Judges 14
Butler13 1 AND the children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.
2. And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was 3 Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bare not. And the angel of the LORD appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt 4 conceive, and bear a son. Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink no wine nor strong 5 drink, and eat not any unclean thing: for, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come upon his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: 6 and he shall begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of the angel of God, very terrible; and I asked him not whence he was, neither 7 told he me his name: but he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing : for the child shall be a 8 Nazarite unto God from the womb to the day of his death. Then Manoah entreated the LORD, and said, O Lord, I pray thee, let the man of God whom thou didst send come again unto us, 9 and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall be born. And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah ; and the angel of God came again unto the woman as she sat in the field : 10 but Manoah her husband was not with her. And the woman made haste, and ran, and told her husband, and said unto him, Behold, the man hath appeared unto me, that came unto me 11 the other day. And Manoah arose, and went after his wife, and came to the man, and said 12 unto him, Art thou the man that spakest unto the woman ? And he said, I am. And Manoah said, Now when thy words come to pass, what shall be the ordering of the child, and how shall 13 we do unto him ? And the angel of the LORD said unto Manoah, Of all that I said unto the 14 woman let her beware. She may not eat of any thing that cometh of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing, all that I commanded her let her 15 observe. And Manoah said unto the angel of the LORD, I pray thee, let us detain thee, that 16 we may make ready a kid for thee. And the angel of the LORD said unto Manoah, Though thou detain me, I will not eat of thy bread : and if thou wilt make ready a burnt offering, thou must offer it unto the LORD. For Manoah knew not that he was the angel of the LORD. 17 And Manoah said unto the angel of the LORD, What is thy name, that when thy words come 18 to pass we may do thee honor ? And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Wherefore askest 19 thou after my name, seeing it is wonderful ? So Manoah took the kid with the meal offering, and offered it upon the rock unto the LORD : and the angel did wondrously, and Manoah and 20 his wife looked on. For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar : and Manoah and his wife 21 looked on ; and they fell on their faces to the ground. But the angel of the LORD did no more 22 appear to Manoah or to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the LORD. And 23 Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God. But his wife said unto him, If the LORD were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt offering and a meal offering at our hand, neither would he have shewed us all these things, nor would at this 24 time have told such things as these. And the woman bare a son, and called his name Sam- 25 son : and the child grew, and the LORD blessed him. And the Spirit of the LORD began to move him in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.
14 : 1-20 ; 15 : 1-8. Events connected with his marriage at Timnath with a Philistine woman. The Riddle at the Feast, and its consequences. Faithlessness punished.
Here at 13 begins the second of the two his- tories (Jephthah and Samson) to which the sec- tion (ch. 10 : 6-18) is the common introduction. A. R. F.—In 10 : 6, 7, it is said that the Lord was angry with his people, “and sold them into the hands of the Philistines and into the hands of the children of Ammon.” Of these two servitudes, the last, with the deliverance from it by Jephthah, is treated first. This occupies the two preceding chapters. The historian now re- turns and takes up the history of the other op- pression, and brings it down to the death of Samson. Bush.—The Ammonites vexed them on the east, and the Philistines on the west : thus, by the invasion of their enemies on both sides, their punishment increased with their idolatry. The two oppressions happened at the same time ; but, to avoid confusion, Scripture first gives an account of the war with the Am- monites, managed by Jephthah, then of that with the Philistines. Bp. Patrick.
