Lion's Honey Read Free Page B

flows between them, nor of any smile or tender glance. And this should come as no surprise, since as a rule the Bible rarely records the feelings of its heroes. The Bible is a history of actions and events, and leaves to us, toeach and every reader, the task of speculation, an exciting task but one that carries the risks of exaggeration and fantasy. Nevertheless, let us dare to do, in the pages that follow, what many generations of readers before us have done, men and women who have read the spare biblical text according to their faith, the conventions of their age, and their own personal inclinations, and attached meanings and conclusions (and sometimes wishes and delusions) to every word and syllable. 1
    And so, with necessary caution, but also with the pleasure of guesswork and imagination, let us try to fix in our mind’s eye the encounter between the man and his wife, she speaking and he listening, she going on at length and he not saying a word. And there is no knowing what is welling under that silence, excitement and joy perhaps, or maybe anger at the wife who converses so freely with a strange man; and we may also wonder whether she, as she speaks, looks him straight in the eye or averts her gaze downward, away from the husband to whom, for some reason, an angeldid not appear. And even if only a small part of what we have pictured actually took place, there is no doubt that the news they have received will shake them both to the core, will stir up his deepest feelings about her longtime barrenness and startling pregnancy, and maybe also hers about him, about the weakness and impotence that, it would seem, are hinted at in this brief scene.
    And we, peeking in, are so captivated by this highly charged family moment that we almost fail to notice that what the wife reports to her husband is not quite the same as what she had been told. Two central details are missing: she does not mention that a razor must not touch the head of their unborn son, nor does she tell her husband that this son ‘shall begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines’.
    Why does she omit these crucial details?
    One might argue that in her excitement and confusion she simply forgot the matter of the razor. She was doubtless quite agitated; and perhaps assumed that Manoah would be aware that, if theboy was to be a Nazirite, the well-known restrictions would apply, including the prohibition against the cutting of hair. But how to explain the second omission? How can it be that a woman withholds – even conceals – from her husband such significant information regarding their future son, news that would surely give him satisfaction and pride, and perhaps a measure of compensation for all those bitter, barren years?
    To comprehend this, to understand her , we need to go back and read the story through her eyes. Recall that the biblical text does not even reveal her name. The word ‘barren’ is all that is said of her, and is even redoubled: ‘barren and had borne no children.’ And this emphasis suggests that she had been waiting long years for a child who never arrived. She has probably given up on the possibility that she will one day have a child. And it is quite likely that the ‘title’ ’ akara , ‘the barren one’, has been conferred upon her by others, in the family, in the tribe, in all of Zorah. And who knows, maybe even her husband, in moments of anger, flung at her nowand then the searing epithet ’ akara , and between them, too, the word became her name, the barb that stings her every time she thinks about herself and her fate.
    And now, this same ‘childless one who has not given birth’ is suddenly graced by the appearance of an angel who brings her the news that she will bear a child. Yet at this very instant, as her dream is fulfilled and her joy is boundless, the angel adds: ‘For the boy is to be a Nazirite to God from the womb on. It is he who shall begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines.’
    And she plunges