No King in Israel (30)

Judges is a grim book. It shows fallen man the way he truly is, even when favored with a level of access to divine revelation that many nations never experienced. Few of its chapters are consistently uplifting or their positive aspects unmitigated by reminders of human wickedness and fallibility. Jephthah’s story, which we have just finished, mingled God-given victory with bad judgment, betrayal and brother-against-brother violence. Our final judge’s life was a notorious mess, and the book gets even bleaker from there.

In between, chapter 13 is a brief, cheery respite from the darkness. From verse 2 on, it’s all wonderful, including a rare pre-incarnate glimpse of Christ himself.

II. Twelve Judges in Chronological Order (continued)

12. Samson

Judges 13:1 — Here We Go Again

“And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.”

Like much of the Old Testament, Judges is full of forty-year periods. Othniel gave the land rest for forty years, as did Deborah and Gideon. Ehud gave the land rest for twice forty. If we doubt the sovereignty of God over human history, such predictability and order should give us pause.

Prior to the last of our twelve judges, we encounter yet another forty-year period. This one is not forty years of rest but forty years of oppression, the longest period of divine discipline since Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness under Moses.

It’s hard to miss the obvious: things were getting worse.

Judges 13:2-7 — The Promise

“There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children. And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.’ Then the woman came and told her husband, ‘A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome. I did not ask him where he was from, and he did not tell me his name, but he said to me, “Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.” ’ ”

The Tribe of Dan

Previously in this study we referenced Jacob’s blessing of his sons in Genesis 49. We may as well do so again. Samson’s father Manoah was a Danite. Jacob had prophesied, “Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel.” We can check that box with Samson, the first judge descended from Dan. Then Jacob went on to add, “Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path that bites the horse’s heels so that his rider falls backward.” That’s an interesting statement with a number of potential historical fulfilments and perhaps another in the future. Two of those possible realizations occur in Judges, one in the person of Samson, who was certainly a “serpent in the way” to the Philistines, and another in chapter 18 with Dan’s treacherous and brutal treatment of the people of Laish (or Leshem).

A Man of Zorah

Manoah was from Zorah. That city comes up again in this story. In Joshua 15, Zorah and Eshtaol, perhaps a day’s walk apart, are among cities named in Judah’s territorial allotment. In Joshua 19, both cities are listed as part of Dan’s allotment. The resolution to the apparent inconsistency is relatively simple: both were border cities marking the southernmost point of Dan’s allotment and one of the northernmost points of Judah’s. Tribal borders in those days were not garrisoned, fenced or walled. They had a tendency to be less hard-edged than we are used to today.

The southern location of Dan’s territory at the time Samson was born was certainly convenient for a man destined to engage in conflict with Philistines. It extended all the way to the Mediterranean through what is now the Gaza Strip and explains why God would raise up a Danite to fight this particular enemy; Dan was most immediately affected by Philistine oppression. The Philistine city of Ekron bordered Dan’s allotment. Ashdod, another major Philistine town, was close by. Significant cities in Samson’s story include Ashkelon (chapter 14) and Gaza (chapter 16). These two were Philistine strongholds within Judah’s allotted territory, quite a bit further south and west.

Setting the Timeframe

The reference to Zorah in Samson’s story clarifies the timeframe for later events in Judges. As Joshua 19 indicates, Dan was eventually unable to hold the territory allotted to it, and looked for somewhere else to live, setting up the massacre of Judges 18.

Samson’s story, then, comes at the chronological tail of several hundred years of rule by judges, but prior to the tribe of Dan moving north.

His Wife was Barren

Samson was just one of several sons born to older women who had all but given up hope of having a child. Childlessness was hugely significant in those days in that many assumed it was a sign of God’s displeasure. Because territory in Canaan passed from father to son, a man who died with no heir effectively lost his family’s land. Moreover, generalized fruitfulness was one of the corporate blessings promised to Israel for obeying the law. Most Israelites were binary thinkers: blessings or curses, favor or judgment. They did not imagine God might use the occasional exception to the norm for his own glory, so they stigmatized barren women, often without cause.

Significant men born to formerly barren women in scripture include Isaac, Joseph, Benjamin, Samson, Samuel and John the Baptist. When God wanted to do something remarkable, he often used barren women as a starting point, shaming the strong with the “weak things of the world”.

The Angel of the Lord

The angel of the Lord [YHWH] appears in Judges 2, 5, 6 and 13. His identity is all-but-indisputable. He is a manifestation of deity, specifically the preincarnate Christ. We will see strong evidence of that shortly. As in his appearance to Gideon, scripture calls the same being “the angel of God ['ĕlōhîm]”.

Manoah’s Wife

Manoah’s wife goes unnamed despite being a major character in the story and considerably more sensible than her husband when confronted with a supernatural visitor. It’s not unreasonable to suppose the written or oral versions of the story from which the writer of Judges worked did not include her name. She is “his wife” and “the woman”. Lest anyone complain that this is an indication of a sexist mindset, we might note that the Bible names innumerable women, including in the book of Judges. We can only conclude the detail was not important to the Holy Spirit in telling the story.

A Nazirite

The word Nazirite (or Nazarite) comes from the Hebrew verb nāzar, meaning to dedicate, consecrate or keep religiously separate. Numbers 6 details the laws concerning the Nazirite vow. The vow was a voluntary act of devotion to God that involved a man growing out his hair, abstaining from anything grown on the vine, and avoiding defilement by the dead. With a few exceptions, men in Israel kept their hair relatively short, so the Nazirite would have stood out among his people. The vow usually had time limit, after which the man would have his hair shaved off and offer it to the Lord along with various other gifts.

Samson’s Nazirite separation to God was unique in a couple of ways: first, the state was imposed on him rather than voluntary; second, it started in the womb, the “vow” terms initially kept by his mother. It would not end until the day he died.

If we wonder why the Lord would bother to so carefully spell out the rules concerning Samson’s Nazirite consecration when they are right there in the Law of Moses, we must remember that some Israelites were more devout than others, and many were ignorant concerning the finer details of the law.

In Summary

Manoah’s wife dutifully reported all this to her husband. In so doing, she referred to the angel of the Lord as “a man of God”, suggesting that while she found him “very awesome”, the full import of what she had experienced may not have completely set in.

We need to keep these Nazirite rules in mind as we read Samson’s story; they are relevant to the events that follow. An Israelite reading it would probably have a much stronger reaction than those unschooled in the Law of Moses to some of the choices Samson the Nazirite makes along the way.