Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Nazirite Vow
Numbers 6:1-21
1 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, · WEB
Any Israelite, man or woman, may take on a priest's holiness for a chosen period, and the vow is visible in the hair.
When either man or woman shall make a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to Yahweh Numbers 6:2.
The opening clause is the important one. Either sex, any tribe, entirely voluntary. In a book that has just spent four chapters establishing that only one family may serve at the altar, this provides a way for anyone at all to take on a temporary holiness — and to end it.
The three restrictions are specific and each removes something ordinary.
No product of the vine, and the ban is drawn absurdly wide: not wine, not vinegar, not juice, not fresh or dried grapes, and nothing that is made of the grapevine, from the seeds even to the skins Numbers 6:4. What is given up is not drunkenness but the whole plant that stood for celebration and prosperity.
No razor. The hair grows uncut for the length of the vow Numbers 6:5, which makes the commitment visible to everyone. A Nazirite cannot keep it private, and cannot quietly stop.
And no contact with a dead body — not even for his own parents — he shall not make himself unclean for his father, or for his mother, for his brother, or for his sister Numbers 6:7. That is the restriction placed on the high priest Leviticus 21:11, and here an ordinary farmer takes it on for a season.
What happens if the vow is broken by accident is the part that shows its character. If someone dies suddenly beside him, the whole period is void: the former days shall be void, because his separation was defiled Numbers 6:12. He shaves, brings offerings, and starts the count again from zero.
That is severe, and it is not a punishment — nothing was his fault. It is a statement that the vow was for a period of consecration rather than for an accumulated total, and a period with a gap in it is not that period.
At the end he shaves his head at the door of the tent and put it on the fire which is under the sacrifice of peace offerings Numbers 6:18. The hair that recorded the vow is burned, and he is free — after that the Nazirite may drink wine Numbers 6:20.
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