40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 12:1-13:7 (Episode 211)

Episode Date: April 12, 2020

Jephthah gets in a conflict with the men of Ephraim resulting in a lot of bloodshed. Jephthah is followed by three Judges we don't know much about other than their massive families. We are introduced to the mother of Samson and a messenger who is more than an angel. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are going on over there. Don't go to the events page. Not right now. Unless you're listening to this later on. There's nothing going on there.

As you know, because we are still in that great quarantine of 2020, Chad's cranking out content. I'm cranking out content. Cranking out this content. Because we've got nothing else that we can do. All we can do is create content for you to absorb. so that's what we're trying to do chad how's the uh the creating of content going for everyone else that's stuck at home with nothing to do well i'm trying to stay busy i'm doing these

weekly videos i'm working on my uh my book for 15 17 unveiling mercy i'm trying to write like 15 of those devotions a day i'm like just coming up with anything to make sure that my mind stays occupied my wife and i are going on long walks in the evenings at least to get out of the house i mean some people are like it's kind of barricaded at home but yeah we're like we can at least walk around the neighborhood and get a little exercise a little fresh air yeah man there's people there's people depending on what state you live in you just straight can't leave your house yeah you're just like stuck inside i mean like i mean like if you actually leave your house you're not on the way to the pharmacy you get like stopped by the by the police and told to go home yeah it's just

it's kind of wild but i mean i've done i've been pretty good because i mean because i've i got plenty of work to keep me keep me busy but it's doing dealing with the same struggles i guess everybody else is just gonna want this to end but until it does we'll keep putting out plenty of podcasts videos articles whatever we can keep uh keep people's minds on the good stuff yeah yeah we just uh had you know we had done the form of concord series and i think uh we're about to start something uh chad and i are going to do a series with scott so probably this is a really great time for you to go over to the the youtube channel go ahead and subscribe to that because basically all the video content that we that we do ends up there so it's it might appear in other

places as well but if you want a place to subscribe where you won't miss any content then that's where you should go and you just subscribe ring that bell then you'll get all the videos all the time and you won't and you they're all in one place you just peruse there's hundreds and hundreds of videos over there of us doing different things so check it out all right chad where are we at in the story of jephthah i believe we're in the twilight of this story We are, yeah. We wrapped up chapter 11 last time, which is the major part of Jephthah's story, that beautiful, heartwarming story of Jephthah. It was quite a story. I mean, when you look at, especially the latter half of it, once you get to the vow that he made, it gets super dark and just kind of shows you where Israel was during this time. And Jeff, that's kind of a representative of the spiritual cancer that was afflicting Israel.

And I think having said that, I think it's important to point out that a lot of these judges, I mean, they are called by God to be the divinely designated deliverer of Israel. But at the same time, they're sort of a representative of Israel as a whole. and by that I mean like when you when you look at them you're kind of getting a picture of the same problems that are afflicting the whole nation so their personality with their with their weaknesses is a reflection really of the nation as a whole so yeah they're I mean they're called by God to be a deliverer a savior of Israel at the same time they mirror back the problems that are afflicting afflicting Israel we see that with Jephthah and we're going to see that especially with samson whom uh we will we'll get to uh just in a few minutes so uh kind of can bear that in

mind when you're reading through the book of judges too that they kind of serve that dual purpose used by god but also mirror the problems that are uh that are leading is leading israel into idolatry and all sorts of other uh law breaking at the time well it's interesting that the judges i mean it's not like you know the when a judge is called it doesn't read like other things may read it doesn't say uh and you know the nation was idolatrous and and doing what was displeasing in the sight of god uh except for the family of blank and then god goes and there's like some righteous dude that's like you know holding the line uh of orthodoxy and god's like well you're going to be to deliver. No, it's always like, then there was this guy, and he was like

the son of a prostitute hanging out with some bums. Then there was this other guy. Judges are just like, God just selects a guy, and he doesn't seem like he's any better or more. He's just like another guy, like just another Israelite that's probably caught up in idolatry, not doing the right things, and God just decides that he's the guy. It doesn't seem like God's like scanning around looking for like is there anyone that's not you know that's that's that's holding uh fast to my precepts it doesn't does not seem like this is the way it goes yeah i mean the real the real mark of holiness is how you how you drink water out of a river right yeah you drink like a dog yeah oh yeah it's it is seemingly like god just kind of throws a dart and wherever it lands he's

