Numbers 6:1-21--The Nazirite Vow

Numbers 6:1-21
English Standard Version
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The Nazirite Vow
6 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the Lord, 3 he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. He shall drink no vinegar made from wine or strong drink and shall not drink any juice of grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried. 4 All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins.

5 “All the days of his vow of separation, no razor shall touch his head. Until the time is completed for which he separates himself to the Lord, he shall be holy. He shall let the locks of hair of his head grow long.

6 “All the days that he separates himself to the Lord he shall not go near a dead body. 7 Not even for his father or for his mother, for brother or sister, if they die, shall he make himself unclean, because his separation to God is on his head. 8 All the days of his separation he is holy to the Lord.

9 “And if any man dies very suddenly beside him and he defiles his consecrated head, then he shall shave his head on the day of his cleansing; on the seventh day he shall shave it. 10 On the eighth day he shall bring two turtledoves or two pigeons to the priest to the entrance of the tent of meeting, 11 and the priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering, and make atonement for him, because he sinned by reason of the dead body. And he shall consecrate his head that same day 12 and separate himself to the Lord for the days of his separation and bring a male lamb a year old for a guilt offering. But the previous period shall be void, because his separation was defiled.

13 “And this is the law for the Nazirite, when the time of his separation has been completed: he shall be brought to the entrance of the tent of meeting, 14 and he shall bring his gift to the Lord, one male lamb a year old without blemish for a burnt offering, and one ewe lamb a year old without blemish as a sin offering, and one ram without blemish as a peace offering, 15 and a basket of unleavened bread, loaves of fine flour mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers smeared with oil, and their grain offering and their drink offerings. 16 And the priest shall bring them before the Lord and offer his sin offering and his burnt offering, 17 and he shall offer the ram as a sacrifice of peace offering to the Lord, with the basket of unleavened bread. The priest shall offer also its grain offering and its drink offering. 18 And the Nazirite shall shave his consecrated head at the entrance of the tent of meeting and shall take the hair from his consecrated head and put it on the fire that is under the sacrifice of the peace offering. 19 And the priest shall take the shoulder of the ram, when it is boiled, and one unleavened loaf out of the basket and one unleavened wafer, and shall put them on the hands of the Nazirite, after he has shaved the hair of his consecration, 20 and the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. They are a holy portion for the priest, together with the breast that is waved and the thigh that is contributed. And after that the Nazirite may drink wine.

​21 “This is the law of the Nazirite. But if he vows an offering to the Lord above his Nazirite vow, as he can afford, in exact accordance with the vow that he takes, then he shall do in addition to the law of the Nazirite.”

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In the last section we talked about fidelity to the covenant of marriage and while there were not expressly any vows made in that commitment, we know that there was a vow of fidelity that was assumed if not expressly stated in that union.  Today, we're looking at another type of vow--a vow of devotion to the LORD.  How is it that a man or woman is supposed to look and act if they completely devote themselves to the LORD for a time?  As I mentioned at the end of yesterday's blog, there's also a few examples in the Bile of people who were devoted to the LORD by their parents and were told to keep this vow their entire lives, though that was not typical.

Notice this vow can be followed by either men or women, however I'm going to usually stick to the masculine pronouns because that's what the text does.  The first requirement of the vow is that the devotee may not consume any alcohol (wine or strong drink).  He is also prohibited from drinking vinegar that is made from wine or strong drink (alcohol, especially wine, that starts to go sour is what produces vinegar), they were not to drink any grape juice, and he was not to eat any grape--neither fresh, nor dried (which would include raisins).  All the days of his vow they ere not to eat anything that was produced by the grapevine, even the seeds or skins.

This is going to be a big way in which someone would be identified in their culture.  Such a person would stand out like a sore thumb if he did not drink wine or alcohol of any kind or eat grapes or raisins or grape seeds or grape skins, or consume vinegar.  That's a huge part of the diet in that area as grapes were one of the staple foods of the Promised Land.  We all know that grapes and grape juice and vinegar made from wine and anything made from grapes will stain everything that it touches--including clothes and teeth.  If you see someone whose clothes are stained with what appears to be wine, you're probably going to assume that it's wine and not grape juice or vinegar.  I think that's probably the idea here, and it is  a physical reminder to them to stay away from the stain of sin--to be holy and set apart.

