Manoah's Wife

OT Judges

Manoah's unnamed wife, barren until the angel of the LORD appeared to her -- before appearing to her husband -- announcing she would bear Samson, and whose calm faith steadied Manoah's fear after they realized they had seen God.

For younger readers

Manoah's wife isn't given a name in the Bible, but she's given something remarkable: she's the very first person the angel of the LORD appeared to, announcing that she -- though she'd never been able to have children -- would give birth to a son who would help rescue Israel from the Philistines. She had to relay the whole message to her husband Manoah, and when the angel came back a second time, he appeared to her again first. After they realized they had truly seen a messenger from God, Manoah panicked, but his wife calmly reasoned that God wouldn't have accepted their offering and told them all this only to destroy them. Her son was Samson, and her steady faith is a quiet but powerful part of his story.

Life Story

Manoah's wife is never named in Judges 13, yet she is the one to whom the angel of the LORD appears first -- twice -- rather than her husband. Barren throughout her marriage, she received the angel's announcement directly: she would conceive and bear a son who must be raised as a Nazirite, never cutting his hair, and who would 'begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines' (Judges 13:2-5). She relayed the entire message faithfully to Manoah, describing the visitor as a fearsome 'man of God' whose name she had not asked (13:6-7). When Manoah prayed for the messenger to return and instruct them further, the angel came back to the field where she was sitting alone, and she again had to run and fetch her husband to meet him (13:9-11) -- the narrative consistently placing her, not Manoah, at the center of the divine encounter. After the angel ascended in the flame of their sacrifice and Manoah, terrified, concluded they would die for having seen God, it was his wife who reasoned calmly and clearly: if the LORD had intended to kill them, He would not have accepted their burnt offering or shown them all these things (13:22-23). Her theological clarity in the moment of her husband's panic, alongside her role as the first recipient of the announcement, marks her as a woman of unusual spiritual perception in the account of Samson's unlikely birth.

First named in Judges 13:2-24

References: Judges 13:2-24

Genealogy

Father

—

Mother

—

Spouse(s)

Manoah

Children

Samson

View full connections graph →

See on the full timeline →