13 : 1. The children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. Their peculiar sin was a direct and emphatic contradiction of the very purpose for which they were severed from the nations round them. Abraham had been called, Isaac blessed, Jacob guarded, Israel multiplied, that there might be one man, one family, one tribe, one people—to bear witness amid the ever-mul- tiplying polytheism to the indivisible unity of the Godhead. For the bearing of this witness it was above all things needful, not only that they should worship Jehovah, but that they should worship none other with Him. This was the sin of polytheism : it forever multiplied its altars. From the deep of his own inner self- consciousness, from the play of his own imagina- tion, from the shadows cast by outward things upon his spirit, fallen man developed his gods, until, not only every high hill and every dark forest, but every desire of his heart and every appetite of his senses was embodied in some deity, who repeated in gigantic proportions the sins which were his own defilement. Against this vast system of abominable idolatry, Abraham’s solitary wanderings and his altars to Jehovah, Jacob’s sufferings and visions, Joseph’s captivity and advancement, the forty years of Moses amid the mountain-chain of Midian, the thunders of Sinai, the sword of Joshua, had all borne alike their various witness. To maintain this witness and to hand it on, Israel had been planted in the goodly land which, to make room for them, had vomited forth its old inhabitants. The adoption, therefore, by them of the Baalim and the Ashtaroth into their system of worship, was a breach of their God-given character—a yielding up of their title-deed to the land of their inheritance. Every mountain and valley, every rock and river lifted up to heaven their voices against this new pollution, and cried to Jehovah for deliverance from it. The cry was answered by the avenging bands of the Ammonite from his sloping hill-side, of the Amorite from his mountain fortress, and of the Philistine from his sea-girt plain. As the bands of Israel dropped Jehovah’s banner their strength departed from them, and they became weak before their enemies. Wilberforce.
“They did evil again in the sight of Jehovah;” and as cause and effect are inseparable, Jehovah delivered them into the hand of their enemies. But, as they were His chosen people, the punishment was not destructive but corrective. Now, correction betokens love. It is a proof of a father’s deep interest in his child. So our heavenly Father speaks to His family: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3 : 2). Israel was worse than all others, in proportion as Israel ought to have been better: “Judgment must begin at the house of God.” And as the continual repetition of their apostasy aggravated their guilt, the oppression by their Philistine enemy was suffered to last for double the time (forty years) that the longest of their past oppressions had continued. A. R. F.
3. The angel of the Lord.** The uncreated angel, the Angel-Jehovah, so often spoken of in the preceding narrative, and who appeared to Moses, to Joshua, to Gideon, and others. Evidence of this will disclose itself as we proceed. Bush.
Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist were perpetual Nazarites. Abstinence from strong drink, and from anything made of the grape; letting the locks of the head grow unchecked by the razor; and keeping quite clear of any pollution from a dead body, even in case of the death of his nearest relations, were the chief articles of a Nazarite’s vow. He shall begin
to save. This is an exact description of what Samson did. He did not “deliver Israel” as the other judges did; but he began to shake the Philistine power, and prepared the way for the deliverance of Israel in the time of his worthier successor Samuel. A. C. H.—He never entirely broke their yoke, but left much of this work unfinished. No complete deliverance was effected short of the age of David. Remarkably he achieved all he did by the power of his single arm. It was done by courage and muscular force. Unlike the Judges before him, he planned no stratagem; created no panic among his foes; never set them upon mutual slaughter; never rallied the warriors of Israel’s tribes to his standard, and apparently never had their help at all. H. C.
5. The language of Christ to Manoah’s wife was all concerning “a deliverance,” which was to come through her. In whatever garb Christ may visit us, it is still an advent; and the purpose of that advent is to strike off a chain, to give liberty, essential, true, eternal liberty, “deliverance to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” Vaughan.
8. See the strength of Manoah’s faith. He saw not the messenger, he heard not the errand, he examined not the circumstances; yet now he takes thought, not whether he shall have a son, but how he shall order the son which he must have; and sues to God, not for the son which as yet he had not, but for the direction of governing him when he should be. Zachariah had the same message; and craving a sign, lost that voice wherewith he craved it: Manoah seeks no sign for the promise, but counsel for himself. True faith takes all for granted, yea for performed, which is once promised. Bp. H.
9. And God hearkened—and the angel of God came again.** The phraseology here is worthy of notice. The sacred writer does not say, “And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah, and sent his angel,” but, “God hearkened to the voice of Manoah and the angel of God came again,” implying that it was the God who hearkened to the voice of his servant that came in the person of his Son.
