CHAPTER 96. Judges 13. Manoah.
JEPHTHAH judged Israel six years and then died. Then the people began again to sin against the Lord, and He gave them over to their enemies, the Philistines, for forty years. This was a long time to be in sorrow and trouble, but the Israelites deserved punishment. Many times they had displeased God, and now He showed them again the evil of sin by letting them suffer. But God did not forget His people, though He punished them; He knew how to deliver at the right time, and He could have a deliverer ready to save them when He pleased.
There was a man of the tribe of Dan named Manoah. He and his wife feared God; they had no child. One day an angel of the Lord appeared to Manoah’s wife, and told her she should have a son, who would begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.
He would be consecrated to God, a Nazarite, from before his birth. A Nazarite was a man, who set himself apart to God, to serve Him for a certain length of time in a very special way. Three things a Nazarite was forbidden to do. First, he could drink no wine or anything that came from the vine, because wine is a type of joy and cheer. In Jotham’s parable we saw that the fruit of the vine “cheereth God and man”. God did find joy in man before sin entered in the world, but now He can do so no longer, for sin is come between man and a holy God. One who consecrates himself unto the Lord, cannot any more find joy and pleasure with those who do not love Him, for God is not in all their thoughts (Ps. 10:4), and if he wants to live pleasing to God, he will give up worldly friends and worldly pleasures.
A second thing a Nazarite was not to do: He was not to cut his hair during the whole time of his Nazariteship, for long hair showed openly that he had given up his personal dignity as a man, in order to devote himself to the service of God. It was and is, as 1 Cor. 11 tells us, a shame for a man to have long hair. How many of us are willing to be nothing, to be made fun of, despised for Christ’s sake?
A third condition was imposed on the Nazarite. He was not to go near any dead body. If he did, he was defiled and would have to start his vow over again, shave his head, and offer sacrifices of purification, to show he had failed. Neither for his father, mother, brother nor sister, was he to break his vow of Nazariteship. He was not to consider even his dearest ones, when he set himself apart to God. “He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me.” Matt. 10:37, 3837He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:37‑38).
The son who was to be born to Manoah and his wife, the angel of God told her, was to be a Nazarite during his whole life, and no razor should come upon him.
Manoah’s wife wondered very much when she heard what the angel said, and she went and told her husband. Manoah did not doubt what the angel had said, for he had faith in God. He knew nothing was too wonderful for God to do, but he feared that he and his wife might not do what they were commanded and not bring up the child rightly; so he prayed God to send the angel to them again, to tell them what to do.
God heard Manoah’s prayer. A few days after, the woman was sitting alone in the field, when looking up, she saw the angel standing by her. She ran directly and called her husband. Manoah followed his wife and came to the angel, and asked: What shall we do to the child when he shall be born? The angel repeated what he had told the woman before, and then Manoah said: I pray thee, let us detain thee until we have made ready a kid for thee. The angel answered: I will not eat of thy bread; and if thou wilt offer a sacrifice, offer it to God, for Manoah did not know who the angel was. He asked further: What is thy name? The angel answered: Why dolt thou ask my name since it is a secret?
Manoah then prepared a sacrifice and offered it upon a rock unto the Lord, and God sent fire upon the sacrifice to consume it, while Manoah and his wife looked on. As the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame. Then they both were very much frightened and fell on their faces to the ground. Manoah, filled with fear, said: “We shall surely die, because we have seen God,” but his wife said: If the Lord was pleased to kill us He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a meat offering from us, neither would He have told us these things.
We do not wonder at the fear shown by Manoah and his wife, for man with his sinful nature may well tremble in the presence of God. However wonderful it was for an angel to appear to them, and announce such glad news, how much greater, how much more wonderful for God’s own dear Son to come down, not only to appear to some God-fearing man and depart again to His heavenly home, but for thirty three years for Him to tread this sin-stained earth, and the end of it—and for this purpose did He come —to give Himself a ransom for many; to die, that His blood might cleanse us from our sins! All that time, He, the true Nazarite, lived separate from sinners, although always going about doing them good. His heart was entirely devoted to God and also His work, and nothing ever kept Him from doing His Father’s will. To his mother He said, when she looked for Him in the temple: “Wist (know) ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?” He had one thing to do—His Father’s will—and to that He separated Himself perfectly.
Every believer in the Lord Jesus is now called to be a Nazarite, that is, to separate himself, or herself unto. God, not by outward signs, as in the days of Manoah, but by the true separation of the heart from the world. “They are not of the world,” Jesus said of His followers, “even as I am not of the world.” John 17: 14.
ML 07/07/1912