1. After Abdon was dead, the Philistines overcame the Israelites,
and received tribute of them for forty years; from which distress
they were delivered after this manner: -

2. There was one Manoah, a person of such great virtue, that he
had few men his equals, and without dispute the principal person
of his country. He had a wife celebrated for her beauty, and
excelling her contemporaries. He had no children; and, being
uneasy at his want of posterity, he entreated God to give them
seed of their own bodies to succeed them; and with that intent he
came constantly into the suburbs (18) together with his wife;
which suburbs were in the Great Plain. Now he was fond of his
wife to a degree of madness, and on that account was unmeasurably
jealous of her. Now, when his wife was once alone, an apparition
was seen by her: it was an angel of God, and resembled a young
man beautiful and tall, and brought her the good news that she
should have a son, born by God's providence, that should be a
goodly child, of great strength; by whom, when he was grown up to
man's estate, the Philistines should be afflicted. He exhorted
her also not to poll his hair, and that he should avoid all other
kinds of drink, (for so had God commanded,) and be entirely
contented with water. So the angel, when he had delivered that
message, went his way, his coming having been by the will of God.

3. Now the wife informed her husband when he came home of what
the angel had said, who showed so great an admiration of the
beauty and tallness of the young man that had appeared to her,
that her husband was astonished, and out of himself for jealousy,
and such suspicions as are excited by that passion: but she was
desirous of having her husband's unreasonable sorrow taken away;