Samson’s Mom: The Biblical Experience of Raising an Unusual Child

Samson’s adult life is a story well-known to popular culture from medieval art through 1960s pop music. It’s a tale of a strongman falling in love with an attractive woman from his adversary’s camp. The woman exploits his infatuation by nagging him into revealing the secret that deprives him of his power, setting him up to be captured and tortured. Blinded and humiliated, Samson’s last act is to pull down the Philistine temple around him so as to kill both himself and many of his enemies.

But have you heard his origin story or wondered how his mother coped?

The book of Judges provides a good description of Samson’s beginnings. Samson’s mother, like many Biblical women, was infertile, a narrative setup that frequently presages the miracle birth of a noteworthy character. Sadly, the woman who would become Samson’s mother is identified only as “הָאִשָּׁ֑ה”— “the woman”—and as “wife of Manoah.”

‘Samson Captured by the Philistines” courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Samson Pulls Down the Pillars” courtesy of the Jewish Museum.

In an unusual but not unique annunciation, we learn that an angel/messenger of God appeared to her, saying, “You shall conceive and bear a son.” Uniquely, the angel added strict instructions that she should “be careful not to drink wine or other intoxicant, or to eat anything impure.” Today this sounds like standard healthcare advice to a pregnant woman. But God’s purpose in giving these instructions was particular, as we learn when the messenger continued: “Let no razor touch his head, for the boy is to be a nazirite to God from the womb on. He shall be the first to deliver Israel from the Philistines.” (Judges 13:3-5)

As described in the Torah (Numbers 6), becoming a nazirite or nazir seems to be an optional process in which individuals vow to follow a set of rules for a limited time. The text implies that nazirites choose this path to create an emphatic pact with God, perhaps in supplication or gratitude. The dietary and haircut proscriptions relayed to Samson’s mom reflect those required of nazirites.

In this story, Samson’s future mother must observe nazirite restrictions during her pregnancy and must raise her son to live as a nazirite his whole life. The Hebrew root nazir (נָזִיר) translates as one who is consecrated, dedicated, set apart. Samson had no choice but to be dedicated to God from conception until death.

This setup prompts me to ponder how this unnamed, apparently ordinary woman, who has been told that her offspring will “deliver Israel from the Philistines,” would bring him up. The text, however, immediately skips ahead to Samson’s adult actions, leaving open the question of “How does one bring up a child knowing it will be an agent of God?”

We’ll never know what difficulties Samson’s mother had in meeting the nazirite restrictions, but we can wonder: Did the restrictions make the family unusual? In this time, did wine serve as an alternative to contaminated water? If never cut, little Samson’s hair would have been waist length or longer by his early teens. Did it make him stand out?

And what kind of training is typical for a boy from the tribe of Dan? Did Samson’s parents raise him like a typical boy or somehow cater to his future calling? It might have helped Samson’s parents to know if Samson was going to deliver the Israelites through war or through intellectual cleverness. Was Samson going to be a military leader like Joshua, brilliant like Solomon or, like Moses, a combination of the two?

In my imagination, his parents teach him physical fighting skills, tactics and governance. And I’d like him to learn Israelite law derived from Torah. God’s gift was known to give him extra strength which, I hope, his upbringing would hone to support leadership and judicial prowess.

In the end, the Bible reveals adult Samson’s difficult personality: He has a short, violent temper and a preference for Philistine over Israelite women. How did nature and nurture combine, along with his physical strength, to yield these characteristics?

Did Samson’s parents give in to temper tantrums and whims? When Samson asked his parents to arrange his marriage with a young Philistine woman, they demurred. Their response sounds ageless: “Is there no one among the daughters of your own kindred and among all our people, that you must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?” (Judges 14:3) Yet, when Samson insisted, his parents, doting or resigned, arranged the marriage.

When this marriage fell apart, Samson became enamored with another Philistine woman. That affair with Delilah, more loyal to her people than to her Israelite lover, led to Samson’s demise: When Samson revealed that cutting his never-before-trimmed hair would remove his strength, Delilah arranged to a nighttime barber. The hair was a symbol of Samson’s link to the Israelite God. (Judges 16:17-19)

Throughout this biblical tale, the woman who would be Samson’s mother, remains unnamed by the story’s scribes. Yet, despite this insult, it was to her that God’s messenger appeared.

Unfortunately, the text does not reveal the advice that I would have wanted to hear from the messenger: What is the best way to raise an unusual child?