A Voluntary Vow and a Blessing for Israel

The Nazirite law follows directly on the law of the suspected wife. The rabbis noticed the order and drew a moral about wine from it; the Book of Numbers itself gives no reason for the sequence.

“Separate themselves” is yafli, from pala, the root of “wonder”: to make a vow beyond the ordinary, as with the singular vow of Leviticus 27:2. Nazarite comes from nazar, to set apart. Samson, Samuel (1 Samuel 1:11) and John the Baptist (Luke 1:15) were set apart from birth; this law is for a vow taken for a set time.

“Strong drink” is shekar, any intoxicant not made from grapes, such as barley beer or date wine. “Vinegar” is soured wine, and “liquor of grapes” translates mishrat, a word found only here, probably juice pressed or steeped from the fruit.

“The vine tree” is literally “the vine of wine”, the grapevine. “Kernels” and “husk” translate two words found nowhere else, chartsannim and zag; the rabbis disagreed over which was the pip and which the skin, and so the pairing covers the whole grape from inside to out.

“Locks” is pera, loose and untrimmed hair, from the verb used in 5:18 for letting down the suspected woman’s hair. The Nazirite’s head grows wild on purpose. Samson’s seven locks (Judges 16:13, 19) are the most famous instance.

“Dead body” is literally nefesh met, “a dead soul”: nefesh, the word for a living being, is used here of a corpse. The ban covers any approach, not only touch.

“Consecration” translates nezer, the word for the golden crown on the high priest’s mitre (Exodus 29:6) and for a king’s crown (2 Samuel 1:10). Like the high priest (Leviticus 21:11), and unlike an ordinary priest, the Nazirite may not be defiled even for a parent.

The phrase “holy unto the LORD” was engraved on the gold plate the high priest wore on his forehead (Exodus 28:36). The Nazirite carries the same words, not on a plate but on an uncut head.

“Very suddenly” doubles two words for suddenness, befeta pit’om, a death without any warning at the Nazirite’s very side. The seventh day is the day of cleansing from a corpse in 19:12, and the hair grown so far is shaved off.

The same pair of birds on the eighth day ends the purification of a man with a discharge (Leviticus 15:14), and a mother who cannot afford a lamb brings the same pair after childbirth (Leviticus 12:8). Turtledoves and pigeons were within anyone’s reach.

“For that he sinned by the dead” calls an accident a sin, meaning a failure that needs atoning, not a wicked act. A Talmudic sage, Eleazar HaKappar, read it differently: the Nazirite’s sin was denying himself wine, which God had given (Nedarim 10a).

A lamb as a trespass offering, the asham, treats the broken vow like damage to a holy thing (Leviticus 5:15). “Shall be lost” is literally “shall fall”: the earlier days drop away as if they had never been counted.

“He shall be brought” is in Hebrew literally “he shall bring him”, with no subject named. Rabbinic readers took it that the Nazirite brings himself; the King James makes it passive.

All three main kinds of sacrifice are required: burnt, sin and peace offerings, a ram and two lambs. A sin offering at the end of a completed vow is unexpected, and the ewe lamb is the female animal Leviticus 4:32 permits for an individual’s sin offering.

The two breads, cakes mixed with oil and wafers brushed with oil, are the same as those in the basket at the priests’ ordination (Leviticus 8:26). A Nazirite’s completion borrowed the elements of a priest’s installation.

Verse 14 listed the burnt offering first, but the priest offers the sin offering first here. Cleansing precedes dedication in practice, whatever the order of the list.

The ram as a peace offering meant a meal. Most of its meat was eaten by the Nazirite and family, so the vow ended with a feast at the sanctuary.

The hair cannot be kept or given as a keepsake; it is burned beneath the peace offering. Paul had his hair cut at Cenchrea for a vow (Acts 18:18) and later paid the costs of four men completing theirs at the temple (Acts 21:23–24).

“Sodden” is the old past tense of seethe, to boil: the foreleg of the ram is cooked. It is an extra portion for the priest, beyond the breast and thigh that he received from every peace offering.

The breast and thigh were the priest’s standard due (Leviticus 7:34), so he receives three portions from this ram. The text still calls the man a Nazarite in the moment wine is permitted to him again.

“That his hand shall get” is anything more he can afford. Whatever the vow promised beyond the minimum must be paid in full. When no length was named, the Mishnah fixed a Nazirite vow at thirty days (Nazir 1:3).

The blessing arrives without transition after the Nazirite law, the last of the legislation before the offerings of the princes in chapter 7.

“On this wise” is koh, thus, in these words and no others. The priests are given a fixed text, not a subject to speak on. “Saying unto them” is an unusual infinitive form, which the rabbis took to mean the blessing should be said aloud and in full.

Two tiny silver scrolls found in 1979 in a burial cave at Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem, dated to around 600 BC, are inscribed with this blessing. They are the oldest known text of any passage of the Bible.

The blessing grows line by line: three Hebrew words in the first, five in the second, seven in the third. The shining face is echoed in the refrain of Psalm 80, “cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.”

To “lift up the face” (nasa panim) is the idiom for showing favour or accepting someone, as when Jacob hopes that Esau “will accept of me” (Genesis 32:20). Shalom, peace, is the last word of the blessing.

The divine name is spoken once in each line, three times in all. The Mishnah records that in the temple the priests pronounced the name as written in this blessing, while outside the temple a substitute was used (Sotah 7:6).