12. The Heb. may properly be rendered, “and now thy words shall come to pass,” intimating his implicit confidence in the promise. “Lord, I lay hold upon what thou hast said, and depend upon it with the most unwavering assurance.” Bush.—Every parent’s prayer should be that of Manoah, “O my Lord, teach us what we shall do to the child? How shall we order him? how shall we do unto him?” How shall we so train him as to be a spiritual Nazarite and living sacrifice unto God? Manoah prayed for direction in rearing the child, even before his birth. So prayer should precede the entrance of a believer’s child into the world. Grace should forestall Satan’s working, which begins from the time of actual birth. A. R. F.
16. This was the Angel of the Covenant, or the Lord Jehovah Himself. And yet, when Manoah proposes to provide a kid for Him, He tells him that if it be as an offering he must offer it unto the Lord. T. C.—He does not forbid him to present a burnt-offering, but he would have him assured as to the true character of the object of his worship. In saying, “If thou wilt offer a burnt-offering, thou must offer it unto the Lord,” he does not deny that he was himself Jehovah, or intimate that he would decline the honor which Manoah intended, any more than our Saviour would intimate that he was not good, when, being addressed by the title “Good Master,” he replied, “there is none good but God.” In both cases his answer has reference to the light in which they regarded Him. Here he merely intended to say, that though Manoah might offer him a common meal as a man, yet it would not do to offer him a sacrifice without full evidence that he was indeed Divine. This evidence was not yet gained, for it is immediately added, “For Manoah knew not (had not a clear conviction) that he was the angel of the Lord”—i.e., the Angel Jehovah; but he was soon to be assured that he was. The whole address of the angel appears to be framed with reference to the manifestation which he was just about to make.
18. It is wonderful.** Is. 9 : 6, “His name shall be called Wonderful.” In apparently declining therefore to reveal his name he does in fact make known one of his most august and glorious titles, one which went far toward conveying an idea of the Divine attributes of his nature, and one which was therefore eminently appropriate to the drift of Manoah’s question. By assuming a title which unquestionably belongs to the promised Messiah, he identifies himself with that Divine personage, and consequently puts it beyond a doubt who it is that is meant by the term “Angel” or “Angel of the Lord,” so frequently occurring in the Old Testament Scriptures in connection with miraculous appearances and revelations. It is plain that it is no other than the Angel-Jehovah, so emphatically alluded to Ex. 23 : 20, 21.
19. Manoah took a kid—and offered it.** He had by this time become so far satisfied as to the real character of his guest, that he offers the kid as a holocaust accompanied with the usual meal-offering which the law prescribed. Bush.
The angel did wondrously. Wrought a great miracle, according to the name which he had just given himself; for he caused fire from heaven to consume the provisions, as an acceptable offering to God, and then ascended up himself in the flame and vanished out of sight. Pyle.—This was a significant sign that he was the angel of the Lord himself, who formerly had appeared to Gideon and set fire to his sacrifice upon the rock, and now vanished in the flame by a fuller manifestation of his divinity. His name, Wonderful, is repeated among the magnificent titles applied in prophecy to the great Deliverer of the faithful by Isaiah. And from the fear of death expressed on seeing him by Manoah, and intimated by Gideon before, it appears that he was the same God who told Moses, “There shall no man see me and live,” or, the Son of God. Hales.—Gideon’s angel vanished at his sacrifice, but this in the sacrifice; that Manoah might at once see both the confirmation of his promise and the acceptance of his obedience. Manoah believed before and craved no sign to assure him; God voluntarily confirms it to him above his desire: “To him that hath shall be given:” where there are beginnings of faith the mercy of God will add perfection. Bp. H.
God’s acceptance of the offering intimates to what we owe the acceptance of all our offerings, even to the mediation of the Angel of the Covenant, who puts much incense to the prayers of saints, and so offers them before the throne (Rev. 8 : 3). Prayer is the ascent of the soul to God. But it is Christ in the heart by faith that makes it an offering of a sweet-smelling savor: without him our services are offensive smoke, but in him, acceptable flame. H.
