional #BibleStudy #OldTestament