GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
JUDGES 13:2
2 A certain man named Manoah was from Zorah. He was from the tribe of Dan. His wife was unable to conceive and had no children.
When the Danites failed to drive out the Philistines (Joshua 19:40), “they went up and attacked Leshem, took it, put it to the sword and occupied it. They settled in Leshem and named it Dan after their forefather” (Joshua 19:47). We don’t know when this happened. The passage in Joshua seems to be a note given later by inspiration that covered events later in the time of the Judges and not right away when the Danites were assigned Philistia as their home by Joshua. Remember that earlier in Judges we were told that “the Amorites confined the Danites to the hill country, not allowing them to come down into the plain” (Judges 1:34). So by now some or most of the Danites had traveled north to the upper Jordan valley where little streams trickled down to Lake Huleh and from their to the Sea of Galilee. But some families had not moved. One of these was the family of Manoah, living in Zorah in the old, original territory of Dan. Zorah was a town on the western slopes of the hill country of Ephraim, twenty miles or so west of Jerusalem. Just west of Zorah (a mile or so) was the Valley of Sorek (later we will meet a girl from Sorek named Delilah).
Manoah and his wife were unable to conceive. We will talk more about that and the child promised to them later with verses 3-5. But a minor point to give a little attention to here is that this is just one of two places in the Old Testament where the complete phrase occurs: “There was a certain man” (vayahi ish echad). Both here and in1 Samuel 1:1 the same full phrase occurs. In both cases, a barren couple is introduced, and in both cases, the baby that is promised will become a Nazirite (Samson and Samuel). This is an example of the marginal notes in the Hebrew text called Masoretic notes (after the title of the scribes, the Masoretes). Too often, notes like these do not lead to any useful information beyond being sure that the text was absolutely correct as it was copied and recopied over the centuries. But this note draws our attention to a little hint that there was something in common with these two men, just a generation or so apart in age.
Those who have been reading Judges all the way through might look at verse 2 and then go back to verse 1 and wonder, what’s missing? Israel fell back into sin, the Lord judged Israel for this and allowed an enemy to persecute them for a long time (notice that the “forty years” theme has returned), and now the Lord was in the process of sending a savior-judge. But Israel didn’t cry out for help. Even though these cries for help in Judges were not always cries of repentance, it’s remarkable that God sent a savior here without any cry at all. Later in the story (15:11) the Israelites will get pretty perturbed with Samson because of his actions. Why? They were used to being subject to foreign nations. In fact, they were so used to it that they no longer cried out for help, and when help came along, they wondered why.
What an amazing God we have, who sends us help even when we’re too used to our sinfulness and to our troubles to ask for it. The Lord, “who remains faithful forever, and upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry” (Ps. 146:6-7), knows what we need. He watches over us and “will not slumber” (Ps. 121:3). Even when we have been so drugged by the poison of sin—the true opiate of the masses—that we forget to ask for help, he is our help. Think about how this worked for your salvation! “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins” (Colossians 2:13). Our unworthiness did not stop our Savior from saving us. His mercy endures forever. Our complete unworthiness just makes Christ’s worthiness all the more clear, all the more amazing, and all the more priceless.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota