We have seen in earlier articles that the writer of Judges makes masterly use of repetition and near-repetition to convey his message. We find another example of this in Judges 13, as the narrative of Samson’s life begins. The chapter opens in a way that is now very familiar to us: “And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years” (v1).1 “Again,” we are following the old, weary cycle of disobedience and bondage. But then, the pattern breaks. Earlier in the book, bondage was followed by the cry of the nation and divine deliverance. Here, in the story of the final judge, Israel has fallen so far that their deliverance into the hands of the Philistines for forty years elicits no cry of despair, still less of repentance. What is hinted at here is seen in full-blown sadness in chapter 15: The men of Judah who, at the beginning of the book, had been the military champions of Judah are now prepared to betray Samson rather than risk confrontation with the Philistines. They have, as John Milton so memorably expressed it, come “to love bondage more than liberty – bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.”
So low is Israel’s condition that God has to take the initiative. Even in the context of a book that emphasises God’s grace to His undeserving people, it is remarkable that God takes the initiative, providing a deliverer unasked and, it seems, unwanted. Here, too, we find the pattern of the earlier judges broken. Previously in the book, God has been able to raise up judges from among the people. Unexpected though they may have been, and flawed though they certainly were, yet elevated and empowered by God, they were able to bring His people a greater or lesser degree of deliverance. Not now. Now, there seems to be no man among the nation that God can use. If a deliverer is to be provided, he must be grown from scratch. And for that, God needed a godly couple. Hope for the future, then as now, was found in the homes of God’s people.
Manoah and his wife do seem to have been a godly couple, though there are indications in the text that they have not been immune from the spiritual decline of the nation as a whole. Indeed, they parallel its lassitude. In contrast to the nearly contemporaneous Hannah, who felt her barrenness deeply, we get hardly a hint of any such anguish in this home; if there is a hint, it is found in Manoah’s words in 13:12: “Now let thy words come to pass,” but that is a fairly anaemic statement when compared to the depths of Hannah’s distress. It is notable, too, that it is only at the very end of their exchange with the Angel of the Lord that the couple refer to Jehovah rather than to Elohim; like the nation, they had perhaps lost sight of their covenant relationship with God. It is noticeable, too, that the Angel warns Manoah’s wife to avoid not just the drinking of wine or strong drink, but the eating of “any unclean thing” (v14), a prohibition that should have been redundant for any Israelite.
The couple, then, like most of us, were not paragons of perfection, but Samson’s mother in particular seems to have been marked by a good measure of spiritual intelligence. It is significant that the Angel appears first to her rather than to Manoah, and even more significant that she takes priority again in his second appearing. When the Angel does appear, she does what Eve did not and, with a proper regard for headship, goes immediately to tell her husband. And the narrative suggests that she respected Manoah’s headship in spite of the fact that he was less spiritual than she. It is striking that the Angel ignores or denies Manoah’s requests, and, at the end of chapter 13, her spiritual common sense and confidence in God’s character stand in fairly stark contrast to Manoah’s panicky response.
The spirituality of Samson’s mother is an important part of this story. Samson’s life will be shaped by his contacts with women. One of these, the harlot of Gaza, makes only a very brief appearance, but the other three exert tremendous influence on his life. Of those three, Delilah (who is, significantly, the only one named) is a villain, whose mercenary betrayal of Samson has made her name a byword for treachery, even amongst those who have never opened the book of Judges. Samson’s wife is a victim, one of the sad figures of a book where the decline of society is measured, as it is in our own day, by oppression of and violence against women. This poor woman is never more than an object – desired by Samson, bullied by the Philistines, given to a stranger, and ultimately and horribly immolated as collateral damage in Samson’s quarrel with the Philistines. By contrast, Samson’s mother is a virtuous woman, and her prominence in the narrative, along with that of figures such as Achsah, Deborah and Jael, emphasises that the negative way in which other female characters are portrayed is a reflection of prevailing conditions, rather than the artefact of a misogynistic narrator. It is worth mentioning that in our own increasingly misogynistic culture, Christian men should be careful to treat women with respect, “giving honour unto … the weaker vessel” (1Pe 3:7), treating “the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity” (1Ti 5:2).
