The Baby Promised Before He Was Born

Many judges led Israel after Gideon, and still the people kept turning away from God. This time the LORD let the Philistines rule over them for forty years.

In the town of Zorah lived a man named Manoah and his wife. They had no children. The Bible never tells us her name, but it does tell us who the angel visited first.

One day a stranger appeared to her.

"You have never been able to have a baby," he said. "But you will have a son. Drink no wine, and eat nothing unclean. No razor may ever touch his head, because this boy will belong to God from before he is born. He will begin to save Israel from the Philistines."

(That meant no haircuts, ever. By the time he was grown, his hair hung in seven long braids.)

She ran to find her husband. "A man of God came to me!" she said. "He looked like an angel of God, so awesome I was afraid. He didn't tell me his name."

Manoah prayed. "Lord, please send the man of God to us again. Teach us what to do with this boy."

God heard. The angel came back, to the wife, sitting out in the field, while Manoah was somewhere else. (Manoah had prayed for a visit to "us." The angel picked the half of "us" in the field.)

She raced home. "He's back! The man from the other day!"

Manoah hurried after her. "Are you the man who talked to my wife?"

"I am."

"Then when your words come true, how should we raise the boy?"

"Your wife must do everything I told her."

Manoah wanted to be a good host. "Please stay! We'll cook you a young goat."

"I won't eat your food," said the angel. "But if you make a burnt offering, offer it to the LORD." Manoah still had no idea he was talking to the angel of the LORD.

"What is your name," Manoah asked, "so we can honor you?"

"Why do you ask my name? It is wonderful, more than you could understand."

God was keeping that word for later.

So Manoah laid a young goat and some grain on a big rock and offered them to the LORD. The flames roared up toward the sky, and the angel stepped into the fire and rode it up, higher and higher, right out of sight.

Manoah and his wife fell flat on their faces.

"We're going to die!" Manoah cried. "We have seen God!"

His wife was calmer. "If the LORD wanted to kill us, he would not have taken our offering, or told us about our son."

(She had a point.)

The baby came, just as the angel promised, and his mother named him Samson. The LORD blessed the boy, and the LORD's Spirit began to stir in him.

Samson did begin to save Israel, but he would break the angel's rules, and the Philistines would still be ruling Israel when his life was over.

Kings rose and fell, and the prophet Isaiah promised that a child would be born for God's people, and he told what the child would be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God.

Long after Isaiah, another angel came to another young woman who could not see how she could have a baby, because she was not even married yet. He told her about a son who would be holy, set apart for God before he was born. This time the angel did not keep the name a secret. He told her what to call the baby, and he said this boy's kingdom would never end. Samson could only begin the rescue. This child would finish it.

His name was Jesus.