13:21 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. 6 13:22 Manoah said to his wife, “We will certainly die, because we have seen a supernatural being!” 7 13:23 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. 8 He would not have shown us all these things, or have spoken to us like this just now.”
13:24 Manoah’s wife 9 gave birth to a son and named him Samson. 10 The child grew and the Lord empowered 11 him. 13:25 The Lord’s spirit began to control him 12 in Mahaneh Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.
1 tn Heb “Who your name? For [when] your word comes [to pass], we will honor you.” Manoah apparently gets tongue-tied and uses the wrong pronoun (“who” instead of “what”). He starts to say, “Who are you?” But then he switches to “your name” as if he began the sentence with “what.” See R. G. Boling, Judges (AB), 222.
2 tn Heb “Why do you ask for my name, for it is incomprehensible?” The Hebrew adjective פִּלְאִי (pile’iy, “wonderful, incomprehensible”) refers to what is in a category of its own and is beyond full human understanding. Note the use of this word in Ps 139:6, where God’s knowledge is described as incomprehensible and unattainable.
3 tc Heb “Doing an extraordinary deed while Manoah and his wife were watching.” The subject of the participle is missing. The translation assumes that the phrase “the
4 tn Heb “in the flame from the altar.”
5 tn Heb “on their faces.”
6 tn Heb “Then Manoah knew that he was the
7 tn Or “seen God.” Some take the Hebrew term אֱלֹהִים (’elohim) as the divine name (“God”) here, but this seems unlikely since v. 21 informs us that Manoah realized this was the
8 tn Heb “our hand.”
9 tn Heb “the woman.” For clarity this has been specified in the translation as “Manoah’s wife.”
10 tn The name appears to mean “sun-like” or “solar.”
11 tn Traditionally, “blessed.”
12 tn Or “move him to action”; or “stir him.”