Judges 13 Bible Study / Podcast

Samson, the Last Judge and the Setting of Judges 13

So, this morning we're going to be studying Judges chapter 13. This chapter covers the events leading up to the birth of Samson. Samson may be the most well-known of all the judges. I think just about everyone has heard the story of Samson and Delilah.

Samson is the last judge in the book. Samuel is technically the last judge in Israel, but as far as the book of Judges, Samson is the last judge. And then you get after Samuel in 1 Samuel, the book, you get into the time of the monarchy with King Saul and then David and Solomon and so on.

So, Samson, really he's an intriguing figure. He will be a lifelong Nazirite, which explains the long hair. And for whatever reason, the Lord tied Samson's superhuman strength to his hair. Again, if you know the story of Samson and Delilah, you know that.

So, the last verse here in chapter 13 mentions how the spirit of the Lord came upon Samson, or he began to move upon him. Samson was a fierce warrior. He's from the tribe of Dan. And the main enemy of Israel at the time was the Philistines.

Samson's life was marked not only by supernatural strength, there were also supernatural events surrounding his birth. So, we're going to read about the events leading up to the birth of Samson. Judges chapter 13, we'll start in verse 1.

Again, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years. Now, there was a certain man from Zohar of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah, and his wife was barren and had no children.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her,.

Indeed now, you are barren and have born no children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. Now, therefore, please be careful not to drink wine or similar drink, and not to eat anything unclean. For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son, and no razor shall come upon his head.

For the child should be a Nazarite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

So, the woman came and told her husband.

Man of God came to me, and his countenance was like the countenance of the angel of God. Very awesome, but I did not ask him where he was from, and he did not tell me his name. And he said to me, Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son.

Now, drink no wine or similar drink, nor eat anything unclean. For the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death.

Then Manoah prayed to the Lord and said, Oh, my Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come to us again and teach us what we shall do for the child who will be born.

The Angel of the LORD as a Christophany and the Trinity

Okay, we'll stop there and pick up in just a little while, but just cover some of the events surrounding this and what is a Nazarite, and there's some things we have to touch on. So, first of all, the man of God who visits the wife of Manoah, chapter 13, identifies him as the angel of the Lord.

And we've talked about this before in the book of Judges, the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. It's generally accepted that this is what you'd call a Christophany or a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ in the Old Testament.

Later, Manoah, who's the father of Samson, I don't think we get his mother's name. But Manoah, after seeing the angel, he says, We have seen God. After he realizes who the man was, he realizes he was the angel of the Lord.

Manoah says, We have seen God. And he was fearful for his life. So this is yet another example, just like with Moses at the burning bush, that the angel of the Lord is both identified as God, and yet he is distinct from God at the same time.

He is called God, but he is also God's messenger. So how can that be true? How can he be God and yet distinct from God at the same time? Well, John chapter 1, verse 1 says about Christ that in the beginning, he, the word, that's John's title for Christ, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

And then in verse 14, John says how the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So the point is, in the gospel of John, Jesus is said to be both God and yet distinct from God at the same time, just like the angel of the Lord was God and yet distinct from God.

So the Christian understanding of the Trinity, that there is one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you know, tri-unity, the three in one, that Jesus is both God and yet he is not God the Father, that is how we would understand this.

So there are also some parallels getting into the story of Samson. You'll see this, I think next week we'll probably cover the next two chapters, at least that's the plan at the moment. But when you get into the life of Samson, there are some parallels between him and Jesus.

Now, if you accept that Jesus came or Christ came, a pre-incarnate Christ came to announce his birth, there's a connection there, but there are some parallels between Samson and Jesus. And by the way, long hair is not one of them.

Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that Jesus had long hair. The evidence would be to the contrary. That's just the artist's rendering that unfortunately stuck. But what are the parallels? Well, remember, Jesus, of course, was born of a virgin.

Samson was born to a woman who was barren. So not exactly the same thing, but similar that this is a miraculous birth. And of course, an angel of the Lord visited Mary to tell her of her giving birth to Jesus, just like the angel of the Lord would be a different angel, I suppose.

But the angel visits the mother of Samson, Gabriel visits Mary. Now, there are a lot of things about Samson, okay? There's some parallels, but there are some things where Samson is totally unlike Jesus.

Obviously, Samson is, we talked about this last week, that there's kind of a downgrade as you go through the book of Judges. Things started out well, Othniel and Ehud and Deborah, they achieved long lasting peace and the judges seemed to have a good moral character.

And then things kind of changed with Gideon. And then you see the judges practicing polygamy. And Samson really has a questionable character at times. So there's ways he's a type of Christ. And then obviously, there's ways where he's totally unlike Christ.