22,23. The weaker vessel becomes the stronger; the logic of faith forms the true inference. As Manoah here showed great fear; so his wife, great faith. The wife’s trustfulness in God made her a juster reasoner than her husband. A. R. F.—The reason was good, “If the Lord were pleased to kill us he would not have received a burnt-offering from us.” God will not accept gifts where he intends punishment and professes hatred. “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.” If we can find assurance of God’s acceptance of our sacrifices, we may be sure he loves our persons. “If I incline to wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear me; but the Lord hath heard me.” Bp. H.
24. After Moses, the only eminent persons of the Old Testament whom we are permitted to know from their birth, are Samson, Samuel, and Solomon. Of the three the early life of Samuel is the best known. Of that of Samson we only know—and it is much to know—that “the child grew, and the Lord blessed him.” By this, having his destination in view, we may understand that the Lord gave evident proofs that the child was under his peculiar protection; and, by the gifts he bestowed, gave sign that he was preparing him for something great and extraordinary. Kit.
The small results ensuing upon Samson’s exploits disappoint the expectations which would naturally be entertained of one whose birth was so specially announced and ordered by God. His actions themselves, moreover, have the outward aspect of self-willed, fool-hardy, and venturesome feats of mere strength, and these in connection with discreditable alliances with heathen women. But his very failure to accomplish Israel’s deliverance, through his unfaithfulness to his Nazarite vow, in contrast to his extraordinary prowess when moved by the Spirit of God, qualified him the better to be an embodied reproof to the Israelites, whose calling was to be a nation of priests, though through apostasy they lost their power against the enemy. Samson was, in his own person, a lesson to teach Israel that her strength lay in separation from idols and complete consecration to Jehovah. On the other hand, Samson, as a Nazarite, vowed to Jehovah, was to begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines; and so, by his heroic strength, which was derived from faith in God and the Divine gift entrusted to him, he was fitted to instruct the slumbering nation how to awake and put on strength; he exhibited in his own person the might to which the people of God might attain, if only they would be faithful and whole-hearted toward their God. In a word, it is in his typical aspect toward Israel that we find the key to the character and history of Samson, the last of the judges so extraordinarily called by God, and the one in whom the power of Jehovah, exhibited so marvellously, found its culmination. A. R. F.
25. The Spirit of the Lord began to move him.** The communication of this Spirit under the Old Testament was generally made in the form of extraordinary and supernatural influence upon the human spirit. The expression used to denote this is usually “The Spirit of the Lord (Jehovah) came upon him.” The recipients and bearers of this Spirit were thereby endowed with the power to perform miraculous deeds, ability to prophesy, also with power to work miracles or to accomplish deeds which surpassed the courage and strength of the natural man. Kell.—Inspiration brought to Samson neither the grace of purity nor the gift of prophecy; but it gave him the special gifts which he needed for his special work. He would have been a nobler man if he had sought the Spirit of God also to help him in more spiritual ways. The receipt of spiritual gifts depends on the condition of our spirit. Samson was only rightly disposed to receive the Spirit at intervals. W. F. A.
