Commentaria in Judices
Chapter 13. Synopsis of the Chapter
The new idolatry of the Hebrews is chastised by God with a new oppression by the Philistines. Wherefore an Angel foretells to the mother and father, Manue, the birth of Samson, who should deliver them, and commands that he be made a Nazarite. Soon Manue, verse 19, immolates a kid, in whose flame the Angel returns to heaven. Finally, verse 24, Samson is born, and is endowed with the Spirit of God, and becomes the thirteenth judge and avenger of Israel.
1. And again the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, who delivered them into the hands of the Philistines forty years. 2. Now there was a certain man of Saraa, and of the race of Dan, whose name was Manue, and his wife was barren. 3. And an Angel of the Lord appeared to her, and said to her: Thou art barren and without children; but thou shalt conceive and bear a son: 4. beware therefore that thou drink no wine nor strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing, 5. for thou shalt conceive and bear a son, whose head no razor shall touch; for he shall be a Nazarite of God from his infancy, and from his mother’s womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines. 6. And when she was come to her husband, she said: A man of God came to me, having the countenance of an Angel, awful exceedingly. And when I asked him who he was, and whence he came, and by what name he was called, he would not tell me; 7. but he answered thus: Behold thou shalt conceive and bear a son; beware lest thou drink wine nor strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing; for the child shall be a Nazarite of God from his infancy, from his mother’s womb unto the day of his death. 8. Then Manue prayed to the Lord, and said: I beseech thee, O Lord, that the man of God whom thou didst send may come again, and teach us what we ought to do concerning the child that shall be born. 9. And the Lord heard Manue praying, and the Angel of the Lord appeared again to his wife sitting in the field; but Manue her husband was not with her. And when she saw the Angel, 10. she made haste and ran to her husband; and told him, saying: Behold the man hath appeared to me whom I saw before. 11. Who arose, and followed his wife; and coming to the man, said to him: Art thou the man that spoke to the woman? And he answered: I am. 12. And Manue said to him: When thy word shall be fulfilled, what wilt thou that the child should do? or from what shall he keep himself? 13. And the Angel of the Lord said to Manue: Let him refrain himself from all that I said to thy wife; 14. and let him eat nothing that groweth of the vineyard; let him drink no wine nor strong drink, let him eat no unclean thing; and let him fulfil and observe what I have commanded him. 15. And Manue said to the Angel of the Lord: I beseech thee to consent to my request, and let us dress thee a kid of the goats. 16. And the Angel answered him: If thou press me, I will not eat thy bread; but if thou wilt offer a holocaust, offer it to the Lord. And Manue knew not that it was an Angel of the Lord. 17. And he said to him: What is thy name, that, if thy word be fulfilled, we may honour thee? 18. And he answered him: Why askest thou my name, which is wonderful? 19. So Manue took a kid of the goats, and libations, and put them upon a rock, offering them to the Lord who doth wonderful things; and he and his wife looked on. 20. And when the flame of the altar went up towards heaven, the Angel of the Lord ascended also in the flame. And when Manue and his wife saw this, they fell flat on the ground, 21. and the Angel of the Lord appeared to them no more. And Manue presently understood that it was an Angel of the Lord, 22. and he said to his wife: We shall surely die, because we have seen God. 23. And his wife answered him: If the Lord were willing to kill us, he would not have received a holocaust and libations at our hands, nor would he have shewn us all these things, nor told us the things that are to come. 24. So she bore a son, and called his name Samson. And the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. 25. And the Spirit of the Lord began to be with him in the camp of Dan between Saraa and Esthaol.
FORTY YEARS.—These forty years, like the other years of the servitude of the Hebrews, Melchior Canus and Serarius separate from the years of the Judges. But I showed in chap. iii that these are included with them; the same is clear from this chapter and the following, where it is narrated that at the time of the Judge Samson the Philistines oppressed the Hebrews. They therefore run together with the years of Samson, and the years of the oppression of the Hebrews are included in them.
For although Samson in his life often struck the Philistines, yet he did not wholly remove their yoke from the Hebrews except in his death, when he slew and buried with himself under the ruin of the house their princes. Hence the Angel says of him here pointedly, verse 5: “He shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.” And again chap. xv, verse 20, it is said of him: “And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines (during which, namely, the Philistines ruled over Israel) twenty years.”
From what has been said it is clear that these 40 years began twenty years before Samson was Judge, and lasted for the 20 years during which Samson was Judge, and end in his death. For dying he crushed with himself all the princes of the Philistines with three thousand Philistines: wherefore he then plainly broke their strength, and removed their yoke from Israel. These 40 years of servitude began, therefore, in the sixth year of Abesan: and in the following seventh year of the same, Samson was born; for that Samson was born after the servitude began, indeed on account of the servitude begun, is clear from the words of the Angel, verse 5: “He shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.” Samson therefore was made Judge in the nineteenth year of the servitude, and was Judge twenty years: wherefore he died in the 39th year of his age, which was the fortieth and last of the servitude of the Hebrews. So Salian, Tornielli and others, although Serarius gives Samson only 34 or 35 years of life, namely as many as Christ lived, whose figure and type he was.
Wherefore Eusebius in the Chronicle, Lyranus, Abulensis and Genebrard less truly reckon these 40 years so that they began with the rule of Samson, and lasted through all his time for 20 years, and then lasted another twenty years under the Pontiff and Judge Heli, who succeeded Samson. For, as I said, these forty years began before the birth of Samson. For he was born precisely to shake off this servitude. Add the 19 years of his life completed before he became Judge, and the 20 during which he was Judge, and you will have the 40 years of servitude which we seek.
2. OF THE RACE OF DAN.—For this tribe was bordering on the Philistine invaders, and therefore was the first to feel their plunderings: wherefore from it Samson was chosen by God as Judge and avenger: he was therefore a Danite. Hence Jacob, prophesying of him, Gen. chap. xlix, verse 17, says: “Let Dan be a serpent in the way, a snake in the path, that biteth the horse’s heels, that his rider may fall backward.” See what I said there.
MANUE.—This was the father of the Judge Samson, chosen by God for this on account of his own and his wife’s virtue, religion and piety; whence he deserved to speak with the Angel, and from a barren wife to beget by divine power this son, the liberator of Israel. So other prophets and great men were born of barren parents, as Isaac, Joseph, Samuel, John the Baptist, etc., to show that they were given by God to the world for its salvation, and were a type of Christ to be born of a Virgin: wherefore these were not so much the offspring and sons of their parents as of God. Hence Manue Manoach is the same as Noach, or Noe, that is rest: for as Noe gave the world rest from the universal cataclysm or flood, according to Gen. v, 29: “This same shall comfort us from the works and labours of our hands on the earth, which the Lord hath cursed.” So Manue by his son Samson comforted Israel, giving rest. Manue therefore seems to have been a quiet, placid, good and kindly man. Hear Josephus, book V, chap. x: “A certain Manoches, a man among the Danites the best, and without dispute the prince of his country, had a wife admirable for her exceptional beauty above all the women of her age: from whom, when he had no children, bearing childlessness hard, going often with his wife to his country house, which was in the great plain, he importuned God with frequent prayers to give him children.” It is false, therefore, what the same adds, that Manue was very jealous of his wife.