Judges 13-14

Complete Jewish Bible

13 Again the people of Isra’el did what was evil from Adonai’s perspective, and Adonai handed them over to the P’lishtim for forty years.

² There was a man from Tzor‘ah from the family of Dan, whose name was Manoach; his wife was barren, childless. ³ The angel of Adonai appeared to the woman and said to her, “Listen! You are barren, you haven’t had a child, but you will conceive and bear a son. ⁴ Now, therefore, be careful not to drink any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don’t eat anything unclean. ⁵ For indeed you will conceive and bear a son. No razor is to touch his head, because the child will be a nazir for God from the womb. Moreover, he will begin to rescue Isra’el from the power of the P’lishtim.”

⁶ The woman came and told her husband; she said, “A man of God came to me; his face was fearsome, like that of the angel of God. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name. ⁷ But he said to me, ‘Listen! You will conceive and bear a son, so now don’t drink any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don’t eat anything unclean, because the child will be a nazir for God from the womb until the day he dies.’”

⁸ Then Manoach prayed to Adonai, “Please, Adonai, let the man of God you sent come again to us and teach us what we should do for the child who will be born.” ⁹ God paid attention to what Manoach said, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field, but her husband Manoach wasn’t with her. ¹⁰ The woman hurried and ran to tell her husband, “Here! That man, the one who came to me the other day, he’s come again!” ¹¹ Manoach got up, followed his wife, went to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to the woman?” He answered, “I am.” ¹² Manoach asked, “Now, when what you said comes true, what are the guidelines for raising the child? What should be done for him?” ¹³ The angel of Adonai said to Manoach, “The woman should take care to do everything I said to her. ¹⁴ She shouldn’t eat anything that comes from a grapevine, she shouldn’t drink wine or other intoxicating liquor, and she shouldn’t eat anything unclean. She should do everything I ordered her to do.”

¹⁵ Manoach said to the angel of Adonai, “Please stay with us a bit longer, so that we can cook a young goat for you.” ¹⁶ The angel of Adonai said to Manoach, “Even if I do stay, I won’t eat your food; and if you prepare a burnt offering, you must offer it to Adonai.” For Manoach did not know that he was the angel of Adonai. ¹⁷ Manoach said to the angel of Adonai, “Tell us your name, so that when your words come true we can honor you.” ¹⁸ The angel of Adonai answered him, “Why are you asking about my name? It is wonderful.” ¹⁹ Manoach took the kid and the grain offering and offered them on the rock to Adonai. Then, with Manoach and his wife looking on, the angel did something wonderful — ²⁰ as the flame went up toward the sky from the altar, the angel of Adonai went up in the flame from the altar. When Manoach and his wife saw it, they fell to the ground on their faces. ²¹ But the angel of Adonai did not appear again to Manoach or his wife. Then Manoach realized it had been the angel of Adonai. ²² Manoach said to his wife, “We will surely die, because we have seen God!” ²³ But his wife said to him, “If Adonai had wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from us, and he wouldn’t have shown us all this or told us such things at this time.”

²⁴ The woman bore a son and called him Shimshon. The child grew, and Adonai blessed him. ²⁵ The Spirit of Adonai began to stir him when he was in the Camp of Dan, between Tzor‘ah and Eshta’ol.

14 Shimshon went down to Timnah, and in Timnah he saw a woman who was one of the P’lishtim. ² He came up and told his father and mother, “I saw a woman in Timnah, one of the P’lishtim. Now get her for me to be my wife.” ³ His father and mother replied, “Isn’t there any woman from the daughters of your kinsmen or among all my people? Must you go to the uncircumcised P’lishtim to find a wife?” Shimshon said to his father, “Get her for me. I like her.” ⁴ His father and mother didn’t know that all this came from Adonai, who was seeking grounds for a quarrel with the P’lishtim. (At that time the P’lishtim were ruling Isra’el.)

⁵ Shimshon went down with his father and mother to Timnah. When they came to the vineyards of Timnah, a young lion roared at him. ⁶ The Spirit of Adonai came powerfully upon Shimshon, and barehanded he tore the lion to pieces as easily as if it had been a young goat. But he didn’t tell his father or mother what he had done. ⁷ Then he went down and talked with the woman and found he still liked her.

⁸ Awhile later, as he was returning to claim his bride, he turned aside to look at the carcass of the lion and saw that there was now a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. ⁹ He scraped the honey out into his hands and went on, eating as he went; and when he came to his father and mother, he gave them some; and they ate too. But he didn’t tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion.

¹⁰ His father went down to the woman, and there Shimshon gave a banquet — this is what the young men used to do. ¹¹ When the P’lishtim saw him, they provided thirty companions to be with him. ¹² Shimshon said to them, “Let me present you with a riddle. If you can solve it within the seven days of the banquet and tell me the solution, I will give you thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes. ¹³ But if you can’t solve it, you give me thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes.” They answered, “Tell us the riddle, we want to hear it.” ¹⁴ So he said to them,

Three days passed, and they couldn’t solve the riddle. ¹⁵ On the seventh day, they said to Shimshon’s wife, “Coax your husband into telling us the solution to the riddle. Otherwise we’ll burn down your father’s house and you with it. You two called us here to turn us into paupers, didn’t you?” ¹⁶ Shimshon’s wife went to him in tears and said, “You don’t love me, you hate me! You told a riddle to my fellow countrymen, and you haven’t told me the answer.” He said to her, “Look, I haven’t even told it to my father and mother! Should I tell you?” ¹⁷ But she had been crying throughout the seven days of the banquet; so on the seventh day, because she had kept pressing him, he told her the solution; and she passed it on to her people. ¹⁸ Then, before sundown on the seventh day, the men of the city said to him,

Shimshon answered,

¹⁹ Then the Spirit of Adonai came over him powerfully. He went down to Ashkelon, killed thirty of their men, took their good clothes, and gave them to the men who had “solved” the riddle. He was boiling with rage, so he went straight up to his father’s house, ²⁰ and his wife was given to the companion who had been best man at the wedding.