FROM TODAY’S RECAP: - Judges 10:17 - Numbers 6:1-21 - TBR Resource: Priority Time Toolkit Note: We provide links to specific resources; this is not an endorsement of the entire website, author, organization, etc. Their views may not represent our own. SHOW NOTES: - Follow The Bible Recap: Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | YouTube - Follow Tara-Leigh Cobble: Instagram - Read/listen on the Bible App or Dwell App - Learn more at our Start Page - Become a RECAPtain - Shop the TBR Store - Credits PARTNER MINISTRIES: D-Group International Israelux The God Shot TLC Writing & Speaking DISCLAIMER: The Bible Recap, Tara-Leigh Cobble, and affiliates are not a church, pastor, spiritual authority, or counseling service. Listeners and viewers consume this content on a voluntary basis and assume all responsibility for the resulting consequences and impact.
Full Episode
Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Did you know we have another daily podcast? It's called The Bible Kneecap, like kneeling in prayer because your girl loves a pun. Anyway, it's a short prayer of response to what we've read and recapped each day. And each episode is about 60 to 90 seconds long.
To give you a taste of it, we've uploaded a free preview of The Bible Kneecap for you today. So be sure to look for that in your feed. Today we meet our 12th and final judge, Samson. He may be the only one you've heard of before.
He's definitely the most famous, in part because his story is the most detailed in the book, but also it might have something to do with the fact that he feels like the closest thing Christian culture has to a traditional superhero. I hope today's reading helped paint things a little more clearly because he's probably the worst and most wicked of all the judges in the book.
Not only that, but he probably doesn't actually have big muscles like we usually imagine. I'll tell you why tomorrow when we wrap up this story. As for today, the people of Israel have fallen into sin again and are oppressed by the Philistines for 40 years. And according to 1017, this is all probably happening simultaneous to the stuff we read about yesterday.
Yesterday's battle with the Ammonites was happening in the Transjordan, east of the Jordan River, and this stuff with the Philistines is happening along the Mediterranean coastline of Israel, west of the Jordan River. First, we meet a man named Manoah, and the angel of the Lord, who is likely God the Son, shows up to tell Manoah's barren wife that she's going to have a son.
He says her son will play a role in helping rescue Israel and that she should raise him to live under the Nazarite vow. You may remember the Nazarite vow from number six. The rules of the vow included not drinking any alcohol or even eating any part of a grape, not cutting your hair, and not touching anything dead.
If you recall, the Nazarite rules were an even more ramped-up version of some of the rules for the Levites. Most people took this vow temporarily and voluntarily, but Samson was assigned this role, and his assignment was lifelong. And God even said it doesn't start when he's born, it starts when he's in the womb.
So Manoah's wife has to follow the Nazarite vow during her pregnancy, as if giving up coffee isn't hard enough on its own. It seems like Manoah and his wife really believed this prophecy. They're earnest about it. They beg God for instructions and advice from the angel of the Lord. And when they're referencing the prophecy, they say when this happens, not if this happens.
They offer a burnt offering to God and worship him, the one who works wonders, as the text calls him. After Samson is born, God the Spirit begins to send him promptings about his calling at some undetermined age. God blesses him, and chapter 13 ends beautifully. In chapter 14, the first decision Samson makes seems to be wicked and foolish.
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