The one lesson which stands out above the others and runs through the whole chapter is that of the conjugal relation of man and wife, which is set forth with inimitable simplicity and force. The holiness and happiness, the peace and union of countless homes, is due to the marriage law of the Gospel of Christ. But then this law must be kept in the spirit as well as in the letter. The conduct of Manoah’s wife after her first interview with the angel is a beautiful exemplification of this spirit in the wife: “Then the woman came and told her husband.” She had no secrets for the “man of God” which were to be hidden from her husband, nor had the angel any counsel to give which her husband was not to know of. It was on the second time of his appearing as on the first: “she made haste, and ran, and showed her husband, and said unto him, Behold, the man hath appeared unto me.” It is a very forcible lesson to the effect that no pretence of spiritual authority can justify interference with the laws of nature, which are the laws of God. The function of a confessor and spiritual director is incompatible with the Christian law of marriage, as it is with the “first commandment with promise,” when it stands between children and their parents. Nor is Manoah’s trust in his wife less conspicuous than her trust in him. Not a shadow of doubt as to the truth of her statement crossed his mind, not a shade of jealousy that the message came to her rather than to him. In the desire for further information his wisdom suggested prayer that the Lord would send again the man of God; but the language of his prayer was beautifully expressive of the union that was betwixt them two. “Let the man of God come again unto us, and teach us what we shall do unto the child.” And when the second time the angel appeared to the woman alone, he took it as the answer to his prayer. As she came quickly to him, so he quickly followed her. With manly courage he asked the questions which her feminine modesty had not dared to put, and appeared at once in his proper place, ordering and directing what was to be done with regard to the rites of hospitality and piety; and yet when his own fears were excited by having seen the angel of God, he sought counsel from his wife, and readily acquiesced in her pious trust in the mercy and loving-kindness of the Lord. And exactly the same perfect union between them appears many years afterward, when Samson was grown up (ch. 14 : 2-5), so that the whole passage is a beautiful idyl of conjugal love and concord. They both fulfil their proper parts with the utmost simplicity and propriety; they both contribute to the common stock of wedded happiness what each had to contribute; neither of them had one word of reproach or bitterness to the other; neither of them attempted to usurp the other’s place, or shrunk from occupying their own. And they have left for our study and imitation as beautiful an example of the mutual help and harmony of married life as is to be found in the whole range of Scripture. A. C. H.
14 : 1. Zorah, the town of Samson’s birth, was perched on one of the chief summits of this region, overlooking the plain. Only three miles to the southwest was Timnath, where he found his Philistine wife. Only some eight or ten miles in the same general direction, was, as seems most probable, the city of Gath; and no doubt his lawless sports at Timnath were speedily the talk in this princely city. The terror of his name, indeed, seems soon to have secured him the freedom of the country; for we find him once at Askelon, on the sea-coast, far from home, and then still farther south, at the royal city of Gaza. N. C. B.—Standing at Zorah, and looking across the valley further westward to the opposite crest, we can see the ruin of Tibnah, the ancient Timnath. It is not in the plain, but 740 feet above the sea; and Samson, in going to it from Zorah, would have to descend 700 feet into the valley and then reascend 350 feet. Vineyards and olives still line the sides of the hill (verse 5), and corn waves in the valley as when Samson turned the jackals loose with the firebrands, and the Philistines came up to Timnath and burned Samson’s wife and her father with fire. Timnath was an important place in later Jewish history, and the fourth of the military cities at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. It is now desolate. Tristram.
3. I wish Manoah could speak so loud that all our Israelites might hear him: “Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all God’s people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?”
If religion be any other than a cypher, how dare we not regard it in our most important choice? Is she a fair Philistine? Why is not this deformity of the soul more powerful to dissuade us than the beauty of the face or of metal to allure us? Bp. H.
4. But his father and his mother knew not that it was of the Lord that he [Samson] sought an occasion against the Philistines.** Samson, in the old fleshy nature, was seeking his own self-gratification: but the higher impulses in him from the Spirit of God, in concert with the Providence of God, were seeking an opportunity of quarrelling with, and so delivering Israel from the Philistines. Whatever may have been Samson’s carnal purpose, in effect he sought an occasion against the oppressors. A. R. F.
The special design of God in raising up Samson as a deliverer seems to have been to baffle the power of the whole Philistine nation by the prowess of a single individual. In order that the contest might be carried on in this way, it was necessary that the entire opposition of the Philistines should be concentrated, as far as possible, against the person of Samson, so as to illustrate most signally the power of God in the overthrow of his enemies. But how could this result be brought about except by means of some private quarrel between Samson and the enemy with which he was to contend? For at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel. Added in order to intimate the general moving cause which prompted Samson to exert himself in behalf of his people. They were suffering under the despotic and tyrannical sway of their oppressors. It was in this fact that a justification was to be sought for the commencement of hostilities. Bush.
