NOTES for Jdg 13:1-25

Today we read the story of Samson's birth. In the Bible there is more than one situation in which God chooses a barren woman so that she becomes the mother of the one He has chosen for special service. Later, speaking with the Blessed Virgin Mary, the archangel Gabriel will give as an example Saint Elizabeth, who conceived John the Baptist although she was old and barren.

For a person at that time, the birth of a child to a barren woman was a miracle not much smaller than birth from a virgin, since barrenness was perceived as a verdict. God intervenes in the situation. He cancels this "verdict." And it is important to Him to demonstrate openly that the birth of this particular person was needed by Him, that this person was chosen in a special way, and therefore a miracle is connected with his birth. And the miracles connected with the birth of His servants prepare people at least a little for the main miracle, the birth of the Son of God.

The Bible generally tells us little about angels and their nature; they usually appear on the biblical pages only as messengers of God's will, disappearing immediately after fulfilling what was entrusted to them. Judging by the few descriptions, one of which is the description of the angel's appearance to Manoah, angels are created beings, but they possess an entirely special nature, not comparable with the nature of the physical world.

An angel's contact with this nature causes immediate annihilation of physical substance - it simply burns up, as the food offered to the angel by Manoah burned in the fire, and the angel himself disappears in the tongue of flame. Here physical fire is mixed with something else, something inaccessible to any research or study by traditional means, but whose nature, among earthly realities, most resembles fire, at least outwardly.

Meanwhile the main task of God's messenger in this case was to indicate God's plan concerning the future child, who would possess special abilities, so that for his mother, who was carrying him, the most proper thing was to live the life of a person who had taken Nazirite vows; for her son too, as God's messenger says of him, would be a Nazirite all his life. This was unusual: as a rule, Nazirite vows were taken only for a time one wished to spend in more intense communion with God. Here, however, the matter was a life wholly dedicated to God, when a person gives himself completely into God's hands. It was not yet clear what the life of this person not yet born into the world would be like, but it was already obvious that it would be unusual.