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judge from the whole history, was the humble, earnest piety which, despite much
apostasy, still lingered in Israel.
It is to be observed that, like Sarah in the Old, and the mother of the Baptist in the New
Testament, Manoah's wife was barren. For the child about to be born was not only to be
God-devoted but God-given - and that in another sense even from his contemporary,
Samuel, who had been God-asked of his mother. But in this case the Angel of the
Covenant Himself came to announce the birth of a child, who should be "a Nazarite
unto God from the womb," and who as such should "begin to deliver Israel out of the
hand of the Philistines."^306
Accordingly, He laid on the mother, and still more fully on the unborn child, the
Nazarite obligations as these are detailed in Numbers 6:1-8, with the exception of that
against defilement by contact with the dead, which evidently would have been
incompatible with his future history.
The appearance of the Angel and His unnamedness had carried to the woman thoughts
of the Divine, though she regarded the apparition as merely that of a man of God.
Manoah had not been present; but in answer to his prayer a second apparition was
vouchsafed. It added nothing to their previous knowledge, except the revelation of the
real character of Him Who had spoken to them. For, when Manoah proposed to
entertain his guest, he learned that He would not eat of his food, and that His name was
"Wonderful." The latter, of course, in the sense of designating His character and
working, for, as in the parallel passage, Isaiah 9:6, such names refer not to the being and
nature of the Messiah, but to His activity and manifestation - not to what He is, but to
what He does. As suggested by the Angel, Manoah now brought a burnt-offering unto
Jehovah - for, wherever He manifested Himself, there sacrifice and service might be
offered. And when the Angel "did wondrously;" when fire leaped from the altar, and the
Angel ascended in the flame that consumed the burnt-offering, then Manoah and his
wife, recognizing His nature, fell worshipping on the ground. No further revelation was
granted them; but when Manoah, in the spirit of the Old Testament, feared lest their
vision of God might render it impossible for them to live on earth, his wife, more fully
enlightened, strove to allay such doubts by the inference, that what God had begun in
grace He would not end in judgment. An inference this, applying to all analogous cases
in the spiritual history of God's people. And so months of patient, obedient waiting
ensued, when at last the promised child was born, and obtained the name of Samson, or
rather (in the Hebrew) Shimshon.^307 His calling soon appeared, for as the child grew up
under the special blessing of the Lord, "the Spirit of Jehovah began to impel him in the
camp of Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol."^308
(^)