Judg. 13:2–7. Whilst the Israelites were given into the hands of
the Philistines on account of their sins, and were also severely oppressed in
Gilead on the part of the Ammonites, the angel of the Lord appeared to the wife
of Manoah, a Danite from Zorea, i.e.,
Sur’a, on the western slope of the
mountains of Judah (see at Josh. 15:33). Mishpachath
Dani (the family of the Danites) is used interchangeably with shebet Dani (the tribe of the Danites:
see Judg. 18:2, 11, and 18:1, 30), which may be explained on this ground, that
according to Num. 26:42, 43, all the Danites formed but one family, viz., the
family of the Shuhamites. The angel of the Lord announced to this woman, who
was barren, “Thou wilt conceive and bear
a son. And now beware, drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean:
for, behold, thou wilt conceive and bear a son, and no razor shall come upon
his head; for a vowed man of God (Nazir)
will the boy be from his mother’s womb,”
i.e., his whole life long, “to the day of
his death,” as the angel expressly affirmed, according to v. 7. The three
prohibitions which the angel of the Lord imposed upon the woman were the three
things which distinguished the condition of a Nazarite (see at Num. 6:1–8, and
the explanation given there of the Nazarite vow). The only other thing
mentioned in the Mosaic law is the warning against defilement from contact with
the dead, which does not seem to have been enforced in the case of Samson. When
the angel added still further, “And he
(the Nazarite) will begin to deliver
Israel out of the hand of the Philistines,” he no doubt intended to show
that his power to effect this deliverance would be closely connected with his
condition as a Nazarite. The promised son was to be a Nazarite all his life
long, because he was to begin to deliver Israel out of the power of his foes.
And in order that he might be so, his mother was to share in the renunciations
of the Nazarite vow during the time of her pregnancy. Whilst the appearance of
the angel of the Lord contained the practical pledge that the Lord still
acknowledged His people, though He had given them into the hands of their
enemies; the message of the angel contained this lesson and warning for Israel,
that it could only obtain deliverance from its foes by seeking after a life of
consecration to the Lord, such as the Nazarites pursued, so as to realize the
idea of the priestly character to which Israel had been called as the people of
Jehovah, by abstinence from the deliciae
carnis, and everything that was unclean, as being emanations of sin, and
also by a complete self-surrender to the Lord (see Pentateuch, p. 674). (Carl
Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary
on the Old Testament, 10 vols. [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1996), 2:292-93)
