Samson’s Parents Meet the Messenger of Yahweh (#14 in Yahweh and the Angel of Yahweh)

Miraculous births are notable in the Bible. In one sense, every birth is a miracle. The whole process of the sperm fertilizing the egg is miraculous, as is the gestation, and the birth itself. We know that because we have had four children born and one miscarriage. But the birth of Samson was even more miraculous since his mother was unable to conceive.

¹ The Israelites again did what was evil in Yahweh’s sight, so Yahweh handed them over to the Philistines forty years. ² There was a certain man from Zorah, from the family of Dan, whose name was Manoah; his wife was unable to conceive and had no children. ³ The Messenger of Yahweh appeared to the woman and said to her, “Although you are unable to conceive and have no children, you will conceive and give birth to a son. ⁴ Now please be careful not to drink wine or beer, or to eat anything unclean; ⁵ for indeed, you will conceive and give birth to a son. You must never cut his hair, because the boy will be a Nazirite to God from birth, and he will begin to save Israel from the power of the Philistines.”

⁶ Then the woman went and told her husband, “A man of God came to me. He looked like the awe-inspiring Messenger of God. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name. ⁷ He said to me, ‘You will conceive and give birth to a son. Therefore, do not drink wine or beer, and do not eat anything unclean, because the boy will be a Nazirite to God from birth until the day of his death.’” ⁸ Manoah prayed to Yahweh and said, “Please, Lord, let the man of God you sent come again to us and teach us what we should do for the boy who will be born.”

⁹ God listened to Manoah, and the Messenger of God came again to the woman. She was sitting in the field, and her husband, Manoah, was not with her. ¹⁰ The woman ran quickly to her husband and told him, “The man who came to me the other day has just come back!” ¹¹ So Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he came to the man, he asked, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” “I am,” he said. ¹² Then Manoah asked, “When your words come true, what will be the boy’s responsibilities and work?”

¹³ The Messenger of Yahweh answered Manoah, “Your wife needs to do everything I told her. ¹⁴ She must not eat anything that comes from the grapevine or drink wine or beer. And she must not eat anything unclean. Your wife must do everything I have commanded her.” ¹⁵ “Please stay here,” Manoah told him, “and we will prepare a young goat for you.” ¹⁶ The Messenger of Yahweh said to him, “If I stay, I won’t eat your food. But if you want to prepare a burnt offering, offer it to Yahweh.” (Manoah did not know he was the Messenger of Yahweh.)

¹⁷ Then Manoah said to him, “What is your name, so that we may honor you when your words come true?” ¹⁸ “Why do you ask my name,” the angel of Yahweh asked him, “since it is beyond understanding?”

¹⁹ Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to Yahweh, who did something miraculous while Manoah and his wife were watching. ²⁰ When the flame went up from the altar to the sky, the angel of Yahweh went up in its flame. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell facedown on the ground. ²¹ The Messenger of Yahweh did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Then Manoah realized that it was the Messenger of Yahweh.

²² “We’re certainly going to die,” he said to his wife, “because we have seen God!” ²³ But his wife said to him, “If Yahweh had intended to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us, and he would not have shown us all these things or spoken to us like this.” (Judges 13:1-22)

I really like this couple. First, the husband does not doubt his wife when she tells him this fantastic tale but instead prays for God to send the man of God again. Then, when Manoah fears he will die for having seen God, his wife sensibly reasons that Yahweh didn’t want to kill them.

Here, once again, the Messenger of Yahweh appears as a man, though the woman finds something unusual about him that makes her think he is “the awe-inspiring Messenger of Yahweh.” What that is or how she has a concept of the Messenger of Yahweh, we don’t know. Also, the Messenger of Yahweh distinguishes Himself from Yahweh (I won’t eat your food but you can make an offering to Yahweh).

Then, the Messenger of Yahweh makes a cryptic remark about His name being beyond Manoah’s understanding. The name Yahweh is not beyond understanding, so it seems there is an ineffable quality to His actual name, a characteristic we would expect only of Yahweh Himself. This might help explain why in Genesis 19 the Scripture can speak of two Yahwehs. Yahweh is a name, but it can be applied to two separate individuals, Yahweh and the Messenger of Yahweh. The unique personal names of each is beyond our comprehension.

Finally, Manoah and his wife think they have seen God, and like Abraham, Hagar, Moses, Joshua, Gideon and others, they have, only they have seen the Son of God who acts as the Messenger of Yahweh. And this God is the God of the miraculous, who brings about births of children to people incapable of giving birth, and who will bring about one birth of a son who will save his people from their sin.