like all right i can use that guy there's nothing really special about him but i'll i'll make use of him and uh i mean that certainly the way that jephthah was and samson's gonna be gonna be the same way he's a little bit different in that he is called from the womb but uh as he grows up of course he ends up just being another typical another typical israelite that is way too engrossed in the ways of the canaanites and a lot in a lot of ways i think samson or maybe in every way samson is sort of the most um christological uh of all the judges um partially just due to the fact that you have it straight from birth right yeah straight from birth and then also his death the way that he dies and the effects of that his beginning and end are pretty pretty uh pretty

christological yeah yes they are they certainly are but before we get to samson i guess we need to finish up our uh our last judge jephthah so i uh i don't know exactly why they stopped the chapter where they did because there's another seven verses they could have included on chapter 11 i guess they thought it was getting too long already but the uh story is going to end of jephthah with chapter 12 verse 7 really uh there's one more instance that takes place and this is a this is a mirror image of what happened earlier in the case of gideon remember that the that after Gideon had gone on the war path and defeated his enemies that the the men of Ephraim came to him and they're like hey why didn't you include us you know we wanted to fight why didn't

you include us and Gideon's like trying to kind of calm their fears I'm trying to calm their their anger he's saying hey you know you guys are better than us and uh you've done a whole lot more than we have. So he's kind of patting them on the back to try and calm them down. And it works. It says that their anger subsided. But now we're going to have kind of a replica of that story at the beginning of chapter 12. And it's not going to work so well in this case. And Jephthah, when he responds to them, rather than calming them, is going to actually incite their anger even more. So what happens is, beginning of chapter 12, these Ephraimites, they cross over to where jephthah's at and they say why did you cross over to fight against the ammonites without

calling us to go with you and then they they go on to say we're gonna burn your house down on you i don't get these ephraimites i mean they're like they are they're so eager for war and then they jump to these conclusions and then they just throw out these threats like there's no chance for Jephthah even to answer them like you know what we're going to do? We're going to burn your house down on top. These kind of sound like the guys that maybe you do want to take to war though. I mean maybe

Jephthah really needs to make a note of like next time I go fight I gotta invite these guys. They keep getting very upset like they are ready to go so I really do invite them or else I'm going to have to fight

with them. Invite them to fight for me So another error on Jephthah's part should have, if you're going to another battle, man, got to bring these guys up. They are anxious. Yeah, they are eager to fight. So, well, Jephthah's response is interesting. So after they ask their question and then issue their threat, he responds. It's a little bit difficult to translate, honestly.

The Hebrew there is just a little bit unclear. It's hard to bring out an English translation, but my translation, for instance, says, I and my people were at great strife with the sons of Ammon. And then the ESV has, I and my people had a great dispute with the Ammonites. But in the Hebrew, it begins by him saying to them, Ishriv Hayiti, which means, I am a man of strife. And then it goes on to say that my people also had strife with the Ammonites. But the very opening words are the way in which Jephthah seems to indicate, look, don't mess with me because I'm a man of strife. I know how to

fight. And I had a fight with the Ammonites. And by implication, if you want to fight with me while i'm game but it's like i said it's kind of hard to bring all that on in the english translation but that's the way that's his opening words is that i am a man of strife is that basically is that basically him saying i'm your huckleberry is that yeah that's exactly what's going on yeah i'm your huckleberry you want to fight i'm ready so he uh he goes on to say well who knows whether this is true or not i mean this is jeptha and the guy likes to talk as we've seen i mean he's a big talker he no one talks more in the book of judges than jeptha does and as we saw last time his talking gets him into some serious problems i mean into some some

terrible awful dark problems in the case of his daughter but he says now we don't know if this true or not he says when i called you uh when i when i called you you did not deliver me from their hand so he seems to indicate hey i went to you i asked if you wanted to fight who knows who's i mean who knows who's telling the truth are the affirmations telling the truth is jeff the town of the truth we really don't know but whatever it is he see claims that that they did and goes on to say, when I saw you would not deliver me, well, I took my life in my own hands, and I crossed over against the sons of Ammon, and the Lord gave them into my hand. Why then have you come up to me this day to fight against me? So Jephthah's kind of, he starts out with this, I'm your huckleberry, and then

