Commentary - Judges 13:2-7

Bird's-eye view

In this passage, we are dropped back into the dreary cycle of the book of Judges: Israel sins, God hands them over to an oppressor, Israel cries out, and God raises up a deliverer. But this time, the announcement of the deliverer comes with a unique heavenly flourish. The story of Samson's birth is not just about the arrival of a strong man; it is a profound gospel tableau. It begins, as so many of God's great works do, with emptiness and impossibility, a barren womb. This barrenness is a picture of Israel's own spiritual state, helpless and unable to produce its own salvation. Into this hopeless situation steps the Angel of Yahweh, a figure who is more than just a messenger. He brings a divine announcement that God is about to act, to create life where there was none, and to set apart a champion for Himself from the very womb. This is a story about God's sovereign grace breaking into human history to accomplish His purposes, using the most unlikely people and circumstances to begin the work of salvation. The detailed instructions for the Nazirite vow are not arbitrary rules, but a sign that this child belongs to God in a special way, a foreshadowing of the one who would be perfectly set apart to save His people completely.

The entire scene is a microcosm of the gospel. We have a picture of human inability (the barren wife), a divine intervention (the Angel of Yahweh), a miraculous birth, and a son consecrated for the work of deliverance. This is what God always does. He finds us in our spiritual barrenness, dead in our trespasses and sins, and speaks a word of life. He sets us apart for Himself, not because of our strength, but because of His promise. Samson's story, for all its subsequent messiness, begins here, in an unmerited, sovereign act of divine grace.

Outline

Context In Judges

Judges 13 opens after another forty-year period of Philistine oppression (Judges 13:1). This is the longest period of foreign domination recorded in the book, and significantly, the text does not say that Israel cried out to the Lord for deliverance. Their apostasy seems to have settled into a kind of dull resignation. They are not actively seeking God. This makes the events of our passage all the more striking. God's intervention is not a response to their repentance, but a pure act of sovereign initiative. He decides to save them before they even ask. This sets the stage for the career of Samson, the last of the major judges, whose story is one of spectacular strength and equally spectacular moral failure. He is a flawed savior for a flawed people, and yet God uses him mightily. This chapter, detailing his miraculous origin, establishes that Samson's strength and calling are entirely from God, a fact that makes his later recklessness all the more tragic, yet it also magnifies the grace of God that works through him regardless.

Key Issues

Grace for the Barren

One of the recurring themes in Scripture is God's special attention to barren women. We see it with Sarah, with Rebekah, with Rachel, with Hannah, and here with the unnamed wife of Manoah. This is not a coincidence. A barren womb in the Old Testament was a source of great shame and sorrow, a visible sign of fruitlessness. But in the hands of God, it becomes a canvas for His glory. God loves to work with impossibilities. When He brings life from a barren womb, no one can mistake who gets the credit. It is not the result of human strength or striving; it is a pure miracle. This physical barrenness is a potent metaphor for our spiritual condition apart from Christ. We are spiritually barren, unable to produce any righteousness that could save us. We are, as Paul says, dead in our sins. And the gospel is the announcement that God, through the Angel of His presence, has spoken life into our deadness. He promises a new birth that we could never accomplish on our own. Every time we see a barren womb opened in the Old Testament, it is a whisper of the gospel, a preview of the ultimate miracle of the virgin birth of Christ and the spiritual new birth of every believer.

Verse by Verse Commentary

2 And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had borne no children.

The story begins in the ordinary way that many biblical narratives do, by introducing us to a man and his family. They are from the tribe of Dan, a tribe that was struggling and would later feature in some of the most sordid events at the end of this book. And right away, we are given the central human problem of the story: his wife was barren. The Hebrew is emphatic, stacking the phrases: "she was barren and had borne no children." This is the dead end. This is the place of human impossibility. In a culture where children were seen as the primary blessing of God, this was a state of quiet desperation. This is precisely the kind of situation God loves to step into.

3 Then the angel of Yahweh appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall be with child and give birth to a son.

