How to pray simply and humbly (Judg 13.8)

Then Manoah entreated the LORD, and said, “O, LORD, I pray, let the man of God whom you sent come to us again and teach us what we are to do concerning the boy who will be born.”

Background

The beginning of chapter 13 begins with a familiar phrase: “Once more the Israelites did what was wrong in the eyes of the Lord, and he delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.” Though the two previous stories showed us the corrupt or unfaithful side of Israel’s leaders, this one offers some hope. (At least until the end of the story.)

A woman and her husband longed to have a child. An angel appears and announced that she will have a child. But God wants her to dedicate this child as a Nazirite. Usually, a Nazirite vow lasted only thirty days. It was a way to commit oneself to God. But this particular child is to take the Nazirite vow for life. He will not drink wine or alcohol, never cut his hair, and will not eat forbidden food.

The woman tells her husband of the announcement. The husband offers a prayer. It is a straightforward and unsophisticated prayer: “If it is pleasing to you, Lord, let the man of God whom you sent come again to tell us what we are to do for the boy that is to be born.”

This is different from previous prayers we have studied. It asks God to repeat the information. Maybe he doesn’t trust his wife! More likely, he just wants to be careful and to follow God’s instructions.

He begins the prayer with a humble phrase: “if it is pleasing to you…” He is not asking God to prove himself, like Gideon, or promising to worship God if he’ll do what he wants, like Joseph, or making some rash promise, like Jephthah.

We have studied many prayers throughout these first six books. Some are complex, some are poetic, still others have beautiful structural elements or symbolic connections. All of them make for a rich collection of prayers, and stand as excellent models. Yet occasionally a simple prayer is most appropriate. Nothing complicated, no deep theology, no lofty phrases. “If it is pleasing to you, Lord, tell me what I should do.”

In the midst of a crisis or suffering, such simplicity and directness can sometimes be more powerful than deep and complex prayers. It may just be what is needed.

The book of Judges is a book that describes a steady decline of faith. The Israelites continue to fall away from God—they get in trouble, they cry out for help, He delivers them, and then they fall back into the old ways. Each cycle is worse than the previous. In the last few stories, we see that even the leaders are failing. But here, in the midst of the decline, is a little ray of hope in the simple prayer of a simple man. A hope that tells the readers that, though everyone has fallen away, there is still an element of strong faith among the Israelites.

Most of us know the story of this child named Samson. He grows up as a Nazarite, and he leads Israel to many victories as a judge. He is intelligent and powerful. Not only that, but he is the strongest man around. God blesses him. But just as we hope for that this portends a turnabout in Israel’s history, we are once again disappointed. He allows himself to be seduced by a woman who works for an enemy. She cuts his hair while he sleeps. As a result, he voids his vow and loses his strength. His enemies capture him. A brief period of faithfulness and safety is gone, and the downward spiral resumes.

Meaning

Rich and diverse communication between spouses can enhance and strengthen the marriage, but if there is no true relationship, then beautiful words are hollow. Richness and diversity add to the power of our prayers and keep them from becoming stale. But the deepest and most poetic prayer will not be effective if it is not rooted in relationship. Recall this ancient story from a Jewish sage, which I quoted in the Introduction:

“There was once an illiterate cowherd who did not know how to pray, so instead, he would say to God: “Master of the Universe, you know that if you had cows, and you gave them to me to look after, I would do it for nothing, even though I take wages from everyone else. I would do it for you for nothing because I love you.” A certain sage chanced upon the cowherd and heard him praying in this manner. The sage said to him, “You fool, you must not pray like that.” The cowherd asked him how he should pray, and the sage set about teaching him the order of the prayers as they are found in the prayer book. After the sage went away, the cowherd soon forgot what he had been taught, and so he did not pray at all. He was afraid to say the usual prayer about God’s cows because the sage had told him it was wrong to say such things, on the other hand, he could not say what the sage had told him because it was all jumbled up in his mind. That night, the sage was reprimanded in a dream and told that unless the cowherd returned to his spontaneous prayer, great harm would befall the sage, for he had stolen something very precious away from God. On awakening, the sage hurried back to the cowherd and asked him what he was praying. The cowherd told him that he was not praying anything since he had forgotten the prayers the sage had taught him, and he had been forbidden to tell God how he would look after his cows for nothing. The sage begged him to forget what he had told him and go back to his real prayers that he had said before ever he had met him.”¹

Application

In your prayers today, put aside all we have discussed over the past five books, and pray a simple vow. You might vow to pray many short prayers throughout the day—just a sentence or two each. Or set a timer to pray once every couple of hours. Use the prayer above as a model of humility and simplicity. Consider the situations in which such a prayer might be the best.

1. Jewish Wisdom: A Treasury of Proverbs, Maxims, Aphorisms, Wise Sayings, and Memorable Quotations by David G. Gross and Esther R. Gross (Fawcett Books, 1993). ↩