he claims to say that he tried to get them involved in this, and they didn't. They weren't cooperative. to, ah, this is one of those cases where I don't know who to believe. It really doesn't matter because when you get to the end of it, he's basically saying, if you want to fight, let's fight. So that's what happens. It says that Jephthah gathered all the men of Gilead and he fought against Ephraim. And the men of Gilead defeated Ephraim because they said, this is kind of a slander, a slur that the Ephraimites said against Jephthah and his men. You are the fugitives of Ephraim, O Gileadites, in the midst of Ephraim and in the midst of Manasseh. Now this is interesting because so the Ephraimites are saying, you are fugitives to Jephthah and his men. Now in

the very next verse, everything is going to be turned around. And instead, it's the people of Ephraim who are going to become fugitives. So I'll read that verse, verse five. And the Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan opposite Ephraim, and it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, let me cross over, the men of Gilead would say to him, are you an Ephraimite? If he said no, then they would say to him, say now, Shibboleth. But he said Sibboleth, for he couldn't pronounce it correctly. And then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the jordan and there fell at that time 42 000 of ephraim and then jephthah gets his whole life summarized at the end in one verse jephthah judge israel six years and then jephthah the gileadite

died and was buried in one of the cities of gilead this is a that's not just like a little skirmish man i know this is a that's a lot of guys this is like i mean how many people were left of ephraim after that i mean if these are literal figures 42 000 i mean especially especially for that that day that's a big battle back in the day i mean it's a big battle now i mean if you lost that many guys in the battle that's a lot back then that was a ton yeah this wasn't like one little city of the ephraimites coming and saying hey why didn't you include us this sounds like the whole tribe is involved in this yeah i mean like when you're reading this at first you think there's about to be like a like a west side story street fight you know about you have like like 30

guys on each side they're gonna settle this thing because one guy threatened to burn some other guy's house down they're gonna settle this straight thing like men you know they're gonna meet on the playground and they're gonna do this thing now there's a 40 something thousand guys die like what in the world yeah this is a this is not a skirmish this is an all-out war that goes on so everything gets turned around the ephraimites are slandering the men of gilead saying ah you're just fugitives you're kind of runaways and then after they get defeated they end up being the fugitives they end up being the runaways and we have this uh this almost if it wasn't so fatal it'd be a comical situation that all has to do with how you say certain words right this is all

about accent and patterns of speech so in at the crossings of the jordan river of course these these guys are trying to get away right and i guess there's only certain places where they're going to be able to cross the river well the men of gilead they they take possession of these crossings these fords and when an ephraimite would show up they'd say all right you know what's the password basically say say shibboleth but i guess whatever it was the they they couldn't pronounce the sh there's a there's a different letters in different letters in hebrew and uh so instead of saying, well, they probably thought they were saying Shibboleth, but when it came out, it was Sibboleth. It's kind of like, I always make fun of my wife because she was born in Houston.

But when she says it, I hear her saying Houston, like the H is silent. I'll say, say Houston. And she says, Houston. So in her mind, she is hearing it. She's hearing herself say it the exact way that that i say it and it's probably the same way with with these these men of ephraim they probably thought they were saying shibboleth but instead they came out as a civil and that was you know we still we still here i have that uh terminology in english sometimes if someone's talking about like code language or kind of in-group language they'll use that word shibboleth as a as a reference to that so anyway uh this is uh the end of the story of of jephthah yeah and it's interesting how i mean this obviously has to do with his story but

this kind of has nothing to do with god saving israel right this is sort of you have god's working to save israel and then you have man's like side projects and side offenses going on right uh and so you see the it's all it's all terribly human and i do i mean terribly yeah yeah it's it well it kind of shows you the ongoing strife and civil wars within the various among the various tribes there's just there's no unity and there really won't be the when you really look at the at the span of israel's history there are extremely short periods of time when they are unified as a nation i mean if of course they weren't really unified when they were the 40 years in the wilderness because you had you even had you had all kinds of disunity even back then

