Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing:
This verse comes from the story of Samson's birth in the book of Judges, one of the historical books of the Old Testament. An angel appears to the wife of a man named Manoah — a woman who had been unable to have children — and tells her she will conceive a son. That son would become Samson, one of the most dramatic figures in the Old Testament, known for extraordinary physical strength given to him by God. Samson was to be raised as a Nazirite from birth — a person under a special vow of dedication to God described in Numbers 6. The Nazirite vow required abstaining from all alcohol, avoiding contact with dead bodies, and never cutting one's hair. Unusually, the angel extends the dietary restrictions to Samson's mother during her pregnancy, suggesting that what she takes into her body will shape the child being formed inside her.
God, you cared about what this mother ate before her son was even born — that's how seriously you take formation. Show me what I've been taking in that's quietly shaping me away from you, and give me the courage to put it down — not out of obligation, but because I want to become who you made me to be. Amen.
We never learn her name. The Bible calls her only Manoah's wife — a woman who had been invisible in the most painful way, unable to have children in a world that measured her worth by it. And then an angel shows up and gives her a quiet but serious assignment: watch what you take in. What you consume will shape who this child becomes. Before Samson ever picked up a jawbone or tore down a temple, his mother was making unglamorous, unwitnessed choices that were forming him. The extraordinary rarely arrives fully assembled — it gets cultivated in ordinary decisions nobody sees. What you quietly take in — literally, yes, but also the conversations you stay in, the content you feed your mind, the habits you let become automatic — shapes what gets built in you and through you. Nobody sees most of it. That's exactly why it matters. Formation is almost entirely invisible, until suddenly it isn't.
Why do you think the Nazirite vow included restrictions on food and drink as part of being set apart for God — what connection does that suggest between physical habits and spiritual identity?
In what areas of your life do you feel called to be set apart — to make choices that look different from those around you — and what makes that genuinely hard to sustain?
Is there something you're regularly consuming — content, conversations, substances, habits of thought — that is quietly shaping you in a direction you don't actually want to go?
Samson's mother made sacrifices to form a child she would ultimately release to God's purposes. How does that change the way you think about investing in others — children, students, friends — whose full stories you'll only partly witness?
What is one thing you could choose to stop taking in this week as a concrete, intentional act of formation — not as a rule, but as a deliberate choice about who you want to become?
Therefore, be careful not to drink wine or [any other] intoxicating drink, and do not eat anything [ceremonially] unclean.
AMP
Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean,
ESV
'Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing.
NASB
Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean,
NIV
Now therefore, please be careful not to drink wine or similar drink, and not to eat anything unclean.
NKJV
So be careful; you must not drink wine or any other alcoholic drink nor eat any forbidden food.
NLT
But take much care: Drink no wine or beer; eat nothing ritually unclean.
MSG