Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we beat 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 Senegen 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 Manoa, and the

angel of the Lord, who is likely God the Sun, shows up to tell Manoa'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.

...