people were rebelling against Moses you know the earth opening up and and swallowing Dathan and others so you had issues way back then but once they get to the promised land yeah it's pretty short-lived they seem to be unified in the days of Joshua but after he dies the unity begins to break up and it's sort of like every tribes gets kind of doing their own thing and sometimes two or three of them will band together and sometimes two or three of them will fight each other and it's not going to get any better until really the rule of king david so during during king david's reign and during solomon's reign not the very beginning of david's reign because it took some time for a while only his own tribe recognized him as king but he finally brought unity to the

kingdom and then solomon maintained that unity but then after that it's over so for you know less than a century israel was actually all 12 tribes were unified and then after that you have the breakup after solomon dies you have the northern kingdom breaking away from the southern kingdom and they never were reunified yeah so the the broad stretch of israelite history is one of disunity rather than unity yeah it kind of seems like the only time they're unified is when uh is when there's some massive thing that they need to do. Yeah, like building the temple or something. Yeah, Joshua coming in and says,

we've got to take this land, and so we're going to need everybody. And you kind of see this play out in modern day. I mean, we're not, in the United States, our states don't go to war with each other. We have in our history. Our history is not that long, and there was one time where we all killed each other, which is pretty horrible.

but but then you see the the moments where sort of this this thing rises up and everybody like lays down all the all the other differences to get you know you know world war ii is an example of this and the country is extremely unified uh because you have like this sort of common cause right but right uh but the rest of the time we're always fighting with each other and arguing and pointing fingers at each other and that's that's how the vast majority of our time is spent until until something rises where we're like oh i guess we got to lay that stuff down for right now and deal with this thing yeah yeah i mean that that is sociologically i think that is true there's nothing that will will bring people together like a common enemy or a common cause but when that

disappears it's like people then turn and start looking at the people around them and either come up with a real or an imaginary excuse for going to war either metaphorically or or literally yeah i mean yeah you saw this kind of stuff happen um this is this is just human nature this happens in the reformation yeah you think that you get all united to get this thing done but as soon as that thing's done then it's all kinds of splintering and factions and all this i mean this is just the way humans work man yeah yeah i mean it it just goes to show as i've said before talking about cain and abel there's like all human history is prophesied in cain and abel genesis 4 is like all human history squeezed into a few verses where people who are close to each other fight and

often there's bloodshed as a result so uh anyway we see that here uh at the at the close of jeff the story where uh this is not god's doing this is just two tribes having it out and a whole lot of people dying as a result so anyway that's uh that's the end of the story of jephthah and following him we have three very uh short descriptions of the next next next judges so they're minor judges we don't really know all about them verse eight says that there was a guy from from bethlehem named uh ibsen this could be one of two bethlehems there's actually two Bethlehems in Israel. One is up in the, among the tribe of Zebulun and the other is the Bethlehem that we're all familiar with. So there's not exactly sure, but I suspect that this was probably

the, the tribe of the, the Bethlehem that was in the tribe of, of Zebulun's territory. But anyway, we don't know anything about him really, except that he judged Israel and he had, he had 30 sons and 30 daughters. So no doubt he was rich and powerful because he would have had multiple wives and says that he gave his daughters in marriage outside the family and then he brought in 30 daughters from outside for his sons so probably the same kind of thing going on that happens with kings right where you're trying to forge bonds with other countries and so you you know you're the king of germany so you give your daughter in marriage the king of the prince of france and this kind of politicking was going on in ancient israel just like it uh just like it does does

till today but anyway that that's all we know judge israel's for seven years and then ibsen died and was buried in bethlehem it's interesting that he only judges here for seven years though and the only information you have is he has 30 sons and 30 daughters and he brings in 30 daughters for his son and you're like did this all take place in this seven years like how You know, that's a lot of daughters to bring in while you're trying to. A lot of weddings. That's a lot of weddings. That means that you had a lot of people pregnant at the same time early on.

I mean, it's a weird little short description. Yeah, and we're also not told, maybe it says he judged Israel. What did he do? I mean, was he kind of the classic definition of a judge? Was he delivering Israel from some sort of enemies that aren't even specified? Or was he more of kind of what we think of as a judge who is acting to resolve disputes between people? Probably he was a military judge, just like many of the others, but we don't know exactly who he would have been fighting against. The next guy is from the tribe of Zebulun.

