Catholic Commentary

Judges 13:6–7

The Woman Reports the Annunciation to Manoah

⁶Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, “A man of God came to me, and his face was like the face of the angel of God, very awesome. I didn’t ask him where he was from, neither did he tell me his name;⁷but he said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink. Don’t eat any unclean thing, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’”

What does Judges 13:6–7 mean?

Judges 13:6–7 records Samson's mother describing her encounter with an angel to her husband, reporting that the visitor appeared with an awesome, divine face and announced she would bear a Nazirite son dedicated to God from conception. She emphasizes her reverent restraint by not asking the angel's identity, preserving God's sovereignty, and communicates the strict dietary and ritual restrictions she must observe during pregnancy as the first consecration of her unborn child.

Key Insight

A barren woman becomes the first guardian of a holy life, her own body transformed into a sanctuary before her child is even born—a pattern the Church will see completed in Mary.

Commentary

Judges 13:6 — The Woman's Testimony

The woman's first act after receiving the divine message is to go to her husband and speak. This detail is not incidental. The Hebrew structure places her initiative in the foreground: wattābō' ("and she came") signals purposeful movement. She is not passive after the encounter — she becomes a messenger, a role that in Hebrew narrative carries near-prophetic weight.

Her description of the visitor as "a man of God" ('îš hā'ĕlōhîm) is the standard biblical idiom for a prophet (cf. 1 Samuel 9:6; 1 Kings 17:18), yet she immediately qualifies it with a clause that strains the category: "his face was like the face of the angel of God, very awesome." The Hebrew nôrā' mĕ'ōd ("very awesome/fearsome") is the same root used for the theophanic terror at Sinai (Exodus 34:10). She is telling her husband — and the reader — that whatever she saw exceeded the human. The "angel of God" (mal'ak hā'ĕlōhîm) here moves toward the divine; this is the same figure identified in verse 3 as the "Angel of the LORD" (mal'ak YHWH), a presence Catholic tradition has long read as a pre-incarnate manifestation of the Son (a theophany).

Her confession of ignorance is equally significant: "I didn't ask him where he was from, neither did he tell me his name." This is not carelessness but reverence — the same awe that silences Jacob after his night-wrestling (Genesis 32:29) and Moses before the burning bush (Exodus 3). The withholding of the name is theologically loaded: in the ancient Near East, knowing a divine being's name implied a degree of power over it. The angel's anonymity preserves the absolute sovereignty and otherness of God. That she reports her own silence honestly — without excusing it — speaks to her integrity as a witness. She transmits what she received, neither embellishing nor concealing.

Judges 13:7 — The Nazirite Consecration Announced

In her recollection, the woman reproduces the angel's words with near-verbatim fidelity compared to verses 3–5, with one notable difference: where the angel told her in verse 5 that "no razor shall come upon his head," she instead emphasizes that the child shall be "a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death." The phrase "to the day of his death" does not appear in the original message to her — it may reflect her own understanding, or it may be a divinely inspired elaboration. Either way, it signals that this Nazirite vow is lifelong and absolute, unlike the temporary Nazirite vows described in Numbers 6.

The dietary and ritual restrictions she communicates — no wine, no strong drink, no unclean food — apply to her during pregnancy, making her own body the first site of the child's consecration. The child is holy before he is born; his mother's body is the sanctuary in which that holiness is first observed. The vow is not merely personal asceticism but a total dedication of Samson's life to God's purposes for Israel.

The Typological Sense

At the level of the sensus plenior, the typological resonance with Luke 1 is unmistakable and has been central to Catholic exegesis. An angel appears to a woman; the woman is told she will conceive a son; the child is to be consecrated from the womb; specific prenatal disciplines are enjoined; the woman reports what she has received. The parallel is structural, not coincidental. Samson's mother prefigures Mary in her role as recipient of divine announcement and first guardian of the consecrated child. Yet the contrasts are just as theologically instructive: Mary is named, the mother of Samson is not; Mary asks a clarifying question ("How can this be?", Luke 1:34), whereas this woman confesses she asked nothing; the Nazirite vow governs Samson's external conduct, whereas Mary's own soul is the site of the Incarnation. The type is real but incomplete — it points forward to a greater fulfillment.

