Torah reading is Naso (Numbers 4:21-7:89); Haftorah is Judges Chapter 13:2-25
By Irv Jacobs, M.D.
LA JOLLA, California –This short simplistic prose passage, from the time of the Judges [1], deals with an angel’s message. It is that the un-named wife of Minoah, both minor figures, was to bear a child. The child is Samson, who will be a lifelong Nazarite.
Unlike the typical Haftorah pattern, there is no chastisement for sin, later to be undone by a grant of penitence. There is simply an angel’s appearance that announces to the couple a forthcoming son. The angel mandates Nazarite traditions to the mother, i.e. behavior during her pregnancy and raising the child. The pregnancy and birth follow.
The connection to the Torah reading is that: the parasha Naso formally delineates rules and rituals for one who chooses to become a Nazarite. Such a vow was temporary. In contrast, the Haftorah is about a person consecrated, from conception, to be a Nazarite for life. [2]
The lifelong Nazarite, represented by Samson, is a ‘sacred’ status with powers that transcend the ordinary. As it turned out, Samson devoted his condition, physical strength, to self-centered and isolated acts of revenge. His ‘spirit’ that will fuel his service, we later learn, hardly and only accidentally benefited his community. [3]
The narrative is straightforward, with no particular literary artistry. I have used the translation and interpretation from his opus, The Hebrew Bible by Emeritus Professor Robert Alter, of the University of California at Berkeley. [4] Even he is unable to make these dull passages come alive.
The angel refused a thank-you meal, so the couple’s kid and grain offering was offered up as sacrifice on a rock altar. “When the flame went up from the altar to the heavens…the…messenger appeared no more to Manoah and…his woman.”
Now comes the mandatory ‘upbeat’ (hardly) end to the Haftorah:
“And the woman bore a son, and she called his name Samson, and the lad grew up…the spirit of the Lord began to drive him in the camp of Dan…”
To me, the rabbis made a notably poor choice of this brief passage for a Haftorah. It makes no literary impression, and in fact it is only a dull, uninspiring amateurish story. What a dud!
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[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Prophets Vol. 2, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2019, pp. 77-81- Alter describes the period of the Judges as analogous to the USA’s gunslinger Wild West period, where ‘Every man did what was right in his eyes.”—and survival was virtually entirely by violence.
[2] Etz Hayim,The Jewish Publication Society, 2001, New York, p. 812-813
[3] Ibid. p. 813
[4] Op. cit., Robert Alter pp. 128-131
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Irv Jacobs is a retired medical doctor who delights in Torah analysis. He often delivers a drosh at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla, and at his chavurah.