How to listen when God speaks

a lesson from an unnamed woman

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

Last week I was reading through the book of Judges in my Bible study and came across the story of an unnamed wife and her husband Manoah. They were to be the parents of Samson, who went on to judge Israel and make a mess of things over his repeated choices of unfit wives. It never doesn’t amaze me how God uses people who are so intent on wrecking their lives. But I digress.

Since I’ve been a Christian, some 40-odd years now, I’ve read the Bible straight through a lot of years. The other years I chose various topics to study and meditate on. But let’s say I’ve read it through at least 25 times. It also amazes me that every single time, I see something in a different way or something jumps out at me that I’ve never considered before.

A little background: Since I’ve been a Christian, I have been largely influenced by very conservative teachings on Christianity. For decades I thought this was the standard and everyone else was wrong. This culture was the authority and I was an unlearned nobody, trying to be whatever “they” dictated I should be. Then a few years ago I began questioning some of the teachings I’d grown up with, asking, “Is that really what the Bible says? Or is that someone’s opinion?”

This has been an uneasy place for me to be. As a hard-and-fast rule follower, I am much more comfortable knowing exactly where my lane is so I can stay between the lines. Driving an unmarked road is way out of my comfort zone. But as he always is, God has been faithful, and as long as I keep my eyes on him alone, I will get to the right place eventually, even if I hit a few potholes.

That’s a very long introduction to the story I read (for at least the 26th time) in Judges 13. The story is set at a time in Israel’s history when they did not have kings. Instead, they had judges. The last judge has died, and the first verse of chapter 13 says,

And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.

This was the ongoing pattern of Israel: sin, get rebuked by God, repent and promise to follow the Lord, sin. I don’t want to say it sounds like me, but here I am sitting on my hands so they don’t shoot up.

In verse 2 the narrative begins. We meet Manoah, a man who is a descendant of Dan, and his unnamed wife, who was barren (had no children).

Into the story steps the “angel of the LORD,” and he appears not to Manoah, but to the wife. Let me stop here and explain that if you grew up in a culture like mine, this might be surprising. Throughout my years as a very conservative Christian, I was taught—sometimes outright, often inferentially—that God speaks to men. That because men are the “head” of their families, God would naturally go to them first. Sort of a holy chain of command. So the first thing I noticed this year is that God appeared to the wife.

The angel loses no time giving his message to the wife (v 3–5):

Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son.

Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing:

For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

The wife immediately does exactly what I would do: she goes to tell her husband. It doesn’t say she was surprised or nervous that God’s angel had appeared to her instead of him, but that would have been my reaction a few years ago. Maybe not so much now, but it takes a while to change your thinking about things like this.

So she goes and tells her husband (v 6–7):

A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible: but I asked him not whence he was, neither told he me his name:

But he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink, neither eat any unclean thing: for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death.

Manoah immediately goes to God and asks (v 8):

O my Lord, let the man of God which thou didst send come again unto us, and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall be born.

The first thing I noticed here is that Manoah wasn’t willing to take his wife’s word for it. He wanted God to show up and give him—Manoah—confirmation for himself. He wanted to be part of it. Maybe that’s not so unreasonable. But check out what happened next.

And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah [yay!]; and the angel of God came again unto the woman as she sat in the field: but Manoah her husband was not with her.

Wait, what? God answers Manoah’s prayer, but he appears to the woman again, without Manoah. Now I’m wondering if there is a point here that I’m missing, so I’m paying attention.

The wife “made haste” and ran to show her husband and said, “Hey, the same guy that appeared to me the other day is here again!” (not in King James English).

Now listen, I’ve been taught all my Christian life to pay attention to the exact words that God uses, so I’m trying to do that here. Verse 11 says,

And Manoah arose, and went after his wife, and came to the man, and said unto him, Art thou the man that spakest unto the woman? And he said, I am.

Did you see that? Manoah “went after his wife.” He followed her lead because she knew where to go and he didn’t. She was taking him to the source of information from God. Please know I am not being all “women should be the leaders because men don’t know anything” in a general sense, but there are times when wisdom dictates that a man follow his wife. It’s very possible she knows something he doesn’t, and as my favorite LMFT says, “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

(This is getting long; I’ll hurry.)

In verse 12, Manoah questions the angel as to exactly what he said, and here’s the angel’s answer:

Of all that I said unto the woman let her beware.

