Bible Geek Word Nerd - Samson - MALAK

 

Manoah Can’t Handle the Truth

 Last time in our discussion of Samson, we talked about his father, Manoah, who does not come off very well in the story, if we’re being honest.  His name, meaning “rest” or “resting place”, might be a sort of a foreshadowing for his parenting approach: resting and passive.  Not only that, Manoah appears befuddled by the events transpiring around him, while his wife appears capable and ready.  Perhaps this explains why the angel of the LORD visited Manoah’s wife instead of Manoah.  Like Jack Nicholson’s character, Col Nathan Jessep, in “A Few Good Men”, the Angel seems to say to Manoah, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Let’s talk about that angel.

His appearance in verse 3 of Chapter 13 is sudden, startling, and strange.  He greets Manoah’s wife with the Big Reveal of the story:

The angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, ‘You are barren (AQAR) and childless, but you are going to become pregnant and give birth to a son.

The Hebrew word for “angel” is MALAK (מֲלְאָךְ).  It means “messenger”, and sometimes it refers merely to someone bringing a message to someone else, as in Numbers, when Moses sends messengers to the king of Edom:

Moses sent MESSENGERS from Kadesh to the king of Edom, saying: ‘This is what your brother Israel says: you know about all the hardships that have come on us.
Numbers 20:14

Or in Nahum 2, where the LORD Himself pronounces doom for Ninevah (hey, Jonah tried…a little):

‘I am against you,’ declares the Lord Almighty.  ‘I will burn up your chariots in smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions.  I will leave you no prey on the earth.  The voices of your MESSENGERS will no longer be heard.’
Nahum 2:13

However, most of MALAK’s 213 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible are references to angels of G-d.  Angels of the LORD are a class of heavenly (that is, spiritual) beings.  In nearly every physical manifestation of angels of G-d, they appear in human form, from the angels who told Abraham that Sarah would conceive a son, the angel who wrestled Jacob, or the angel who called Gideon. 

Angels do not have wings.  Ever.  Sorry, Clarence.  Zuzu and “It’s a Wonderful Life” are charming but wrong.  You do not get your wings when the bell rings (This will be teased out in a future series called “The Bible Nerd Ruins Christmas”.)  The two classes of heavenly beings who do have wings are called CHERUBIM and SERAPHIM (more about them in another post).  The late Michael Heiser has written extensively on the supernatural world of the Bible, including the profoundly edifying “The Unseen Realm”.

What sort of heavenly being is the Angel of the LORD in Judges 13?

Manoah’s wife describes him with awe-struck terms:

Then the woman went to her husband and told him, ‘A man of God came to me.  He looked like an angel of God, very awesome.  I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name.
Judges 13:6

The NIV translation is working through a challenging Hebrew passage.  The woman told her husband that a man of G-d (ISH HA-ELOHIM) had come to her, and that he looked like a MALAK of G-d.  In Hebrew, she said his “appearance” was the appearance of the MALAK of HA-ELOHIM.

The Hebrew word behind “appearance” is MAREH (מַרְאֶה), a word that’s used over 100 times in the Text and means “sight”, “appearance”, or “vision”.  For example, in Genesis 39, Potiphar’s infamous wife is smitten with Joseph’s fair MAREH.  In Genesis 41, MAREH is used five times to describe the corn and the cows from Pharaoh’s dreams.  In Exodus 3, Moses was startled by the MAREH of the Burning Bush.  MAREH derives from the verb RAAH (רָאָה), which means “to see”. 

Later in the chapter, Manoah asks the angel for his name, to which the angel replies:

And the angel of the Lord said to him, “Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?”
Judges 13:18

“Wonderful” is a solid translation of the word PILI (פִלְאִי) an adjective that’s used only twice in the Hebrew Bible.  The other time is Psalm 139:6, where the poet writes,

Such knowledge is too WONDERFUL for me, too lofty for me to attain.

PILI comes from PELE (פֶלֶא), which we wrote about in December on the death of the soccer great from Brazil, Pele.  PELE is from PALA (פָלָא), which means “to be surpassing or extraordinary”.  These words are almost always used to describe wonders or miracles performed by the LORD.  When the angel says his name is PILI, who is he claiming to be?

And as if to erase any doubts, the Text makes it plain:

Then Manoah took a young goat, together with the grain offering, and sacrificed it on a rock to the Lord.  And the Lord did an amazing thing while Manoah and his wife watched: as the flame blazed up from the altar towards heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame.  Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground.
Judges 13:19-20

Most Jewish and Christian commentators agree that the angel is divine.  Many Christian commentators call the angel a Christophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus the Messiah.  Whatever his identity, this MALAK has a divine mission and a divine message for Manoah and his wife about their coming son.

Can Manoah handle the truth?  Can you?

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Samson - Manoah

Manoah has Resting Father Face

We have been exploring the story of Samson in the Book of Judges.  We have not gotten very far into the story because to be honest, Samson’s story is not very interesting to us because it is so familiar.  Everyone’s heard something of it from somewhere, including reading it in Judges 13 to 16.  (And if you read past Delilah’s part in the story to what happens after?  Well, you might need therapy.  No way the vegetables tell the rest of Judges!  Nope.)

 

So we are telling the fringes of the story…the background and contours hidden in the shadows that might get missed in the frequent telling of the jawbones and foxes and hair-trimming that everyone knows so well.  It’s not that we are slow in our passage.  Rather, the hidden details offer us interesting story nooks and crannies.  Hang with us a bit and let the story unfold a bit differently.

 

Verse 2 of Chapter 13 reads thus (in the RSV):

 

And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Mano′ah; and his wife was barren and had no children.

