Judges 13:2-14

International Standard Version

² There was one man from Zorah, from the family of the descendants of Dan, whose name was Manoah. Since his wife was infertile, she hadn’t borne children.^{[a] 3} One day the angel of the Lord presented himself to the woman. “Hello!” he greeted^[b] her. “Though you are infertile at this time and haven’t borne a child, you’re about to conceive and give birth to a son. ⁴ So be sure that you don’t drink wine or anything intoxicating, and don’t eat anything unclean ⁵ because—surprise!—you’re going to conceive and give birth to a son! Don’t put a razor to his head, because the young man will be a Nazirite, dedicated^[c] to God from inside the womb. He will begin to deliver Israel from domination by the Philistines.”

⁶ Then the woman went to tell her husband. She said, “A man of God appeared^[d] to me. He looked like what an angel of God would look like—very frightening.^[e] I didn’t ask him where he had come from and he didn’t tell me his name. ⁷ He told me, ‘Surprise!—you’re going to conceive and give birth to a son!’ and as for you, ‘Be sure that you don’t drink wine or anything intoxicating, and don’t eat anything unclean,’ ‘because the young man will be a Nazirite dedicated to God from inside the womb’ until the day he dies.”

⁸ So Manoah prayed to the Lord, “Please, Lord, have the man of God whom you sent before^[f] come again so he can instruct us what to do on behalf of the child who is to be born.”

⁹ God listened to Manoah’s request,^[g] and the angel of God came again to the woman as she was sitting out in the pasture. But her husband Manoah wasn’t with her, ¹⁰ so the woman ran quickly to tell her husband, “Look! The man who came the other^[h] day appeared to me!”

¹¹ So Manoah got up quickly and followed his wife, and when he came to the man he told him, “Are you the man who spoke to my^[i] wife?”

He replied, “I am.”

¹² Manoah asked, “Now, when what you’ve said occurs, what is to be the young man’s way of life and work?”

¹³ The angel of the Lord replied to Manoah, “Just have your wife^[j] be careful to carry out everything that I told her. ¹⁴ She must not consume anything extracted from grape vines, including wine or anything intoxicating, and she must not eat anything unclean, doing everything that I commissioned her to do.”