Study Desk

Manoach took the kid and the grain offering and offered them on the rock to Adonai . Then, with Manoach and his wife looking on, the angel did something wonderful —

as the flame went up toward the sky from the altar, the angel of Adonai went up in the flame from the altar. When Manoach and his wife saw it, they fell to the ground on their faces.

But the angel of Adonai did not appear again to Manoach or his wife. Then Manoach realized it had been the angel of Adonai .

Manoach said to his wife, "We will surely die, because we have seen God!"

But his wife said to him, "If Adonai had wanted to kill us, he wouldn't have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from us, and he wouldn't have shown us all this or told us such things at this time."

He came up and told his father and mother, "I saw a woman in Timnah, one of the P'lishtim. Now get her for me to be my wife."

His father and mother replied, "Isn't there any woman from the daughters of your kinsmen or among all my people? Must you go to the uncircumcised P'lishtim to find a wife?" Shimshon said to his father, "Get her for me. I like her."

His father and mother didn't know that all this came from Adonai , who was seeking grounds for a quarrel with the P'lishtim. (At that time the P'lishtim were ruling Isra'el.)

Shimshon went down with his father and mother to Timnah. When they came to the vineyards of Timnah, a young lion roared at him.

The Spirit of Adonai came powerfully upon Shimshon, and barehanded he tore the lion to pieces as easily as if it had been a young goat. But he didn't tell his father or mother what he had done.

Awhile later, as he was returning to claim his bride, he turned aside to look at the carcass of the lion and saw that there was now a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey.

He scraped the honey out into his hands and went on, eating as he went; and when he came to his father and mother, he gave them some; and they ate too. But he didn't tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion.

His father went down to the woman, and there Shimshon gave a banquet — this is what the young men used to do.

Then the Spirit of Adonai came over him powerfully. He went down to Ashkelon, killed thirty of their men, took their good clothes, and gave them to the men who had "solved" the riddle. He was boiling with rage, so he went straight up to his father's house,

and his wife was given to the companion who had been best man at the wedding.

But after a while, during the wheat-harvest season, Shimshon went to see his wife. He brought a young goat for her and said to her father, "I want to go to my wife in her room." But he wouldn't let him.

The P'lishtim asked, "Who did this?" They answered, "Shimshon the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, because he took Shimshon's wife and gave her to his best man." Then the P'lishtim came up and burned both her and her father to death.

When he got to Lechi, the P'lishtim came running and shouting at him; and the Spirit of Adonai came on him powerfully. The ropes on his arms became as weak as burnt flax and fell from his arms.

He found a fresh donkey jawbone, took it in his hand, and with it he struck down a thousand men.

Then God made a gash in the crater at Lechi, and water came out. When he had drunk, his spirit came back; and he revived. This is why the place was called ‘Ein-HaKorei [the spring of him who called], and it is there in Lechi until now.