 

We have already discussed “barren”, “certain man”, and “tribe”.  Let’s talk about Samson’s dad, Mano’ah, from the tribe of Dan.

 

The first thing to note might be that the tribe of Dan does not come off very well, either in the Scriptures or in extra-Biblical writing.  In the Scriptures, we have the present story of Samson, which darkens the tribe’s legacy.  But before this tale, Leviticus 24 tells the story of an infamous blasphemer.

 

and the Israelite woman’s son blasphemed the Name, and cursed. And they brought him to Moses. His mother’s name was Shelo′mith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.
Leviticus 24:11

 

And we ought not to forget what the tribe of Dan did, as recorded in Judges 18:30:

 

And the Danites set up the graven image for themselves; and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.

 

In extra-biblical writing of the rabbinic sages and Church Fathers, Dan is seen as the archetype for evil-doing.  Church Fathers believed that Anti-Christ would come from the line of Dan.  It seems that Manaoh – and Samson – might have been starting from behind when Judges 13 begins.

 

Manoah is the only Manoah mentioned in the Scriptures.  He’s a one-off.  This is odd because his name is derived from the same root word as Father Noah the Ark Builder.  Why did nobody else name a famous child after Noah in this way? 

 

Their names derive from the verb NUACH (נוּחַ), which means “to rest”.  It occurs about 70 times in the Hebrew Bible, from its first appearance in Genesis 8:4, where the Ark came to REST, to its final one in Zechariah:

 

Then he called to me, ‘Look, those going towards the north country have given my Spirit REST in the land of the north.’
Zechariah 6:8

 

You might be saying to yourself, “Hold on a minute there, Bible Geek Word Nerd.  How can Genesis 8 be the first place where NUACH/rest is used?  Does not Genesis 2 tell us that G-d rested on the Seventh Day?”  We are delighted to be asked.  You are correct that the Text does tell us that G-d rested on the Seventh Day.  But the Hebrew uses a different word to describe the rest: SHABATH (שָׁבַת).  You might recognize it.  It’s the word from which Sabbath comes.  It can mean rest, but it primarily means “cease” (as in “cease working on the Sabbath”).  The words are qualitatively different in the Scriptures, describing a different sort of rest.

 

Some interpreters read the story and see a less-than-ideal father described in Manoah.  The Angel of the LORD visited his wife, and not him, to announce their promised child, for example.  He does not rule over his house well – his MISHPACHAH seems disordered.  Some interpreters take his name to mean that MANOAH was a passive, perhaps even lazy man (the Angel chose to bypass him because he was too “resty”).

 

And indeed, as the tragic story of his son of promise unfolds, we surmise many ways in which an active father might have averted the corruption of Samson.

 

Rest might be a good thing, but it is not always what’s required in life.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Samson - MISHPACHAH

 

The Man from the Clan of Dan

 

“A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the CLAN of the Danites, had a wife who was childless, unable to give birth.”
Judges 13:2

 

Funny word, clan.  It’s from late Middle English (according to Dictionary.com) and denotes a group of families or households.  Other translations will render this word “tribe” or “family”.  We’ll tell you about the Hebrew term underlying it, and then you can choose which you prefer.

The word is MISHPACHAH (מִשְׁפָחָה), a word that is used over 300 times in the Hebrew Bible.  The first time is Genesis 8:19 (from the RSV):

 

“And every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves upon the earth, went forth by FAMILIES out of the ark.”

 

The word is used five times in Genesis 10 to describe the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth after the Flood.  Keeping it consistent, the RSV uses “family” whilst the NIV and others use “clan”, demonstrating translator preferences.  Interestingly, the definitions of each word in the dictionary use the other word as part of their definition.

 

Hebrew has several words that describe people who share a common ancestor.  MISHPACHAH is, of course, a common one.  Others include MATEH (מַטֶּה), a word occurring more than 250 times in the Text.  Most of the time, it means simply staff or rod or branch.  For instance, in the story of Judah and his daughter-in-law TAMAR, Judah’s MATEH was left as a security deposit with TAMAR:

 

He said, “What pledge shall I give you?” She replied, “Your signet and your cord, and YOUR STAFF that is in your hand.” So he gave them to her, and went in to her, and she conceived by him.

Genesis 38:18

 

It is the word used for what Moshe held in his hand in Exodus 4.  A MATEH is carried by a leader – the leader of a tribe or clan or family.  So etymologically, it is a metonymy: the leader carries the MATEH.  The leader is the MATEH.  The group that gathers around it is the MATEH.

 

Another word used for clan or tribe is SHEBET (שֵׁבֶט).  English often translates it as scepter, club, rod, or staff.  But it’s also a metonymy, like MATEH, and for the same reasons.   It’s found 190 times in the Hebrew Bible.  SHEBET is what comforts the author of Psalm 23 in the valley of the shadow of death.

 

A final word used for this concept is BAYITH (בּיִת), written most often in English as BETH because of how the word is pronounced.  BAYITH is used over 2000 times in the text, and most plainly means “house” or “household”.  However, like MATEH and SHEBET, it is a metonymy for the group that lives in the house.

 

This begs the question: Why select MISHPACHAH to describe Manoah’s family with several options available?  Nobody knows for sure.  But I have a hunch.  I could be wrong.  I have been wrong before.  MISHPACHAH is a more intimate, personal word than the others are.  The others work formally to describe the group of related people.  But they are remote and distant.  MISHPACHAH is in your kitchen, sitting around the table, having a conversation with one another.  Perhaps think of it like this: SHEBET, MATEH, and BAYITH are like “thou” and “thee”.  MISHPACHAH is like “y’all”.  Cozy and close.  Like a clan.  Like a family.