8. Samson in slaying the lion, and the bees in swarming in its carcase, did things which were links in the chain of events which God foresaw, or fore-ordained, as he did also the effects of Samson’s marriage with the Philistine. But just as the bees only followed their instinct in building their hive, so Samson, in fixing his affections on the Timnathite, and in attacking the lion, and in eating the honey, and in propounding the riddle, and in avenging himself for his wife’s treachery, was merely following the bent of his own inclinations and the leading of his own will, though in so doing he was bringing about God’s purpose for the deliverance of Israel. The most trivial events may be necessary links in the great chain; and while men are blindly following their own inclinations, with little thought and no knowledge of what will come of them, God is making use of them with unerring wisdom to work out his own eternal purposes for the good of his people and for the glory of his own great name. A. C. H.
12. The circumstances of the wedding-feast in Timnath are in keeping with such occasions at the present day. Even the weddings of ordinary people are celebrated with great rejoicings, which are kept up several days. The games and sports, also, by which the companions of the bridegroom pass away the time, are not unlike those mentioned in the fourteenth chapter of Judges, and such occasions frequently end in quarrels, and even bloodshed. Thompson.
17. Whom the lion could not conquer, the tears of a woman have conquered. Adam the perfectest man, Samson the strongest man, Solomon the wisest man, were betrayed with the flattery of their helpers. As there is no comfort comparable to a faithful yoke-fellow, so woe be to him who is matched with a Philistine. Bp. H.
Samson had been brought up in the faith of the Lord God of Israel. He was in covenant with him by circumcision. His religious duty was to love the Lord his God with all his heart, and to serve him alone. His wife did not believe in the Lord, but was a worshipper of Dagon. There could therefore be no union for them in that great bond of union which is the living God. They had nothing in common to cement their hearts and interests together, and to bind their life into one. He was pleased with her beauty, and she was gratified by his admiration. That was all. And how long would that last? What strong temptation, what powerful motive of action, what great provocation, would those influences be able to withstand? What promise did they give of unity of sentiment and harmony of conduct amid the intricacies of conflicting duties? One week in their case was sufficient to supply the answer to these questions. A betrayed husband, a deserted wife, discord, strife, bloodshed, were the fruit of seven days of this ill-assorted union. The wife married to another husband is cut off by murderous hands in the prime of her youth and beauty. The husband married to another wife is again betrayed and given up to his enemies to be mocked, and blinded, and to die. We seem, therefore, to be taught by the ill-starred marriage of Samson with the Timnathite, as forcibly as by the blessed union of his father and mother, what to seek and what to avoid in choosing a partner for life. The union of two souls in the love of God and in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ; the union of two minds in all rational and sober pursuits, whether intellectual, political, or social; the identity of interests; the community of purpose to make the most of what God has given to each for the common stock of happiness; the care of each for the other as the first human duty, and the faithfulness of each to the other in the whole series of actions, from the least to the greatest —this is the ideal of Christian wedlock to which we are led by the failures of the one as well as by the virtues of the other. A. C. H.
15:6. Burnt her and her father with fire. A most inhuman and barbarous act on the part of its perpetrators, yet wonderfully overruled in the Providence of God to chastise the guilty. The Philistines had threatened Samson’s wife that if she did not obtain and disclose her husband’s secret, they would burn her and her father’s house with fire. She, to save herself and oblige her countrymen, betrayed her husband; and now by so doing brought upon herself the very doom which she so studiously sought to avoid! Bush.—How many, to shun pain and danger, have yielded to evil, and in the long run have been met in the teeth with that mischief which they had hoped to have left behind them! How many, in a desire to eschew the shame of men, have fallen into the confusion of God! Both good and evil are sure paymasters at the last. Bp. H.
SAMSON SLAYS A THOUSAND PHILISTINES AT LEHI. HIS ESCAPE FROM GAZA. SAMSON WITH DELILAH. CAPTURE AND IMPRISONMENT; REPENTANCE AND FINAL VICTORY. DEATH, BURIAL, AND CHARACTER.