Notwithstanding their difference in spirituality and temperament, Manoah and his wife were united in their responsibility to care for the promised child. Manoah’s question, especially as rendered in the King James Version, is an appropriate – indeed essential – prayer for every Christian couple who have been blessed with children: “How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him?” (13:12). Manoah understood that he and his wife bore a heavy burden of responsibility if Samson was to reach his potential and to fulfil God’s purpose for him. The child would need to be ordered; his upbringing could not be haphazard. Nor was it to be informed by Philistine philosophies of childrearing. Alternative renderings of Manoah’s question include: “What is to be the rule that governs the boy’s life and work?” (NIV) and “What shall be the judgment governing the boy and his work?” (LSB), both of which capture Manoah’s desire for a divine revelation to direct the rearing of Samson. Amidst the conflicting theories of childrearing that proliferate in print and online, we need to look not only to God to guide us in the responsibility of parenting, but to His Word for the rule that will govern our children’s lives.
The significance of the Angel’s response to Manoah’s question should not be missed. Rather than directly answering Manoah’s questions, the heavenly Visitor’s answer reiterates the responsibilities of Samson’s mother: “Of all that I said unto the 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 observe” (13:13-14). The Angel’s response carries an important and sobering implication: The surest way to order our children’s lives correctly is to order our own in accordance with the Word of God.
Manoah and his wife had a shared responsibility. But there was a special responsibility that fell on Samson’s mother. And it fell on her, in part, as a consequence of biology. We live in an age where male and female, father and mother, are regarded as fungible, but the Bible still makes distinctions between the sexes and still places unique responsibility on mothers “to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands” (Titus 2:4-5). This should not obscure the fact that fathers are responsible to bring up children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph 6:4). Nor should the responsible father use it as an excuse to avoid taking his turn when a diaper needs to be changed. However, we should realise the importance of the mother’s role and recognise that God has fitted her biologically and psychologically for that role. Young sister, if God has entrusted you with a child, He has given you a most precious stewardship. Do not allow the pressure of society or the expectations of your friends rob you of the privilege of raising a child for God. The opportunity to do so is very, very brief and the time to regret mistaken priorities very long indeed.
These are some of the lessons in parenting that we can learn from Manoah and his wife. But their home has another lesson for those of us who have children and those who do not. Although Manoah’s offer of hospitality to the Angel was declined, his impulse to open his home and make ready a kid (13:15) is surely praiseworthy. It will become more so when we turn the pages of our Bible to chapter 19 and see the appalling distortion of hospitality that took place in the streets of Gibeah. Whatever else we can say about Manoah, he is worthy of imitation in this: He was prepared to open his home and sacrifice his goods to show hospitality to a man of God.
We should be too. The New Testament is clear in its precepts about our responsibility to show hospitality; it is a specific requirement for elders (1Ti 3:2; Titus 1:8), but every one of us is required to be “given to hospitality” (Rom 12:13), to “use hospitality one to another without grudging” (1Pe 4:9), and to remember to “entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Heb 13:2). Not only so, but it is impossible to read the closing chapters of Paul’s epistles or John’s second and third epistles without appreciating the role that hospitality played in the spread of Christianity in the first century. Much has changed in the centuries since then, but God’s work still benefits from godly couples who are prepared ungrudgingly to make ready a kid and to open their homes for the benefit of God’s people.
Manoah and his wife lived in dark days when oppression had become the norm and freedom almost unthinkable. In their own barrenness they reproduced in miniature the plight of the nation. Yet through their home, God’s grace would pierce His people’s lethargy, and they would have the privilege of raising a child who, for all the disappointments of his later life, would nevertheless begin to deliver God’s people from their bondage. God still works in the homes of His people, and parents hold the future of testimony in their hands. May God give us the grace to order our children so that they may reach their full potential for Him.
1 Bible quotations in this article are from the KJV unless otherwise noted.