His name is Elan or Elon. And we know even less about him. We know that he judged Israel 10 years, and then he died and was buried. And that's all. We don't even know how many kids he had. Maybe he was a bachelor. Maybe he didn't have a family. He only had 15 kids, so it wasn't noteworthy.

Oh, yeah. Not even worth mentioning. So we got one more in this chapter, and his name is Abdon, the son of Hillel. Hillel is going to be a famous name among the Jews later on. One of the famous rabbis was Rabbi Hillel. And he had, wow, he even outdid the first judge we talked about here. He had 40 sons and 30 grandsons. And get this, they rode on 70 donkeys.

And he judged Israel for eight years. The donkey reference is probably a reference to the fact that, you know, was a powerful family and kind of a ruling type of family. We just celebrated Palm Sunday when we're recording this. It's a Tuesday of Holy Week, so we just passed Palm Sunday. But that's one of the significances of the fact that Jesus rode a donkey. This was part of the Old Testament heritage. Often those who were in some kind of power capacity, authority capacity, a king or a judge, they would be separated from others by not walking, but riding on donkeys, just like Solomon rode on David's donkey. So this particular judge has these 40 sons, 30 grandsons, and they're on

these 70 donkeys to kind of set them apart. And it says he judged Israel for eight years, and then he died, and he was buried in the hill country of the Amalekites. And that's it. That's it for the chapter and that's it for those three minor judges that's all all we know about them so now we are going to enter into a long section in the book of judges this is one of the longer sections if not the longest one and it's all about the probably the judge is most well known i mean gideon's pretty well known and samson's pretty well known but samson probably is is his story and many of the details in the story is probably more well known than any other judges just because there's a lot of kind of strange things that happened to him and and his physical

powers of course are well known his hair everybody knows about samson's hair i mean to think that that a story from the book of judges makes its way into pop music that says a lot right what's i'm trying to help me out here i'm trying to think of the uh of the of the song where uh samson and well there's more than one there's a country song about samson delilah and there's there's there's leonard cohen's hallelujah as references yeah hallelujah that's it yeah obviously david as well but samson delilah there's there's a song by the plain white tees just called hey there delilah which is not really about samson and delilah i don't think but maybe maybe yeah but in that it's kind of crazy to think that this story from the book of

judges would work its way into popular culture yeah i think it's probably the only part of the of Judges that has done that. Of course, other parts of the Bible have too, but it's like everybody knows about Delilah. But she wasn't the only woman in Samson's life, as we will find out shortly. You can kind of divide his life into segments based upon his connection with women. His mother first, and then he has his wife, and then she's killed, she's murdered, and then you have a prostitute and then you have Delilah and we know that she was part of

Samson's undoing but anyway there's a whole lot that will be very interesting to talk about when we delve into various aspects of his life it's interesting in the scriptures if you were to try to figure out who the shadiest

most manipulative dude in the Bible was there'd be a lot of guys in the running because there's a ton of them but if you were to say who's the shadiest most manipulative woman in the bible i think i think almost everyone would immediately be like that's gotta be delilah yeah yeah like she's she's she stands above the rest because by and large the women are actually in the scriptures are actually they're they present much better than the men yes they do and uh there's a lot of dudes that you could be like well there's a lot of there's a lot of

scumbags but as far as women go delilah i think that's part of the reason that she's unique is because she's one of the only women in the scriptures that you're like man this she seems like she is trouble yeah yeah delilah and jezebel right i mean they're they are uh just about the worst but yeah delilah i mean jezebel just kind of comes across as pure evil right yeah but but delilah's different i mean yeah she's seductive and manipulative and won't give up she's in it for the money uh dude the power that she has over samson when we get there seems ridiculous yeah you read that part of the story you're like dude do you not realize what's happening here you need better friends samson like how come none of your boys are not coming up to you like dude you