I already told her—your wife.

He does reiterate for Manoah what he’s already said to the wife, but it’s clear that the command is to the wife. The angel doesn’t tell Manoah to make sure his wife does thus-and-such; he gives the instruction directly to the wife. The “chain of command” is not important here. God is speaking to the woman and giving her the plan that is of great importance, and he expects her to obey it. It’s between her and God. Nowhere in this exchange is Manoah asked to enforce, interfere, control, or otherwise be in charge of his wife’s obedience. It’s on her.

The story continues with Manoah wanting to have a dinner for the angel, who says, “Thanks but no thanks; I won’t eat it.”

Another interesting tidbit I noticed is that through all this, Manoah doesn’t know the man is an angel of the Lord (v 16). We know his wife suspected the man was an angel in the very beginning, and she told Manoah as much (v 6). She had a sense that the man was more than just a man.

In my very conservative culture, women are often accused of being “hyper-spiritual,” like that’s a bad thing. I don’t think it’s wrong to be in tune with spiritual things. I think the danger is that it is easy to apply spiritual significance to things that are not, and that’s where we all can get into trouble, men and women alike. I think being “spiritual” needs to be tempered with discernment and humility to keep it from getting out of hand. Remember Galatians 6:1,

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

God refers to us Christians as “ye which are spiritual” but admonishes us to restore a fallen brother or sister “in the spirit of meekness.” Spirituality must be accompanied by humility. One without the other is dangerous.

Back to the story.

Manoah makes a sacrifice and the angel of the Lord goes up in the flames. THEN, Manoah knew it was an angel. Maybe the opposite of over-spiritualizing is having to see proof with your own eyes?

And finally, we have verses 22–23:

And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God.

But his wife said unto him, If the LORD were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our hands, neither would he have shewed us all these things, nor would as at this time have told us such things as these.

How have I never seen this before? If you are a woman in a conservative Christian culture, have you ever been accused of being too emotional? Too over-the-top? Told that no man wants an emotional wife? I have heard it a million times. As an actual HSP (highly sensitive person), this teaching has always rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t choose to be an HSP; God created me as such. Does that mean I was created wrong or that I should strive to be something other than how I was created just to meet other people’s expectations? This teaching is worse than wrong; it’s harmful. This article published by the National Institutes of Health details the long-term physical ramifications of emotional repression, and there are hundreds more just like it.

Once Manoah figures out the man is an angel, he freaks out: We’re gonna die!

And look who is the calm person. His wife, still unnamed, explains that if God wanted to kill them, he wouldn’t have received their offerings or showed them all these things. Clearly he wasn’t going to kill them.

So in this story, Manoah is the emotional one and his wife is the one with an even-keeled personality. And guess what . . . that’s not a problem. Being emotional is not a fault or a character flaw; it’s a personality trait, whether in a male or a female. Let’s let it be just that and stop harping on it.

Repeat after me: Emotions are not bad.

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So what’s the point of all this?

First, let me tell you I am not a feminist like the world thinks of feminists. But I am decidedly pro-feminine and I think God is too. This story shows that he does indeed speak directly to women, not through their husband or pastor. That’s a privilege—to be spoken to by the God of the universe. This happens multiple times in scripture: Eve, Hagar, Sarah, and Mary, to name a few.

With that privilege comes a responsibility. What you don’t see in this story is the wife talking to her husband like he’s stupid or treating him like another one of the children. She doesn’t lord it over him that God spoke to her and not to him. There is no heavy sighing and eye rolling. She is not prideful about it. There is no copping of attitudes. She has a spirit of humility about the whole thing and I think that is the key. It’s remembering that God could just as easily have chosen someone else for this assignment. He could have spoken to your next-door neighbor instead of you and you could go back to your peon status, so unpuff your chest and simmer down.

God doesn’t choose you because you’re so great and he has no other options. He chooses those who he knows are willing to obey and will honor him with the task at hand. That’s what makes Manoah’s wife so special here. She embraced God’s plan in a spirit of thankfulness and humility. We could do likewise.

Would Samson still have been born if she had not included her husband in the interaction with the angel? Of course; God already told her it would happen and what she needed to do. She did not run and get Manoah because she needed permission for God to speak to her; that had already happened. She included him because that’s what wives and husbands do.