Catholic Commentary

Catholic tradition identifies the "Angel of the LORD" (mal'ak YHWH) appearing in this passage as a theophany — a genuine, if veiled, manifestation of the divine presence. Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, Ch. 59) and Origen (Homilies on Genesis) both interpreted such angelic appearances as pre-incarnate appearances of the Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity. While this reading is not defined dogma, it has deep roots in the Patristic tradition and illumines why the angel's face strikes the woman as exceeding human description.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§§ 489–490) situates the annunciations to barren or miraculous mothers — Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, and, supremely, Mary — within a single arc of divine preparation for the Incarnation. This passage belongs to that arc. The Church reads Israel's history typologically: each such annunciation is a rehearsal that deepens the pattern until it reaches its definitive form in Luke 1.

St. Ambrose (De Institutione Virginis) and later St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae III, q. 30) noted the parallel between the angelic salutations to Old Testament women and to Mary, observing that each earlier messenger prepared the people of God to receive the final word. The woman's bodily discipline — abstaining from wine and unclean food — anticipates the theology of the body as a locus of consecration, which finds its fullest expression in Paul's teaching that the body is a "temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 6:19). The mother's body is already enrolled in the child's vocation. This has direct bearing on Catholic teaching on the sanctity of prenatal life and the spiritual significance of motherhood (cf. Evangelium Vitae, §§ 44, 99).

For Today

The unnamed woman of these verses models something badly needed in contemporary Catholic life: faithful transmission without distortion. She receives a divine word, and she passes it on to her husband with precision and humility — reporting even what she does not know. In an age when Scripture and Tradition are routinely filtered through personal preference, ideological agendas, or social media reduction, her example is a quiet rebuke and an invitation.

Practically, this passage invites Catholic parents to see their own bodies and households as the first site of their children's formation in holiness. The prenatal discipline enjoined on this mother reminds us that consecrating a child to God is not something that begins at the baptismal font — it begins in the choices parents make before birth, in how they pray, fast, speak, and order their common life. The child was a Nazirite before he could choose anything. This is the logic of original grace that Catholic sacramental life, from baptism onward, continues to enact.

Finally, the woman's reverence before a presence she cannot fully name or locate is a model of contemplative humility: not every holy encounter requires immediate analysis. Sometimes faithfulness means reporting the awe accurately and trusting that the meaning will unfold.

Cross-References

Luke 1:26–38 commentary — The Annunciation to Mary mirrors this scene structurally — an angelic messenger, a woman chosen by God, a child consecrated before birth — yet surpasses it as antitype surpasses type.
Numbers 6:1–8 commentary — The Nazirite law, prescribing abstention from wine and unclean food, provides the legal and liturgical framework for the disciplines enjoined on Samson's mother and, through her, on Samson himself.
Genesis 32:29 commentary — Jacob's wrestling-night ends with a withheld divine name, just as the angel here refuses to reveal his name — the anonymity of the divine presence protects its transcendence.
1 Samuel 1:11 commentary — Hannah's vow to consecrate Samuel to God from birth, like the dedication of Samson, places both within the tradition of mothers whose barrenness yields a child entirely given over to God's purposes.
Luke 1:15 commentary — The angel's prohibition of wine for John the Baptist — 'he must never drink wine or strong drink' — deliberately echoes the Nazirite language of Samson's annunciation, linking the two forerunners.
Exodus 3:13–14 commentary — God's refusal to be fully named at the burning bush ('I AM WHO I AM') resonates with the angel's withheld name here — divine presence exceeds the capacity of human naming.