But that's true for any Old Testament type of Christ or foreshadowing. David would be the most clear picture of a type of Christ in the Old Testament. He's the Lord's anointed after all. And yet David did a lot of wrong things.

But remember, the point is the whole Old Testament speaks about Jesus. So Jesus is pictured somehow in the book of Judges. And I believe even in the story of Samson. So I would argue Christ is present here as the angel of the Lord.

And even when you consider Samson's death, it in a sense is a sacrificial death. Not totally unlike the death of Christ as a sacrificial death. So all of that to say, we should always read the scripture.

And just as we look for application, we should also look for how it speaks and teaches us about Christ. So let's look at chapter 13 again. It begins in verse one. Again, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.

And the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years. Now, isn't this the same old story? This is the cycle. Israel is obeying God. Times are good. Things are going well. After a while of that, they take it for granted.

They slide into idolatry. God delivers them into the hands of their enemies. Things get bad. And when things get bad, it's then and only then that they cry out to the Lord. And then God raises up a judge to deliver them.

You say, well, you've repeated that about a dozen times going through the book of Judges. Yes, I have. And it's so that you will remember. That's the cycle in the book of Judges. So here God is going to raise up Samson to deliver them.

And I have to say, looking for some application, while it is a negative thing to constantly for a nation, for the nation of Israel, to constantly be in this cycle of backsliding and then coming back. And there's a revival and then they backslide again.

There is one good thing we could say. At least Israel at times experienced revival. You know, yeah, they had, it was a cycle and it didn't last. But at least they had revival. At least at times they did turn back to the Lord.

As, and I mentioned that because as of the moment of this recording, and as this program is airing live on radio, it's February 2023. There is a lot of talk right now. Today's the 22nd. There's a lot of talk right now about the Asbury revival.

You've probably heard about this. Well, maybe, you know, maybe a group of people off somewhere are getting fired up for God. And Christians like seeing that, of course. And if you want to call that revival, fine.

But biblically revival is more of what we would call reformation. Israel as a nation, when they experienced, when Israel experienced revival, it was the nation turning back to God. It was on a large scale.

Again, I suppose a local church could experience revival and that's great. But, you know, real revival as, you know, you typically think of it in the Bible. Okay. You could look at Peter preaching and 3000 people get saved in one day.

Now, okay. That's a revival. And it had a long lasting impact, but Israel as a nation, when they experienced revival, they turned back to God as a whole. They turned back to the Lord. This is the kind of thing that people alive today here in the United States.

We have, we've simply not seen that the United States, at least up until this moment is not in a cycle of disobedience and then revival and then disobedience and then revival. That's not what we are going through.

We just seem to be on the steady decline with no signs of turning around. At least Israel turned around. Now there's a movie in theaters right now, Jesus revolution, or at least it's going to be in theaters tomorrow.

I think someone will say, well, you know, that's not true. America has gone through revival. We had the fourth great awakening in the 1960s, 1970s, during the Jesus people movement. That was a real revival, but did it actually turn the nation back to God?

No, it didn't. Since the 1960s, since the 1970s, our nation has become less godly, not more godly. So the point is not to say that God isn't at work here. He didn't work in this situation. The point is when you hear the word revival, you have to define terms and you have to sort of take it with a grain of salt because we simply are not seeing today a complete region or a nation just turning back to the Lord.

Again, that might happen in a local church. It might happen in a group of churches. And if, and when it does, we praise the Lord for that. But we're just not seeing revival on a large scale like we are, or like we do here in the book of Judges.

Remember, the nation turned back to God. So here in Judges, that's what the Lord is in the process of doing. He is going to raise up a deliverer. He is going to raise, and then another word for deliverer, a synonym is a savior.

Samson was a type of savior. He saved Israel from the Philistines. And I think it needs to be said, the men that the Lord uses oftentimes, certainly this is true in the Old Testament, it seems more clear in the Old Testament, but the men that the Lord uses were deeply flawed.

Sometimes you get the idea from listening to preachers, you listen to a pastor and you hear what he's saying, and you get the idea that, well, in order for God to use somebody, I mean, you need to be just like near perfect.

If there's any problem with a person, God can't use you, you have to be, no, listen, God uses all sorts of people. Samson is extremely flawed. Samson being perhaps the most clear example of this, but the call on his life, however, was he was to be holy.

Samson was to be a Nazarite from birth, actually from the womb. We'll touch on what that means in a second. So the angel of the Lord, God used Samson, amen? He did, despite all his problems that we're going to read about next week.

