13. “Your wife must be careful to do everything I told her,” the Lord's angel answered.
14. “She must not eat or drink anything made from grapes. She must not drink wine or beer or eat anything forbidden by God's laws. I told her exactly what to do.”
15. “Please,” Manoah said, “stay here with us for just a little while, and we'll prepare a young goat for you to eat.”
16. Manoah didn't realize that he was really talking to one of the Lord's angels.The angel answered, “I can stay for a little while, although I won't eat any of your food. But if you would like to offer the goat as a sacrifice to the Lord, that would be fine.”
17. Manoah said, “Tell us your name, so we can honour you after our son is born.”
18. “No,” the angel replied. “You don't need to know my name. And if you did, you couldn't understand it.”
19. So Manoah took a young goat over to a large rock he had chosen for an altar, and he built a fire on the rock. Then he killed the goat, and offered it with some grain as a sacrifice to the Lord. But then an amazing thing happened.
20. The fire blazed up towards the sky, and the Lord's angel went up towards heaven in the fire. Manoah and his wife bowed down low when they saw what happened.
21. The angel was gone, but Manoah and his wife realized that he was one of the Lord's angels.
22. Manoah said, “We have seen an angel. Now we're going to die.”
23. “The Lord isn't going to kill us,” Manoah's wife responded. “The Lord accepted our sacrifice and grain offering, and he let us see something amazing. Besides, he told us that we're going to have a son.”
24. Later, Manoah's wife did give birth to a son, and she named him Samson. As the boy grew, the Lord blessed him.
25. Then, while Samson was staying at Dan's Camp between the towns of Zorah and Eshtaol, the Spirit of the Lord took control of him.