Holey Writ

The following was written in November of 2008 (though I have here made some revisions) for a college Hermeneutics class I was in. The assignment was an exercise in putting to use an approach to exegesis which we had just learned; we were encouraged to be “playful” and to point out any gaps or problems in the Biblical text, diving into them in the hopes of gaining new insight.

When I sit down to read Judges 13, I expect to find a narrative of the events leading to the birth of Samson. Instead, I am confronted with several diversions which enliven what would normally be a very straightforward passage:

A barren woman receives a visit from an angel telling her she will bear a son; This is nothing we have not heard before, several times.

Perhaps the author was aware of the cliché inherent in his subject matter and, presented with a literary dilemma, attempted to either placate or distract the reader by injecting a mixture of unrelated elements selected to complicate the story. This would explain the presence of the comical sexist interplay between the story’s male and female characters.

This theme is evident even in the initial setting-description; the author introduces Manoah in v. 2 as the first character: we are told he is from Zorah and of the family of the Danites, a respectable man in contrast to his unnamed wife of whom the only description is the unflattering “[she] was barren and had no children”. Yet in v. 3 the action begins with the wife taking center stage. This is a clever attempt by the author to preoccupy his audience with thoughts of gender-egalitarianism in order to slip into miraculous-birth-narrative-mode while they aren’t looking.

This scheme does not end here. After receiving her heavenly message, the subservient Mrs. Manoah promptly reports back to her husband, who passive-aggressively proceeds to pray that God would send the angel a second time because he has no idea what they are supposed to do, since his wife did not bother to so much as get the angel’s name (v. 6). When the angel does reappear to Manoah’s wife, she runs to get her husband, either in fear of botching up another lone angel-encounter, or to make her chauvinistic husband happy. Either way, Manoah does not regard his wife as very trustworthy and decides he had better go and personally ask the “man” who he is.

Here enters another chaotic element into the mix: an unhelpfully redundant angel. He had already in v. 3 so kindly assisted the woman by informing her “you are barren and have borne no children”. Here the angel reprises his role by completely ignoring Manoah’s question as to what the boy’s life will consist of, choosing instead to repeat exactly what he had already said to the woman about making sure not to drink wine. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia defines angels as “God’s messengers to men, and...agents who carry out His will”. Perhaps it was this lack of assistive message-giving that led Manoah to persist in wondering if this man was really an angel (v. 16).

As if to add further insult to injury, the angel then refuses to eat when Manoah offers him a young goat, suggesting instead that he offer it to YHWH. Why does he do this? It certainly is not because he is physically incapable of eating in the same way as did Abraham’s three visitors in Genesis 18. I say either he was not in the mood for goat that afternoon or he wanted to take the opportunity to show off by ascending in the flame of the altar, which would be more consistent with his prior stubborn character, refusing to give his name (v. 18). But of course my angel-analysis would fall apart if I, as some do, were to interpret this man, who calls his own name “wonderful”, as an Old Testament appearance of Jesus Christ. I would then quickly go back and reinterpret Him, now finding out how all of my previous criticisms are actually strengths.

What is the point of this chapter? Does it have any significance to anything concerning the actual life of Judge Samson? Or was it simply inserted as an interesting prelude to a boring “the woman bore a son and called his name Samson” (v. 24)? Perhaps the author did not think the life of Samson itself to be sufficiently interesting. Could v. 19 (“And [the angel of YHWH] did a wondrous thing”) be an attempt by the author to make sure the reader does not miss the novelty of what he is about to write?

Answers to these questions would be hard—if not impossible—to obtain, since the author is not only unknown, but dead. For the purpose of my reading, however, it really does not matter either way; as long as I am simultaneously learning about the history of God’s interaction with His people and enjoying some good-old-fashioned storytelling, I am quite happy.

But there is at least one timeless lesson to be learned from the twenty-third verse of this chapter. Manoah, in fearful reaction to the realization that he and his wife have “seen God”, exclaims that they will “surely die”. His wife steps in with the reassuring explanation that any such death would of course be a complete contradiction of the message God had just given to them about raising a son in the near future. The lesson is this: If you’re not in the habit of listening to any of your wife’s opinions, maybe you should start.