The angel of the Lord visits the wife of Manoah, Samson's mother, and he tells her in verse four, not to drink any wine or to eat anything unclean. The reason why is because she would be with child. So this child, Samson, the angel told her that he will be a Nazarite, and I never really picked up on this before, but it says he would be a Nazarite from the womb, not from birth, but from the womb.

So that's why she can't ingest any wine or anything, because it's not that he's okay when he, when he's growing up as a baby, he's going to be a Nazarite, never give him a haircut. No, it's from the womb.

So even his mother had to abstain from these things. So this was a way of saying, being a Nazarite, that the child, Samson, he shall be set apart, fully set apart unto God, and the Lord will use him. This was the promise.

The Lord will use him to deliver the children of Israel. So Samson's life, although he did not always display this in his life, his life was to be fully consecrated unto the service of God. And Samson was committed to the service of God.

But again, he didn't live a, like a perfect upstanding life. And it just shows you that God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick, as they say. So what is this Nazarite vow all about? Just a reminder of this.

Many of you listening know certain things about the Nazarite vow. It includes, mainly, you couldn't drink wine or you'd have to abstain from all other grape products. So no grapes, no wine. That was one thing.

A Nazarite could not cut their hair. So Samson had long hair. And then the third thing, a Nazarite could not become unclean or ritually impure. He could not touch a corpse. These were certain things a Nazarite being set apart.

He couldn't do those things. So the Nazarite vow is first mentioned in Numbers chapter six, and the word Nazarite means to be separate, to separate. And that's what holiness is. It's not sinless perfection in one's life because all of God's people are holy.

Christians are saints. It doesn't mean they're sinless and perfect. Not that that's an excuse not to be. But I mean, the reality is people are flawed, but holiness is to be set apart from God. Samson is separated from his mother's womb, separated unto the service of Jehovah God.

Other notable Nazarites were the prophet Samuel and John the Baptist. Jesus, a lot of confusion about this. Jesus was not a Nazarite. Jesus was a Nazarene. He came from the city of Nazareth. So the apostle Paul did take a Nazarite vow, but that was only for a short time.

Anyway, with Samson, this ties into the story with Delilah and the cutting off of his hair. Remember, Samson could not ever cut his hair and the angel appeared to Samson's mother only to tell her these things.

His father did not get the word. So Manoah, the angel comes, tells her these things and Manoah isn't there. So the angel departs. And then when Manoah finds out about this, of course, what's his reaction?

Well, he wants to see the angel. Look at verse six. So this is Judges 13, verse six, excuse me. It says, a man of God. So Samson's mother says, a man of God came to me and his countenance was like the countenance of the angel of God.

It was very awesome. So Manoah's response is, well, I want to see him. So he says in verse eight, oh, my Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come to us again and teach us what we shall do for the child who will be born.

And God says, listened to the voice of Manoah and the angel of God came to the woman again as she was sitting in the field. But Manoah, her husband was not with her. So that's got to be frustrating because Manoah wants to see this.

Then the woman ran in haste and told her husband and said, look, the man who came to me the other day has now appeared to me. So Manoah, verse 11, arose and followed his wife. And when he came to the man, he said to him, are you the man who spoke to this woman?

And he said, I am. Manoah said, now let your words come to pass. What will be the boy's rule of life and his work? So the angel of the Lord said to Manoah of all that I said to the woman, let her be careful.

She may not eat anything that comes from the vine, nor may she drink wine or similar drink or eat anything unclean. All that I commanded her, let her observe. Then Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, not realizing yet that he is the angel of the Lord.

He says, please let us detain you and we will prepare a young goat for you. But the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, though you detain me, I will not eat your food. But if you offer a burnt offering, you must offer it to the Lord.

That's capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. You must offer it to Jehovah. You must offer it to, or as people say today, Yahweh. Don't offer it to me, offer it to him. So I thought he is God. Well, hold on.

And then it says for Manoah did not know that he was the angel of the Lord. So the angel says, offer it to God because Manoah didn't realize he's the angel of the Lord. So this further shows us that in the Bible angels, number one, when they visit people here on earth, angels appear as men.

Remember Hebrews 13 verse two says, do not forget to entertain strangers for by doing so by so doing some unwittingly entertained angels. So Manoah doesn't realize who he is talking to. For all he knows, this man is a prophet.

He may suspect he's an angel, but he doesn't really know that. And because he thinks he's offering it perhaps to a prophet, to a man, the angel of the Lord refuses to accept it because an offering would only be acceptable to God.

And Manoah does not, that's not where his heart is. He's not offering it to God. He's offering it to what he thinks is a man. Verse 17, then Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, what is your name? That when your words come to pass, we may honor you.