All the days during which the devotee is under their vow, he is not to cut any of the hair on his head (we also assume this to include facial hair).  All the days of their vow they are to let their hair grow long as a sign of their vow and that they are set apart and holy unto the LORD.  That's very different than the reason that most men let their hair grow long today as typically that is a sign of rebellion.

Because he is to be holy, the devotee is not to go near a dead body--not even to go to the funeral of his own mother or father.  He is not to go near the carcass of a dead animal (we'll see Sampson violate this part of his vow when he takes wild honey that was from a hive that was inside of the carcass of a dead lion--a lion that he had killed earlier with his bare hands).  This may seem extreme, but there is no partial devotion to the LORD and Jesus will call for a similar "all in" commitment from those that want to be His disciples


Luke 14:25-33
English Standard Version
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The Cost of Discipleship
25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.


Matthew 8:18-22
English Standard Version
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The Cost of Following Jesus
18 Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. 19 And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 21 Another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 22 And Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

​So, then what if he comes in contact with a dead body of no fault of his own because someone just keels over right in front of him so that in some way it defiles his consecrated head (I'm assuming this means some kind of blood or something gets on his face or head).  In this case, the devotee is to wash himself and shave all the hair off of his head, let it grow out for seven days, and then shave it all off again.  He's also to offer a sacrifice an offering of two turtledoves or two young pigeons on the eighth day after his cleansing as an offering--one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering, because, even though it was unintentional, the man did break his vow and in so doing did sin.  Once atonement has been made by these sacrifices, he shall once again take his vow to consecrate his head and separate himself for the LORD for the rest of his days required by his vow (none of the time up to the defilement would count as the defilement ruined all of it).After he serves all the days of separation and his vow is completed, he is also to bring a one-year-old male lamb as a guilt offering in addition to the other sacrifices that he was to offer at the end of his vow.

The man was also to always offer these sacrifices at the end of his vow even if he was not defiled during the period of the vow:
1) A one-year-old male lamb without blemish as a burnt offering
2) A one-year-old female lamb without blemish as a sin offering
3) A one-year-old ram (male goal) without blemish as a peace offering
4) A basket of unleavened bread made with loaves of fine flour mixed with oil
5) Unleavened wafers smeared with oil
6) Grain offerings that go along with the basked of unleavened bread
7) Drink offerings that go along with the basked of unleavened bread

The priest is to offer the sin offering, the burnt offering the fellowship offering and the portion of the basket of unleavened bread, the grain offering and the drink offering as required by the Law.  The devotee is to shave his head and to burn the hair he has shaved off in the fire of the altar of God under the ram that is being offered as a peace offering.  The shoulder of the ram is boiled and combined with one of the loaves of unleavened bread and one of the unleavened wafers as a wave offering that would be put in the hands of the Nazirite (only after the Nazirite's head had been shaved) and they would wave them together as a wave offering before the LORD.  This would be a meal that the priest would eat for the offerings were holy and belonged to the priest and his family except for the peace offerings that the people made on their own when they lived too far away from the Tabernacle or Temple and made such sacrifices in their own fields as the LORD made provision, but this was not one of those cases.  Only after all of these sacrifices had been offered was the man released to drink wine and eat the produce of the vine again.

The man was also allowed to make additional sacrifices as part of his vow above and beyond these requirements as long as he could afford to keep such a vow.  If the man chose to do so, then he would also offer those sacrifices too at the end of his vow along with all the other sacrifices that were required.

If you don't catch it, it was costly to make this kind of a vow.  One-year-old livestock is usually the best that there is, and each of these needed to be without blemish.  These would be the ones they would want to use for breeding because they were young, healthy, and appeared to be without any birth defects that they would pass along.  These male sheep, female sheep and male goats would come from the man's own flocks and the grain for the grain offerings would presumably come from the man's own field.  So then people should not just take these vows willy-nilly to show how holy they were to everyone else because there was a great cost associated with such a vow of devotion, but the longer the vow was made, the more likely that it was that you might accidently have someone die in front of you and that nothing you did to that point would matter and you'd be required to start all over again.  It was a balancing act to make the vow for a period that was in line with the cost of the sacrifice without overpromising to the point where the vow could never be fulfilled.  God takes vows very seriously and vows and oaths are one of the issues Jesus deals with directly in The Sermon on the Mount because God demands us to be people of honesty and integrity as we are to be holy as He is holy.  Our word should be our bond and we are not to need to exaggerate or take superfluous vows or oaths to get people to believer us.