The divine intervention comes not to the husband, Manoah, but to his wife. And the one who comes is "the angel of Yahweh." We must be clear here. In the Old Testament, this is often no mere created angel. This figure speaks as God, receives worship, and is identified with God. This is very likely a theophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of the Son of God. The eternal Word, who would one day be born of a virgin, comes to announce a miraculous birth to a barren woman. He begins by stating the obvious, her problem: "Behold now, you are barren." He is not mocking her; He is acknowledging her reality before He transforms it. And then comes the promise, the gospel word that creates what it commands: "but you shall be with child and give birth to a son." This is pure promise, pure grace, spoken into a situation of utter hopelessness.

4 So now, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing.

The promise is immediately followed by a command, a prohibition. The deliverance God is sending is a holy deliverance, and it requires a set-apart vessel. The restrictions placed on the mother are part of the Nazirite vow that the child will live under. She is to participate in his consecration even before he is conceived. She must abstain from wine and strong drink, which were associated with worldly celebration and could dull the senses, and from anything ceremonially unclean. This is a call to holiness. The one who will carry God's chosen deliverer must herself be consecrated for the task. This reminds us that God's grace is not a license for carelessness; it calls us to a life of holiness and separation from the world.

5 For behold, you shall be with child and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.”

The promise is repeated for emphasis, and then the reason for the mother's consecration is explained. The son is to be a Nazirite to God right from the womb. The Nazirite vow, described in Numbers 6, was typically a voluntary and temporary vow of special devotion to God. But Samson's is different. It is divinely imposed, and it is lifelong. The three main signs were abstaining from grape products, not cutting one's hair, and avoiding contact with the dead. The uncut hair was the most visible sign of this consecration, a public testimony that his life and strength belonged to God. And then his mission is stated: "he shall begin to save Israel." Note the word "begin." Samson's work will be partial, incomplete. He is a flawed savior who starts a process that only the true and final Savior, Jesus Christ, will be able to complete.

6 Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, “A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome. And I did not ask him where he came from, nor did he tell me his name.

The woman's response is one of faithful obedience and awe. She goes straight to her husband, Manoah, and reports what happened. Her description of the visitor is telling. She calls him a "man of God," a common term for a prophet, but then she says his appearance was like that of "the angel of God, very awesome." She recognized that this was no ordinary man. The experience was terrifying, so much so that she was too afraid to ask for his credentials or his name. This is the proper response to a direct encounter with the holy. It is not casual curiosity, but a profound sense of dread and wonder. She knows she has been in the presence of something otherworldly.

7 And he said to me, ‘Behold, you shall be with child and give birth to a son, so now you shall not drink wine or strong drink, and you shall not eat any unclean thing, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’ ”

She faithfully relays the message, repeating the promise of a son and the prohibitions that go with it. She adds one detail not in the initial record of the angel's speech: the vow is to last "to the day of his death." This underscores the permanent, lifelong nature of Samson's calling. He was born for this. He was set apart from his first moment to his last for the task of serving as God's weapon against the Philistines. His life was not his own, and this is true for every believer. We too have been set apart by God, not by a Nazirite vow, but by the blood of Christ, to be holy and to serve His purposes from the day of our new birth until the day of our death.

Application

This passage is a direct assault on all our modern notions of self-sufficiency. We live in a world that tells us we can solve our own problems. If you are barren, there are medical procedures. If you are oppressed, there are political solutions. If you are unfulfilled, there are therapeutic techniques. But the Bible begins in a different place. It begins by telling us that our fundamental problem, our spiritual barrenness, is a dead end. We cannot fix ourselves.

The only hope is a word from outside, a divine interruption. The Angel of the Lord had to come to Manoah's wife, and the Son of God had to come to our world. The gospel is the announcement that God has taken the initiative. He sees us in our hopeless condition, and He speaks a promise of new life. He doesn't wait for us to clean ourselves up or make ourselves worthy. He comes to us in our barrenness and promises a son. For Manoah's wife, it was Samson. For us, it is Jesus.

And the response to this grace is consecration. Because God has set us apart, we are to live as a set-apart people. This is not to earn our salvation, but to reflect it. Like Samson's mother, we are called to a thoughtful holiness, avoiding the spiritual "wine" and "unclean things" of the world, not out of a joyless legalism, but out of a joyful recognition that we are carrying something precious within us. We have been made temples of the Holy Spirit. The story of Samson's birth is our story. It is the story of how God, in his sovereign mercy, brings life out of death and begins the work of salvation in those who could do nothing to save themselves.