gotta cut this off yeah are you so blinded by love or lust that you don't realize what's happening here but anyway we will we will get there first of all we have to have to hear about his his birth story which is fascinating in and of itself we have just all kinds of uh unusual things happening here with uh with his birth story so we'll jump into it this is chapter 13 so it says the israelites did evil again in the sight of the Lord. Nothing new there. And the Lord gave them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years. Now that's significant because that's a long period of period of time. And this is really when you begin to see this particular story is really when you begin to see the Philistines emerging as the arch enemy of the Israelites. We've heard about the

philistines early in the in the book of judges few other scattered places but from this point on if you were to ask an israelite who the major threat was they wouldn't point to the amalekites or to the ammonites or the moabites or any of those people or egypt or any any major nation instead they'd point to the people that lived really in their own land along the the mediterranean in a in a strip there of several cities known as the philistines philistines are just one of those ancient peoples where they're it's kind of cloaked in in mystery as to where they came from most people believe that they came from the aegean uh and and most scholars think that they were they kind of got stuck there it's like they they migrated in and they were they were trying to go

into egypt possibly even to conquer egypt but we do have historical records saying that one of the Phaedrus fought against them and defeated them. So probably what happened is they were on their way to Egypt, and they were met by the Egyptian army, and they were defeated. So rather than fulfilling the ultimate goal of capturing Egypt, or at least taking part of Egypt, they actually stopped, and they settled there along the Mediterranean and built these cities. And in the rest of the book of Judges, in the time of Samuel, and then all the way into the story of David. It's the Philistines who again and again are going to attack Israel. Now, one of the things that is distinct about this particular time period relative to the Philistines is that it seems as

if the Israelites are basically wanting to live at peace with the Philistines. You know, a lot of times these other tribes or these other peoples will come in and the Israelites are actually like crying out to God, you know, deliver us, send somebody to help us, save us. But there's nothing like that happening here. In fact, in a couple of the stories of Samson, it's like the Israelites are trying everything within their power to just kind of keep things calm and maintain peace with the Philistines. So they don't want any trouble with the Philistines, but Samson is the one who's causing problems, and it's really not even Samson. God is using Samson to kind of stir up strife. So it's kind of like he sees that his people have become so lax that they don't even get upset by

the Philistines. And so God's going to poke the bear. He's going to try and stir up strife by using Samson to create this friction between the Israelites and the Philistines so that he'll kind of wake them up and make them realize that they shouldn't be tolerating the situation that they're in. Anyway, that's the Philistines. Now we're going to move out from that kind of broad focus on them to a very narrow focus upon one man and one woman, and one woman in particular, who, you know, we talked a few minutes ago that there's nobody in the, there's hardly anybody in the book of Judges who kind of stands out as sort of pious or faithful. If there is one, it would be the mother of Samson. There seems to, you know, she seems to come across at least as

someone who is genuinely interested in in doing in doing god's will her husband kind of comes across as a as a buffoon as we'll see as the story goes on he just he kind of comes across as like you're like he's he's sort of thin skin and like he feels like he's being left out because the angel keeps appearing to his wife and when he asks the angel questions he doesn't get any direct answers so uh his wife kind of comes out of the story as the one who's really figured things out and understands what god's will is but anyway there was a this guy a certain man we're told first of zora the family of the danites so he's from the family of dan whose name was manoa and his wife was barren and had born no children so typical theme typical biblical biblical theme

coming up, right? Sarah, Rebecca, we have Elizabeth, a lot of stories in the scriptures where you have a barren wife who is about to be confronted by a promise of God that she's going to bear children. Verse 3 says that to this particular woman, the Malak Yahweh, the angel of the Lord, the messenger of the Lord, appeared and said to her, behold, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines. Several interesting

things just right away in this particular story. First of all, if you're a long time listener in 40 minutes, we don't really need to go into who the angel of the Lord is very briefly. In Hebrew, malak just means messenger, usually translated angel, but it just means messenger. So this is the messenger of God. And this messenger, as we'll see, even in this chapter speaks with divine authority. So he's not just, he's not a created angel. He's the divine messenger. So this is the word or the glory or the son of father so in new testament language this is christ who is appearing to this particular family which is which is pretty cool you know because there's a lot of language in here that actually echoes the same language is going to be spoken to mary right yeah only by

