Judges13chapter 13

Judges 13:1-2

delivered them into the hand: This is the seventh and last time the book says Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, after 2:11, 3:7, 3:12, 4:1, 6:1 and 10:6. Forty years is the longest servitude in Judges, against the eighteen years of Moab at 3:14 and the twenty of Jabin at 4:3, and no verse in this cycle says Israel cried unto the Lord. That beat falls six times earlier, at 3:9, 3:15, 4:3, 6:6, 6:7 and 10:10, so God moves toward a deliverer here while nobody has asked. Zorah stands in Judah's lowland list at Joshua 15:33 and in Dan's at Joshua 19:41, and Dan is the tribe that Judges 18:1 shows still looking for ground to live on.

Judges 13:3-5

angel of the Lord appeared: The messenger comes to the wife rather than the husband, and she is put under part of the vow herself at verse 4, so the abstinence starts before the child does. Numbers 6:2 makes the Nazarite vow voluntary and for a set term, and here it is laid on a boy from the womb and never lifted, which is the shape of the dedication Hannah makes at 1 Samuel 1:11. The promise is measured, since he shall begin to deliver Israel, and the Philistines are still standing at 1 Samuel 7 and are put down only under David. Hebrews 11:32 names Samson among the faithful, and the chapters after this one record him breaking the terms of the vow he was born under.

Judges 13:6-7

She calls him a man of God with the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible, and says she did not ask where he came from and that he gave no name. Verse 18 shows the name would have been refused if she had asked. Her report adds a clause the angel did not speak at verse 5, to the day of his death, which fixes the vow as lifelong, and it leaves out the razor and the deliverance of Israel. Whether she was told more than verse 5 records or drew the conclusion herself, the text does not say.

Judges 13:8-10

Manoah asks for a second visit and for teaching, and the text records the answer as God hearkened to the voice of Manoah. The angel comes again to the woman, alone in the field, and verse 9 says plainly that Manoah her husband was not with her a second time. What he asked to see for himself he still has to be fetched to, and she runs to get him. Adam Clarke reads the repeat appearance as what settled Manoah's mind about his wife's account, and Matthew Henry reads it as God answering a man who wanted to know his duty.

Judges 13:11-14

Manoah's question at verse 12 asks two things, how the child is to be ordered and what is to be done to him, and the angel answers by pointing him back to his wife. Everything said to Manoah repeats what was said to her, and the charge stays on her, let her beware, all that I commanded her let her observe. Any thing that cometh of the vine is the wording of Numbers 6:4, which reaches to kernels and husk as well as to wine. Nothing further is laid on the boy beyond the razor of verse 5, so the discipline this chapter describes is the mother's to keep.

Judges 13:15-16

Manoah offers to prepare a kid, which is what Gideon did at 6:19 under the oak at Ophrah, and both meals end as burnt offerings laid on a rock. The refusal is exact, no bread eaten and the offering redirected, thou must offer it unto the Lord. Revelation 19:10 and 22:8-9 have an angel refuse worship in the same terms, and readers divide over the figure standing here. Adam Clarke and Matthew Henry take the appearance as the Son before his incarnation, while Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the words as a correction of what Manoah supposed rather than a refusal of divine honour, since verse 16 says Manoah knew not that he was an angel of the Lord.

Judges 13:17-18

The answer refuses the question, and Genesis 32:29 records the same exchange at Peniel, where Jacob asks the name and is asked in return why he asks. The word rendered secret comes from the root behind wonderful, and the same root describes what the angel then does at verse 19, the angel did wondrously. Isaiah 9:6 uses that root for the first of the names given the child born to us, which is why Matthew Henry reads these verses together. Manoah states his purpose for wanting the name, to do honour when the sayings came to pass, and he is left without it.

Judges 13:19-21

The offering goes up on a rock rather than at a tabernacle altar, and verse 20 then calls that rock the altar, which is what Gideon's rock at 6:20-21 also became. The departure differs from Gideon's in one detail worth seeing: there the fire rose out of the rock and the angel went from sight, and here the angel ascends in the flame of his own offering. Manoah and his wife are watching both times, and they fall on their faces after he has gone. Verse 21 puts the knowledge last, since the visits stop and then Manoah knew.

Judges 13:22-23

The fear has texts behind it. Exodus 33:20 says there shall no man see me, and live, Genesis 32:30 has Jacob marvel that his life was preserved at Peniel, and Gideon says the same thing at 6:22 and is answered by the Lord with peace, fear not. Here no voice from heaven answers and his wife does, reasoning from what has already happened, that God received the offering and gave the sight and spoke the message, and would have done none of it if he meant to kill them. She is never named anywhere in Scripture, and the plainest argument in the chapter is hers.

Judges 13:24-25

The name Samson stands close to the Hebrew word for sun, and the town of Beth-shemesh, the house of the sun, sits a short way along the same valley from Zorah. The Spirit of the Lord comes on a man seven times in Judges, at 3:10, 6:34 and 11:29, and then four times on this one man at 13:25, 14:6, 14:19 and 15:14. The wording here is that the Spirit began to move him at times, which is intermittent rather than settled, and it describes the start of a life rather than a single act. Zorah and Eshtaol close the account as well as open it, since 16:31 buries him between those two towns in his father's grave.