Judges 13:16

13:16 The Lord’s messenger said to Manoah, “If I stay, ¹  I will not eat your food. But if you want to make a burnt sacrifice to the Lord, you should offer it.” (He said this because Manoah did not know that he was the Lord’s messenger.) ² 

Judges 13:9

13:9 God answered Manoah’s prayer. ³  God’s angelic messenger visited ⁴  the woman again while she was sitting in the field. But her husband Manoah was not with her.

Judges 13:11

13:11 So Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he met ⁵  the man, he said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” ⁶  He said, “Yes.” ⁷ 

Judges 13:19

13:19 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. ⁸ 

[13:16]  ¹ tn Heb “If you detain me.”

[13:16]  ² tn The words “he said this” are supplied in the translation for clarification. Manoah should have known from these words that the messenger represented the Lord. In the preceding narrative the narrator has informed the reader that the visitor is the Lord’s messenger, but Manoah and his wife did not perceive this. In vv. 5 and 7 the angel refers to “God” (אֱלֹהִים, ’elohim), not the Lord (יְהוַה, yÿhvah). Manoah’s wife calls the visitor “a man sent from God” and “God’s messenger” (v. 6), while Manoah prays to the “Lord” (אֲדוֹנָי, ’adonay) and calls the visitor “a man sent from God” (v. 8).

[13:9]  ³ tn Heb “God listened to the voice of Manoah.”

[13:9]  ⁴ tn Heb “came to.”

[13:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “came to.”

[13:11]  ⁶ tn Heb “the woman.”

[13:11]  ⁷ tn Heb “I [am].”

[13:19]  ⁷ 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 Lord’s messenger” was lost by homoioteleuton. If the text originally read לַיהוָה מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה (layhavah mal’akh yÿhvah), the scribe’s eye could have jumped from the first יְהוָה to the second, accidentally omitting two of the three words. Later the conjunction וּ (shureq) would have been added to the following מַפְלִא (mafli’) for syntactical reasons. Another possibility is that a pronominal subject (הוּא, hu’) has been lost in the MT due to haplography.