who explains it as signifying “neither easy to utter nor easy to comprehend.”
Verses 19-20
Manoah then took the kid and the minchah, i.e., according to Num 15:4., the meat-offering belonging to the burnt-offering, and offered it upon the rock, which is called an altar in Jdg 13:20, because the angel of the Lord, who is of one nature with God, had sanctified it as an altar through the miraculous acceptance of the sacrifice. לעשׁות מפלא, “and wonderfully (miraculously) did he act” (הפליא followed by the infinitive with ל as in 2Ch 26:15). These words form a circumstantial clause, which is not to be attached, however, to the subject of the principal clause, but to ליהוה: “Manoah offered the sacrifice to the Lord, whereupon He acted to do wonderfully, i.e., He performed a wonder or miracle, and Manoah and his wife saw it” (see Ewald, Lehrb. §341, b., p. 724, note). In what the miracle consisted is explained in Jdg 13:20, in the words, “when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar;” that is to say, in the fact that a flame issued from the rock, as in the case of Gideon's sacrifice (Jdg 6:21), and consumed the sacrifice. And the angel of the Lord ascended in this flame. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell upon their faces to the earth (sc., in worship), because they discovered from the miracle that it was the angel of the Lord who had appeared to them.
Verses 21-23
From that time forward the Lord did not appear to them again. But Manoah was afraid that he and his wife should die, because they had seen God (on this belief, see the remarks on Gen 16:13 and Exo 33:20). His wife quieted his fears, however, and said, “Jehovah cannot intend to kill us, as He has accepted our sacrifice, and has shown us all this” (the twofold miracle). “And at this time He has not let us see such things as these.” כּעת, at the time in which we live, even if such things may possibly have taken place in the hoary antiquity.
Verse 24
The promise of God was fulfilled. the boy whom the woman bare received the name of Samson. שׁמשׁון (lxx, Σαμψών) does not mean sun-like, hero of the sun, from שׁמשׁ (the sun), but, as Josephus explains it (Ant. v. 8, 4), ἰσχυρός, the strong or daring one, from שׁמשׁום, from the intensive from שׁמשׁם, from שׁמם, in its original sense to be strong or daring, not “to devastate.” שׁדד is an analogous word: lit. to be powerful, then to act powerfully, to devastate. The boy grew under the blessing of God (see 1Sa 2:21).
Verse 25
When he had grown up, the Spirit of Jehovah began to thrust him in the camp of Dan. פּעם, to thrust, denoting the operation of the Spirit
