Judges 13:15-24

Common English Bible

¹⁵ Manoah said to the Lord’s messenger, “Please let us persuade you to stay so we can prepare a young goat for you.”

¹⁶ But the Lord’s messenger replied to Manoah, “If you persuaded me to stay, I wouldn’t eat your food. If you prepare an entirely burned offering, offer it to the Lord.” Indeed, Manoah didn’t know that he was the Lord’s messenger. ¹⁷ Manoah said to the Lord’s messenger, “What’s your name, so that we may honor you when your words come true?”

¹⁸ The Lord’s messenger responded to him, “Why do you ask my name? You couldn’t understand it.”

¹⁹ So Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the Lord. While Manoah and his wife were looking, an amazing thing happened: ²⁰ as the flame from the altar went up toward the sky, the Lord’s messenger went up in the altar’s flame. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell facedown on the ground. ²¹ The Lord’s messenger didn’t reappear to Manoah or his wife, and Manoah then realized that it had been the Lord’s messenger. ²² Manoah said to his wife, “We are certainly going to die, because we’ve seen God!”

²³ But his wife replied to him, “If the Lord wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted the entirely burned offering and grain offering from our hands. He wouldn’t have shown us all these things or told us all of this now.”

²⁴ The woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson. The boy grew up, and the Lord blessed him.