Haftorah This Week
Welcome to Haftorah This Week, the place where you will find thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on this week's Haftorah.
HAFTARAT NASO
(Judges 13:2-25)
Manoah can't tell an angel when he sees one. He doesn't understand the significance of the visitor's refusal to eat. He even manages to learn that the messenger's name is unknowable without sensing what is happening.
Confronted with flames and fire that leap toward the sky, Manoah finally realizes that his visitor is a Divine being. But he is overwhelmed. He panics, fearing that no one can survive so intense a confrontation with the Divine. His wife, clearly the wiser of the two, has to calm him down.
And yet, we can understand why Manoah does not get it. Meeting a force so awesome that it seems divine has a way of making us forget where we are. We lose track of others and even of ourselves. Without a sense of boundaries, we may be intimidated by the nearness of the divine presence. Divine power threatens to engulf and consume us or fill us until we explode. Made clumsy and inept by his astonishing experience, Manoah comes off as a bumbling, obtuse fool.
But Manoah's nameless wife is more discerning. She will bear Samson the Nazirite whose uncut hair displays his awesome power, but who is not to drink wine or any other intoxicant so that he will not lose his sense of internal boundaries. Manoah's wife senses that the messenger she meets is frightening, but she has the calmer nature necessary for meeting the Divine without being overwhelmed. She can bear not only the son, but the awesome responsibility of raising the one who will be the first to deliver Israel from the Philistines. Somehow Manoah's wife naturally feels the secure boundaries she needs to stand in the face of the "divine" visitor and the task he brings.
(Tsvi Blanchard)
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