Judges 13

¹ Again the Israelites began to do what displeases Yahweh, and Yahweh delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.

² There was a man of Zorah of the tribe of Dan, called Manoah. His wife was barren, she had borne no children.

³ The angel of Yahweh appeared to this woman and said to her, ‘You are barren and have had no child.

⁴ But from now on take great care. Take no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean.

⁵ For you will conceive and bear a son. No razor is to touch his head, for the boy shall be God’s nazirite from his mother’s womb. It is he who will begin to rescue Israel from the power of the Philistines.’

⁶ Then the woman went and told her husband, ‘A man of God has just come to me; his presence was like the presence of the angel of God, he was so majestic. I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not reveal his name to me.

⁷ But he said to me, “You will conceive and bear a son. From now on, take no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean. For the boy shail be God’s nazirite from his mother’s womb to his dying day.”‘

⁸ Then Manoah pleaded with Yahweh and said, ‘I beg you, Lord, let the man of God that you sent come to us once again and instruct us in what we must do with the boy when he is born’.

⁹ Yahweh heard Manoah’s prayer for favour, and the angel of Yahweh visited the woman again as she was sitting in the field; her husband Manoah was not with her.

¹⁰ The woman ran quickly and told her husband: ‘Look,’ she said ‘the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me again’.

¹¹ Manoah rose and followed his wife, and he came to the man and said to him, ‘Are you the man who spoke to this woman?’ He answered, ‘I am’.

¹² Manoah went on, ‘When your words are fuffilled, what is to be the boy’s rule of life? How must he behave?’

¹³ And the angel of Yahweh answered Manoah, ‘The things that I forbade this woman, let him refrain from too.

¹⁴ Let him taste nothing that comes from the vine, let him take no wine or strong drink, let him eat nothing unclean, let him obey all the orders I gave this woman.’

¹⁵ Manoah is then said to the angel of Yahweh, ‘Do us the honour of staying with us while we prepare a kid for you’.

¹⁷ Manoah then said to the angel of Yahweh, ‘What is your name, so that we may honour you when your words are fulfilled?’

¹⁸ The angel of Yahweh replied, ‘Why ask my name? It is a mystery.’

¹⁹ Then Manoah took the kid and the oblation and offered it as a holocaust on the rock to Yahweh who works mysteries.

²⁰ As the flame went up heavenwards from the altar, the angel of Yahweh ascended in the flame in the sight of Manoah and his wife,and they fell face downwards on the ground.

²¹ After this, the angel of Yahweh did not appear any more to Manoah and his wife, by which Manoah understood that this had been the angel of Yahweh.

²² And Manoah said to his wife, ‘We are certain to die, because we have seen God’.

²³ His wife answered him, ‘If Yahweh had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a holocaust and oblation from our hands; he would not have told us all these things.’

²⁴ The woman gave birth to a son and called him Samson. The child grew, and Yahweh blessed him;

²⁵ and the spirit of Yahweh began to move him in the Camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.