Manoah

Manoah is a Danite from Zorah, the father of Samson, whose story is told in Judges 13. The text introduces him as a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose wife was barren and childless (Judges 13:2), and it says that Yahweh's angel first appeared to the woman, not to him, announcing that she would conceive and bear a son who would be a Nazirite to God from the womb and would begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines (Judges 13:3, 13:5). She reported the encounter to her husband, describing the visitor as a man of God whose face was like the face of the angel of God, very awesome (Judges 13:6).

The text then gives Manoah his most characteristic act: he entreated Yahweh, saying, "Oh, Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us, and teach us what we should do to the child who shall be born" (Judges 13:8). When the angel returned, Manoah offered hospitality and asked to prepare a young goat (Judges 13:15); the angel declined to eat his bread and told him to offer a burnt offering to Yahweh, "for Manoah didn't know that he was Yahweh's angel" (Judges 13:16). Asked for his name, the angel said, "Why do you ask about my name, since it is incomprehensible?" (Judges 13:18). Manoah and his wife then watched the angel ascend in the flame of the altar and fell on their faces to the ground (Judges 13:20).

What Scripture says of him afterwards is brief and mixed. He concludes, "We shall surely die, because we have seen God" (Judges 13:22), and his wife answers that if Yahweh had meant to kill them he would not have received their offering or shown them these things (Judges 13:23); the woman then bears a son and names him Samson (Judges 13:24). Manoah reappears when Samson asks his parents to get him a Philistine wife, and the narrator notes that his father and mother did not know this was of Yahweh (Judges 14:2-4), and Samson is finally buried in the tomb of Manoah his father (Judges 16:31). The name is commonly connected with a Hebrew root meaning "rest," though the etymology of personal names is often uncertain. His wife goes unnamed in the text; later Jewish tradition supplies the name Hazelelponi, a name that appears in the genealogies of 1 Chronicles 4:3.

Christian readings diverge on two points. Historically, the identity of the "angel of Yahweh" has been debated: many church fathers, and much traditional Christian interpretation since, read this figure as a manifestation of God himself, often the pre-incarnate Son, which is why Manoah's fear of death after "seeing God" (Judges 13:22, echoing Exodus 33:20) carries weight; other interpreters, including most modern critical scholars, read the angel as a distinct heavenly messenger speaking on God's behalf. Manoah himself is likewise read differently — in some traditions as a model of cautious, prayerful piety who asks God for instruction, in others as a slow and somewhat unperceptive figure whose wife understands the encounter before he does, a contrast the narrative itself seems to invite in Judges 13:22-23.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.