The Mother of All Promises
Monday, March 31
The Mother of All Promises
Judges 13:2-3
There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children. And the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.”
A cynically-minded observer will likely roll his eyes upon reading Judges 13:2-3 and mutter under his breath, “Here we go again—another barren woman gets the visit from an angel and finds out she’s about to give birth to a special son,” decrying it as cliché. They’ll say that it worked in Abraham’s biography—at least it seemed fresh and surprising then—but now it feels like a copy-and-paste trope. Ah, but while repetition in a narrative can signify authorial incompetence, it can also signify authorial intentionality, in so far as the author means to reiterate something significant. And that’s clearly what God intends to convey through this particularly special theophany, because it always precedes a seismic transition in world history through the coming of a one-of-a-kind deliverer.
“You shall conceive and bear a son,” says the angel to Samson’s parents. That’s the same message the angel speaks to Sarah in Genesis before she gives birth to her only son, Isaac, the first seed of a brand-new nation. That’s the same message Eli speaks to Hannah after she begs the LORD to end her barrenness and God fashions Samuel in her womb—the stalwart priest who ushers in David’s kingdom. That’s the same message the agnel Gabriel speaks to Zechariah, promising a son named John who will be the greatest of all human prophets and who will pave the way for the Lord’s incarnational ministry. And, of course, that’s the same message an angel proclaims to young Mary before she gives birth to Jesus, the Savior of the world, and the founder of that precious organism called the Church.
So mark this for the record, friend: whenever Almighty God stoops down among the tribes of common men to astonish some faithful couple with the news, “You will conceive and bear a son,” you can read it as a sure sign that a heavenly dawn is breaking, and a transitional leader is rising, and a monumental, never-before-seen advance is drawing nigh.