And notice what he says, the angel of the Lord said to him, why do you ask my name? Seeing it is wonderful. Now, if you've been part of the church for some length of time, you're probably familiar with the hymn titled, his name is wonderful, right?

You've probably heard this. You've sang, his name is wonderful. Presumably, right? That would be based on this passage. Of course, the prophet Isaiah chapter nine, verse six says about the Christ that he shall be called wonderful, counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace.

So he asked him his name and he says, well, it's wonderful. Meaning it's too wonderful for you. It's a secret. That's really what he's getting at. This is very similar to when Jacob wrestled with God in Genesis 32.

Remember, he asked him his name and received no answer. So his name is wonderful. The name of Jesus is, well, it is wonderful, but it's also being kept secret here and it's wonderful in the sense that it would inspire you to what it would cause you to be in awe or to wonder.

We'll talk about that in a second. Just the meaning of these words, verse 19. So after this, Manoa took the young goat with the grain offering and offered it upon the rock to the Lord. And he did a wondrous thing while Manoa and his wife looked on.

It happened as the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar. And when Manoa and his wife saw this, they fell on their faces to the ground. When the angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoa and his wife, then Manoa knew that he was the angel of the Lord.

So they're just, they're frightened because by ascending in the flame of the altar, the angel of the Lord demonstrates at least three things. Number one, this was a sure way to reveal his identity. Number two, this lets them know the sacrifice had been accepted.

And then number three, it gives them further confidence that the prophecy about the child Samson will be fulfilled. A baby would be born to this barren woman and her son would grow up and be mightily used by God.

So this was just an amazing experience. It really is wonderful in the sense that it inspired wonder. I'm sure they spent many days and many nights thinking about this event. Another word that the scripture uses is the word awesome.

You know, we sort of throw around the word awesome today, very loosely. Oh yeah, that's awesome. Well, actually originally it meant that you would, you would stand in awe of something like you couldn't believe your eyes.

It's wonderful. You're just in disbelief almost. That's probably not the best word for it, but maybe I don't, I don't know. You're just, you can't comprehend what just happened. Another word, the King James version at least uses is the word terrible.

If memory serves me correctly, there's a verse in the King James version that talks about how God is very terrible. You know, not that he's bad, rather being in the presence of the Lord invokes terror.

And that's the way Manoah reacts. He's, he's terrified. I mean, if you saw a man ascend and you know, you have a fire going and he just goes into the middle of it and ascends up into heaven. I mean, you're going to be pretty frightened.

Verse 22, and Manoah said to his wife, we shall surely die. Why? Because we have seen God. And then his wife sort of acts as the voice of reason. I'm sure she's frightened too, but she says to him, Manoah, you know, if, if the Lord had desired to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from our hands, nor would he have shown us all these things.

Like, why would he come here and do all this just to kill us? That doesn't make any sense. So the woman, verse 24 says, so the woman bore a son and called his name Samson and the child grew in the Lord, blessed him.

Then verse 25 tells how the spirit of the Lord began to move upon him. So even as a child, it seems, remember he's a Nazirite from the womb, but even as a child, as a young man, the Holy Spirit was upon Samson.

One commentator points out the Hebrew word translated moved upon him. It implies overwhelming or vehement or overwhelming impulses to noble deeds. And Samson, despite all the things he did wrong, he did a lot of noble deeds.

He loved Israel. And of course, God loves the children of Israel. God loves his people. Samson loved the nation. He was, one commentator puts it this way, that he, the spirit of God moved upon him, probably not as it moved in the prophets who were charged with an inspired message.

Samson wasn't a prophet, but rather the Holy Spirit kindled within him a high and devoted patriotism. So when Samson grows up, loving Israel, fighting for Israel, hating the Philistines, he truly became a war hero, a true national hero.

And here in chapter 13, we get some insights concerning his background. Really interesting story about Samson and his birth. So as we begin to bring this study to a close in Judges chapter 13, what are some things we can take away from this?

The Gospel Pattern in Samson's Birth and Calling

Well, I think it's pretty simple. This chapter provides a good picture of the gospel because the people, remember the people of Israel, they disobeyed God and because they rebelled against God, they were in need of a savior.

Israel was in need of someone to deliver them. So the Lord sent an angel, just like he sent an angel to the Virgin Mary to give hope to Israel. He does something similar here. He sends an angel who gives a message of hope that a savior or a deliverer would be born.

Samson would deliver Israel and this points to Christ who would one day deliver the whole world. For the scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. So just as there was a message of hope given to Israel back here in Judges 13, there is a message of hope for us today, for all those who place their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.