Study Desk

The woman went and said to her husband, "A man sent from God came to me! He looked like God's angelic messenger—he was very awesome. I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name.

So Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he met the man, he said to him, "Are you the man who spoke to my wife?" He said, "Yes."

Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the Lord . The Lord 's messenger did an amazing thing as Manoah and his wife watched.

As the flame went up from the altar toward the sky, the Lord 's messenger went up in it while Manoah and his wife watched. They fell facedown to the ground.

The Lord 's messenger did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. After all this happened Manoah realized that the visitor had been the Lord 's messenger.

Manoah said to his wife, "We will certainly die, because we have seen a supernatural being!"

But his wife said to him, "If the Lord wanted to kill us, he would not have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us. He would not have shown us all these things, or have spoken to us like this just now."

Samson went down to Timnah, where a Philistine girl caught his eye.

When he got home, he told his father and mother, "A Philistine girl in Timnah has caught my eye. Now get her for my wife."

But his father and mother said to him, "Certainly you can find a wife among your relatives or among all our people! You should not have to go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines." But Samson said to his father, "Get her for me, because she is the right one for me."

Now his father and mother did not realize this was the Lord 's doing, because he was looking for an opportunity to stir up trouble with the Philistines (for at that time the Philistines were ruling Israel).

The Lord 's spirit empowered him and he tore the lion in two with his bare hands as easily as one would tear a young goat. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.

Samson continued on down to Timnah and spoke to the girl. In his opinion, she was just the right one.

He scooped it up with his hands and ate it as he walked along. When he returned to his father and mother, he offered them some and they ate it. But he did not tell them he had scooped the honey out of the lion's carcass.

So Samson's bride cried on his shoulder and said, "You must hate me; you do not love me! You told the young men a riddle, but you have not told me the solution." He said to her, "Look, I have not even told my father or mother. Do you really expect me to tell you?"

She cried on his shoulder until the party was almost over. Finally, on the seventh day, he told her because she had nagged him so much. Then she told the young men the solution to the riddle.

Samson's bride was then given to his best man.

Sometime later, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a gift and went to visit his bride. He said to her father, "I want to have sex with my bride in her bedroom!" But her father would not let him enter.

The Philistines asked, "Who did this?" They were told, "Samson, the Timnite's son-in-law, because the Timnite took Samson's bride and gave her to his best man." So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father.

When he arrived in Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they approached him. But the Lord 's spirit empowered him. The ropes around his arms were like flax dissolving in fire, and they melted away from his hands.