The angel of the Lord at Bokim

2 The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, ‘I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land that I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, “I will never break my covenant with you, ² and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.” Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? ³ And I have also said, “I will not drive them out before you; they will become traps for you, and their gods will become snares to you.”’

⁴ When the angel of the Lord had spoken these things to all the Israelites, the people wept aloud, ⁵ and they called that place Bokim.^[a] There they offered sacrifices to the Lord.

¹¹ The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. ¹² When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, ‘The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.’

¹⁴ The Lord turned to him and said, ‘Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?’

³ The angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, ‘You are barren and childless, but you are going to become pregnant and give birth to a son.

⁶ 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.

⁸ Then Manoah prayed to the Lord: ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. I beg you to let the man of God you sent to us come again to teach us how to bring up the boy who is to be born.’

⁹ God heard Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman while she was out in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her. ¹⁰ The woman hurried to tell her husband, ‘He’s here! The man who appeared to me the other day!’

¹¹ Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he came to the man, he said, ‘Are you the man who talked to my wife?’

‘I am,’ he said.

¹³ The angel of the Lord answered, ‘Your wife must do all that I have told her.

¹⁵ Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, ‘We would like you to stay until we prepare a young goat for you.’

¹⁶ The angel of the Lord replied, ‘Even though you detain me, I will not eat any of your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the Lord.’ (Manoah did not realise that it was the angel of the Lord.)

¹⁷ Then Manoah enquired of the angel of the Lord, ‘What is your name, so that we may honour you when your word comes true?’

²⁰ 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. ²¹ When the angel of the Lord did not show himself again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah realised that it was the angel of the Lord.

²² ‘We are doomed to die!’ he said to his wife. ‘We have seen God!’

²³ But his wife answered, ‘If the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and grain offering from our hands, nor shown us all these things or now told us this.’