For one, she omits the angel’s word, You are barren and childless.
She goes straight to, You shall conceive and bear a son.
Thus, she makes no mention of the miracle of her barren womb being opened by the Lord. Missing as well is any form of praise to the Lord for his work. Furthermore, she omits any reference to the prohibition of cutting the hair (Judges 13:5).
But most significant of all, Manoah’s wife does not pass on the most important aspect of the angel’s words: their son will begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines. She certainly understood that; she gleans that her son would face death before Israel is fully delivered. But she replaces the angel’s positive promise—the child will begin to deliver Israel—with the negative—the day of his death. Says Robert Alter in The Art of Biblical Narrative, It is surely a little unsettling that the promise which ended with liberation—though pointedly only the beginning of the liberation—of Israel from its Philistine oppressors now concludes with no mention of salvation, but instead with the word of death.
1 Block adds that this omission provides ominous foreshadowing because in the end it is the violation of what the woman omits (the razor prohibition) that leads to what the woman here adds (the day of his death
).2
7 but he said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’”