Miracle Babies and Promised Land

AM Psalm 97, 99, [100] • PM Psalm 94, [95]
Judges 13:1-15 • Acts 5:27-42 • John 3:22-36

At about the time I started learning Bible stories, my dad was reading the comics to me (we called them the “funny papers” back then). So, when I was introduced to Samson, I recognized him as what we would now call a superhero. Dedicated at birth to be a “Nazirite,” he was given superhuman powers that he could keep so long as he didn’t cut his hair or do a few other forbidden things. The story of Samson’s conception and birth, which we encounter in today’s readings from the book of Judges, features an unnamed mother (her husband’s name was Manoah), who was “barren.” She was told by an angel of the Lord that she would bear a son who would “begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.”

This story of a baby who, as an adult, would do great things for his people brings to mind two other stories about miracle babies. One is about Isaac, borne to Abraham and Sarah when his father was 100 years old and after Sarah had undergone menopause. Both parents-to-be laughed when God told them that Sarah would bear a son. The other begins with the visitation of Mary by the angel Gabriel and her response, which we know in its musical settings as the Magnificat. (This week our choir is singing it at Evensong in Exeter Cathedral.) Mary ends her song with these lines: “He has helped his servant Israel/in remembrance of his mercy/according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and his descendants forever.” (Luke 1:54, 55 NRSV).

The “promise” Mary mentions is the promise of land ownership, and, to a greater or lesser extent, the context for all three of these miracle stories is God’s covenant with his people Israel. God tells Abraham: “Go from your country and your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you…” (Genesis 12:1, 2). Later God said to Abraham, “I will bless [Sarah], and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she will give rise to nations…” (Genesis 17:16). Later, after the Israelites had conquered some of the tribes that had long populated Canaan, but not all of them (due, as the Israelites understood it, to their violating the covenant with God), Samson emerged as a great and powerful man who, as “Judge” (leader) of Israel, could finish the job. Stories were told about Sampson’s killing an attacking lion with his bare hands and slaughtering 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. His final act was to pull down, with his bare arms, the pillars of the temple of the Philistine god Dagon, killing the Philistine leaders and many others, including himself. Thrilling stuff from a superhero. But there is another side to all this.

Biblical stories of the promised land in the books of Joshua and Judges are so familiar to us that it is easy to read them without noticing how much they center on violence, death, and destruction. We can sing “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came a tumblin’ down” without giving any thought to how many men, women, and children died there that day, or how much the crumbled walls might have resembled bombed out buildings In Ukraine. Lots of us remember the jawbone which Samson wielded but not the 1,000 who died at his hand. We can read the stories of conquest without being particularly aware that the goal was extermination of entire peoples. And we can avoid altogether the passages in which the writer states that the Lord God Almighty condoned and even commanded this extermination. (See Joshua 10:34-40.)

Repeating the stories of promised land is serious business, and we need to be careful about how they are used. The vision of “Promised Land” is deeply embedded in American culture and has helped us define who we are as Americans, for better and for worse. It wouldn’t surprise me if the circuit riding preachers who crisscrossed the Arkansas frontier had Bibles in their saddle bags with stories of promised land well-marked for their next sermon. American soldiers, government officials, and settlers on the western frontiers certainly believed that in removing the native American population from their ancestral homes, killing many in the process, they were fulfilling God’s promise of land for themselves. Many, many African slaves cleared southern promised land of trees and then grew the cotton that made many fortunes for others. Bible-believing slave owners (including my great-grandfather) no doubt knew these stories about promised land, as well as the ones that seemed to sanction slavery.

Warfare is brutal, by definition. And warfare in the ancient Middle East was especially so. But the question for us is not whether that justifies the behavior of ancient Israelites, but how we use the biblical stories about promised land today. Do we see disastrous misreading of them in our time? If so, what should we do about it?

Written by Bob McMath

Bob McMath is a member of St. Paul’s and a historian who has written about farmer-labor movements in the nineteenth century, especially American Populism.