Samson's father living before Israel's Monarchy
Manoah, Samson's father from the tribe of Dan, was visited by the Angel of the Lord who announced Samson's birth.
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Manoah was an Israelite from the tribe of Dan, and he was the father of Samson. Manoah's wife was barren, but the Angel of the Lord appeared to her and announced that she would conceive and give birth to a son who would begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines. The Angel instructed her to follow specific guidelines during her pregnancy and to raise the child as a Nazirite. Manoah prayed for the Angel to return and teach them how to raise the child, and the Angel appeared again, reiterating the instructions. Manoah offered a young goat as a sacrifice to the Lord, and the Angel ascended in the flame of the altar, confirming his divine nature. Manoah and his wife named their son Samson, and the Lord blessed him as he grew. After Samson's death, he was buried in the tomb of his father, Manoah, between Zorah and Eshtaol (Judges 13; 16:31).
Part of: Judges era and the road to David
Manoah's wife was barren until an angel announced a son to be a Nazirite from the womb. Samson was from Zorah in the tribe of Dan, near the Philistines whom he began to deliver.
Sources: Judg 13:2-5 · Judg 13:24-25 · Judg 16:31
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Rest, a Danite, the father of Samson (Judg. 13:1-22, and 14:2-4).
(rest), the father of Samson; a Danite, native of the town of Zorah. (Judges 13:2) (B.C. 1161) [Samson]
MANO'AH (rest), a native of the town of Zorah, in the tribe of Dan, and the father of Samson, whose birth is recorded in Jud 13:1-23. Manoah is again mentioned, Jud 14:2-4 at the occasion of Samson's marriage, but seems to have died before the son, whose body was brought up from Gaza by his brethren, not, as Milton has it, by his father. Jud 16:31.
MANO'AH (rest), a native of the town of Zorah, in the tribe of Dan, and the father of Samson, whose birth is recorded in Jud 13:1-23. Manoah is again mentioned, Jud 14:2-4 at the occasion of Samson's marriage, but seems to have died before the son, whose body was brought up from Gaza by his brethren, not, as Milton has it, by his father. Jud 16:31.
Easton (1897), Smith (1863), Hitchcock (1869), Hastings (1898) and Schaff are in the public domain. Parsed text: neuu-org/bible-dictionary-dataset (CC BY 4.0). Headwords and whitespace normalised for this site.
14 verses in 1 book · English text: BSB (change it from the menu at the top) · Strong’s H4495
Now there was a man from Zorah named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, whose wife was barren and had no children.
Then Manoah prayed to the LORD, “Please, O Lord, let the man of God You sent us come to us again to teach us how to raise the boy who is to be born.”
And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God returned to the woman as she was sitting in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her.
So Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he came to the man, he asked, “Are you the man who spoke to my wife?” “I am,” he said.
Then Manoah asked, “When your words come to pass, what will be the boyʼs rule of life and mission?”
So the angel of the LORD answered Manoah, “Your wife is to do everything I told her.
“Please stay here,” Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, “and we will prepare a young goat for you.”
And the angel of the LORD replied, “Even if I stay, I will not eat your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the LORD.” For Manoah did not know that it was the angel of the LORD.
Then Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, “What is your name, so that we may honor you when your word comes to pass?”
Then Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the LORD. And as Manoah and his wife looked on, the LORD did a marvelous thing.
When the flame went up from the altar to the sky, the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell facedown to the ground.
And when the angel of the LORD did not appear again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah realized that it had been the angel of the LORD.
“We are going to die,” he said to his wife, “for we have seen God!”
Then Samsonʼs brothers and his fatherʼs family came down, carried him back, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. And he had judged Israel twenty years.
Names, family links and references: STEPBible TIPNR (Tyndale House Cambridge, CC BY 4.0). Short descriptions were drafted with AI assistance by STEPBible. Family links follow STEPBible’s scholarly decisions where genealogies are ambiguous.