someone that we know for sure is an angel this is one of the ways you know that you know the difference uh is that uh christ does not come you know jesus does not come to to marry and say you're going to bear me right this is not this is not how it works instead we have a different an actual angel come uh that angel has a name uh named maybe maybe the most famous probably the most famous uh angel of all uh gabriel maybe maybe set maybe michael's in the running but I think probably more kids know who Gabriel is. Yeah. And, yeah, so here you have – this is what's cool about it is, I mean,

there's going to be obvious parallels between the birth of Samson and the birth of Christ, this sort of miraculous birth of a Savior. He will begin – and even in this language, he will begin to save Israel. By the way, he will not complete the saving of Israel. That will belong to Christ. But he will begin to save Israel. and that this is announced

the fact that this would be announced by Christ who would complete the work of salvation is pretty cool yeah that is pretty cool it's like Jesus prepares the language for his own birthday right for his own conception

so anyway that's who the angel of the Lord is if you're a new listener go back and listen to Exodus chapter 3 the discussion of Moses the burning bush where we talk a lot a lot more about who this is anyway so this divine messenger says uh yeah you're barren well that's no news she realizes that already but then he has this promise now you can't tell this in the English and I've checked a

couple of translations and both the translations had the same thing but there's a change that takes place in the Hebrew so in verse three he says you shall conceive and give birth to a son but then when you get to verse 5, the tense of the verb changes, and it's no longer a future. It's actually a past, or you can translate it as a present. So in verse 3, he makes the promise, you shall conceive. But then in verse 5, he says, you have conceived, or you are pregnant. So it's almost as if in the very appearance of this divine messenger is when this conception takes place, which is even even cooler when you compare that then to christ himself and the announcement of the angel but whether that actually happened then or not that seems to be what is implied by the hebrew

there the change from future to to present so you're going to conceive and in fact you already you already have and the the nazirite quality of of this child is is different too we talked about the nazarites way back when we were discussing uh the torah but the nazarites were usually set apart in three different ways first of all they took a vow that was temporary usually temporary in nature you hardly ever had a lifelong nazarite but samson is going to be one and part of what they vowed was that they wouldn't cut their hair and that they would not touch any any carcass or or a corpse of a person. So no contact, no direct contact with death. And then thirdly, that they would not drink any kind of alcoholic beverages. So what's going to set Samson apart here is first

of all, this is a lifelong vow. It's not going to be something that he does temporarily. And he's going to begin this already from the womb so that even his mother is not allowed to consume the beverages, which by virtue of her being pregnant would affect the child. The prohibition there, by the way, not to drink wine or strong drink, the word for strong drink is shakar. It probably refers to actually to beer. So there's a lot of references in ancient Near Eastern literature to a beverage like this. In fact, they've even found among Philistines, interestingly, these vessels were basically the ancient beer jugs but the beer would have so much sediment in it that there was a filtering system where you you would drink out of it and there were little bitty

holes that would catch the residues so when you were you were drinking the beer you wouldn't get a mouthful of all the stuff that was on the bottom of it but we have records that a lot of the the pharaohs and mesopotamian kings actually included in the ration list for people so much beer and Maybe it was a small jug, maybe it was a gallon of beer that would be given to them. So beer was well known, and probably that's what was being talked about here. So no wine, no beer for the mother, and then, of course, for Samson as well. And no razor to pass upon his head. And then we have, of course, as you talked about, this description of his vocation,

that he shall begin to deliver Israel. So that kind of gets us into the story a little bit. we are uh we're out of time so i guess we're going to pick up on the story of samson and the rest of this back and forth between this divine messenger and this uh soon-to-be mother and father when we get together next yeah and this this back and forth that we're going to see between the father and and the angel of the lord there's one of the more interesting exchanges that the that that you see in the that the angel of the lord will have with somebody yeah it's a long conversation it is you get more information

that will definitely lead you to believe this isn't just some angel angels don't talk this way yeah right so stay tuned well guys there's a lot of additional content that we're trying to put out there so you know

stay tuned to the appropriate mediums we're putting stuff out on Facebook all the time go over to the YouTube I'll put a link to the YouTube channel in the show notes so you can just click on that and you can check out those videos from Chad and other people and we'll see you here next week.