1   Once more the Israelites did what was wrong in the eyes of the Lord, and he delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.

2   There was a man from Zorah of the tribe of Dan whose name was Manoah and whose wife was barren and childless. 3   The angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, ‘You are barren and have no child, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. 4   Now you must do as I say: be careful to drink no wine or strong drink, and to eat no forbidden ^note food; 5   you will conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall touch his head, for the boy is to be a Nazirite consecrated to God from the day of his birth. He will strike the first blow to deliver Israel from the power of the Philistines.’ 6   The woman went and told her husband; she said to him, ‘A man of God came to me; his appearance was that

Israel oppressed by the Philistines of an ^note angel of God, most terrible to see. I did not ask him where he came from nor did he tell me his name. 7   He said to me, “You shall conceive and give birth to a son. From this time onwards drink no wine or strong drink and eat no forbidden food, for the boy is to be a Nazirite consecrated to God from his birth to the day of his death.”’ 8   Manoah prayed to the Lord, ‘If it please thee, O Lord, let the man of God whom thou didst send come again to tell us what we are to do with the boy who is to be born.’ 9   God heard Manoah's prayer, and the angel of God came again to the woman, who was sitting in the fields; her husband was not with her. 10   The woman ran quickly and said to him, ‘The man who came to me the other day has appeared to me again.’ 11   Manoah went with her at once and approached the man and said, ‘Was it you who talked with my wife?’ He said, ‘Yes, it was I.’ 12   ‘Now when your words come true,’ Manoah said, ‘what kind of boy will he be and what will he do?’ 13   The angel of the Lord answered him, ‘Your wife must be careful to do all that I told her: 14   she ^note must not taste anything that comes from the vine. She ^note must drink no wine or strong drink, and she ^note must eat no forbidden food. She ^note must do what I say.’ 15   Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, ‘May we urge you to stay? Let us prepare a kid for you.’ 16   The angel of the Lord replied, ‘Though you urge me to stay, I will not eat your food; but prepare a whole-offering if you will, and offer that to the Lord.’ Manoah did not perceive that he was the angel of the Lord and said to him, 17   ‘What is your name? 18   For we shall want to honour you when your words come true.’ The angel of the Lord said to him, ‘How can you ask my name? It is a name of wonder.’ 19   Manoah took a kid with the proper grain-offering, and offered it on the rock to the Lord, to him whose works are full of wonder. 20   And while Manoah and his wife were watching, the flame went up from the altar towards heaven, and the angel of the Lord went up in the flame; and seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell on their faces. 21   The angel of the Lord did not appear again to Manoah and his wife; and Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord. 22   He said to his wife, 23   ‘We are doomed to die, we have seen God’, ^note but she replied, ‘If the Lord had wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted a whole-offering and a grain-offering at our hands; he would not now have let us see and hear all this.’ 24    25   The woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson. The boy grew up in Mahaneh-dan between Zorah and Eshtaol, and the Lord blessed him, and the spirit of the Lord began to drive him hard.

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