Judges 13:2–5

Judges 13:2 — The Condition of Barrenness The narrative opens with a precise genealogical and geographical anchor: a man named Manoah ("rest"), of the clan of the Danites, dwelling in Zorah. His wife's condition is stated with solemn double emphasis — "barren and childless" — a Hebrew idiom (עֲקָרָה וְלֹא יָלָדָה) that underscores not merely a biological fact but a state of social shame, spiritual vulnerability, and, in the theological grammar of the Hebrew Bible, a readiness for divine intervention. Barrenness in Israel's narrative world is never merely physiological; it is the condition God characteristically chooses as the site of His creative power. Manoah's wife joins the great gallery of barren matriarchs — Sarah (Gen 11:30), Rebekah (Gen 25:21), Rachel (Gen 29:31), and Hannah (1 Sam 1:2) — in whom God's sovereign generativity overcomes natural impossibility. Notably, unlike her husband, the woman is never named in the entire chapter; she is identified wholly by her relational and biological condition. Yet it is to her that the angel first appears — a detail of no small theological import.

Judges 13:3 — The Angelic Announcement The "angel of the LORD" (מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה, mal'ak YHWH) is a figure of deep ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible — at times appearing as a distinct heavenly messenger, at times seeming to be identified with the LORD Himself (cf. Gen 16:7–13; Exod 3:2–6). His opening address, "See now, you are barren and childless," is striking: rather than offering immediate comfort, he names the woman's suffering directly. This is not cruelty but a divine acknowledgement — God sees and speaks to the precise reality of her affliction before overturning it. "But you shall conceive and bear a son" (וְהָרִית וְיָלַדְתְּ בֵּן) — the future tenses are declarative and unconditional, carrying the full weight of divine promise, not mere prediction. The angel does not invite her petition; he announces a divine determination already made.

Judges 13:4 — The Nazirite Prescriptions Extended to the Mother The Nazirite vow (Numbers 6:1–21) ordinarily applied to a person who consecrated themselves voluntarily for a defined period — abstaining from wine, strong drink, and grape products; refraining from cutting the hair; and avoiding contact with the dead. Here, three of these prescriptions are applied in utero and even to the mother herself before the child's birth: no wine or strong drink (yayin and shekhar), and no unclean food. The extension of the vow's requirements to the gestating mother is unique in all of Scripture — it signals that Samson's consecration is not chosen or temporal, but ontological, beginning before birth. The mother's body becomes, in a sense, the first sanctuary in which the Nazirite dwells. There is a striking parallel to the purifications and preparations of the Mosaic tabernacle; the womb is set apart as holy space.

Judges 13:5 — The Mission and the Razor The prohibition of the razor ("No razor shall come upon his head") is the outward sign of an inward consecration that is permanent and total: "the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb" (נְזִיר אֱלֹהִים מִן הַבָּטֶן). The phrase "from the womb" (מִן-הַבֶּטֶן) appears in the vocation narratives of other figures set apart before birth — Jeremiah (Jer 1:5) and the Servant of the LORD (Isa 49:1) — lending Samson's calling a prophetic dimension that transcends his often turbulent biography. His mission is stated with precision: "He shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines." The verb יָחֵל (yāḥēl), "begin," is theologically honest — Samson is not the final deliverer but the inaugurator of a deliverance that will require more. His is a proleptic salvation: real, but incomplete. This maps onto Israel's entire theology of salvation history, where each deliverer points beyond himself.

Catholic tradition reads this passage at multiple levels simultaneously, and it is in their convergence that its full theological depth appears.

The Annunciation Typology. The Fathers and medieval commentators consistently read Judges 13 as a type of the Annunciation of Luke 1. St. Augustine, in his City of God (XVIII.19), treats the miraculous births of the great judges as signs pointing toward the supreme miraculous birth of Christ. The structural parallels with Luke 1:26–38 are remarkable: an angel appears to a woman, announces an unexpected conception, gives the child's mission before birth, and prescribes conditions surrounding the pregnancy. The Church Fathers (notably Origen and St. Ambrose) drew this typological connection explicitly, with Ambrose in De Institutione Virginis noting that the angel's annunciation to a humble woman outside the centers of power mirrors the divine pattern fulfilled in Mary. Manoah's nameless wife — humble, barren, unnamed — prefigures Mary's lowliness (tapeinōsis) celebrated in the Magnificat.

Consecration from the Womb and the Theology of Vocation. The phrase "Nazirite to God from the womb" resonates with the Catholic theology of vocation as divine initiative preceding human response. The Catechism teaches that God calls each person by name, and that this call precedes human freedom (CCC 1700, 2572). The prenatal consecration of Samson adumbrates the Church's understanding that vocation — including the call to consecrated life — is given, not merely chosen. Pius XII's Sacra Virginitas (1954) and the Second Vatican Council's Perfectae Caritatis both speak of consecrated life as an anticipation of the Kingdom, a participation in holiness that reshapes one's entire existence — precisely the dynamic enacted physically in Samson's uncut hair and his mother's ascetic discipline.

The Nazirite and the Eucharistic Fast. The extension of the abstinence from wine and unclean things to the mother has been read by St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Matthew 1) and Caesarius of Arles (Sermones) as a figure of the Church's penitential and preparatory disciplines — including the Eucharistic fast — whereby the body is consecrated as a vessel for the holy. The womb that bears the consecrated child becomes, in this reading, an image of the soul prepared to receive Christ in the Eucharist.

For the contemporary Catholic, this passage offers three concrete spiritual invitations. First, it speaks directly to those who suffer the pain of infertility or unfulfilled longing — reminding us that God does not merely tolerate barrenness but actively seeks it out as the site of His most decisive action. Those who wait, in any form of emptiness, are not forgotten; they may be, in God's economy, precisely positioned. Second, the extension of Nazirite discipline to Samson's mother before his birth is a powerful endorsement of the Catholic understanding that the sanctity of a child is shaped in the womb — through the mother's physical, spiritual, and moral life. Parents preparing for a child's baptism, or mothers in pregnancy, might find in this text a vocation to make their own lives a "sacred enclosure" for the new life entrusted to them. Third, the angel's statement that Samson will only "begin" the deliverance of Israel is a salutary antidote to impatience in prayer and mission. Catholics working for justice, healing, or evangelization are rarely granted the complete victory; they are invited to begin faithfully, trusting that God completes in His time what He initiates through our obedience.