The Nazirite Offerings

Sacrifices & Feasts of the Old Testament collection. Voluntary vow of separation, open to any Israelite, male or female, lay. Num 6 regulates (not institutes) the office, and assumes the vow is temporary. No NT typology. Acts 21 raises an awkward question that's unresolved.

The Three Prohibitions

All three prefaced by "all the days of" (kol-yemê).

• No grape products. Wine, strong drink, vinegar from either, unfermented juice, fresh grapes, raisins, "right down to the most minute parts of the grape (from the seeds to the skin)."
  • The rationale is unrecoverable. Common scholarly reading - a rejection of sedentary Canaanite viticulture - depends on dating Num 6 late.
  • An alternative: "one can as easily see it as God's preparation of these people to live in a Canaanite culture as a different (i.e., a holy) people. The norm, not only in Canaan but elsewhere, was to drink wine and eat grapes. The Nazirites were marked out as special people, consecrated to Yahweh only; they were not to conform to the norms of everyday life."
• No cutting the hair. Hair "was a living, growing part of the human person and, as such, represented the life-force of the person very well, since hair will keep growing, for a while, even after death." Visible badge of the vow.
  • Lexical detail: both the high priest's diadem and the Nazirite's hair are called nēzer, "consecration."
• No contact with a corpse, absolute, extending even to father and mother.
  • Eliminated the Nazirite from mourning rites - which mattered because pagan mourning included shaving the head, prohibited in Lev 19:27 and Deut 14:1 but evidently practised anyway.
• Positive characteristic, stated twice (6:5, 8): the Nazirite "is holy to the LORD."

The Offerings

On Completion (Num 6:13-20)

• At the tent entrance: male lamb (burnt), ewe lamb (purification), ram (fellowship), plus a basket of unleavened bread with fine-flour cakes and oil-spread wafers, and their grain and drink offerings.
• Sacrifices appear in one order in vv. 14-15 and another in vv. 16-17. Two purposes, not two sources.
  • Following A. F. Rainey, vv.14-15 belong to "descriptive-administrative" texts where the order is logical: begins with the burnt offering because it belongs wholly to God, ends with the fellowship offering because it's shared.
  • vv.16-17 give the procedural order, beginning with the purification offering "to deal with impurities that have been brought into the sanctuary."
• Then the hair. Shaved at the tent entrance, put on the fire under the fellowship offering (6:18).
  • Ashley notes the debate - offering of the mark of consecration, or simply disposal of something holy and therefore dangerous - and lands on the latter, since no ceremony is described.
• Priest gets an extra portion beyond the usual breast and thigh: the boiled shoulder, transferred by being placed in the Nazirite's hands and elevated. See The Wave & Heave Offerings.
• The mood is joy. Where the offerings for a defiled Nazirite climax in a reparation offering, "the present ritual climaxes in the joy of the so-called peace offering." Citing Milgrom, Ashley notes the common denominator of all peace offerings is rejoicing: "the rejoicing Nazirite comes into Yahweh's presence at the conclusion of the vow with a present for God."

On Accidental Defilement (Num 6:9-12)

• Someone dies suddenly beside the Nazirite > the whole vow is void.
• Seven days of cleansing by red heifer water, then on day 8: two turtledoves or pigeons (one purification, one burnt), plus a male lamb as a reparation offering.
• Male lamb is unique in the Torah for an asham. Ashley explains by analogy with Lev 5:14-16, unwitting trespass against holy things, where restitution must accompany the offering.
  • Here, "the Nazirite must resanctify his or her hair and repledge a new Nazirite vow to make restitution for that holy thing (the Nazirite vow), which has been defiled by contact with the dead."
• The consecrated days already served do not count. Clock resets to zero. See The Guilt Offering (Asham).

Priestly Holiness for Laypeople

• Regulations are close to the priestly ones. Harper shows overlaps:
  • Priests forbidden wine during tabernacle service (Lev 10:9); Nazirite forbidden it always.
  • Ordinary priests may not defile themselves with corpses except immediate family (Lev 21:1-3); high priest and Nazirite may not even then (Lev 21:11; Num 6:7).
• Two differences that matter (Ashley):
  • Only males could be priests. Either males or females could be Nazirites.
  • The Nazirite is a layperson. "In ancient Israel God called a group of laypeople who would be especially consecrated to him."
• Harper's summary: the vow "enabled non-priests to approximate priestly holiness."
• Significant provision, easy to underestimate from a Christian vantage point where the priesthood of all believers is assumed. Under the Mosaic law, economy access was structured by birth. The Nazirite vow was the way anyone could gain access.

Temporary by Default

Ashley's case for temporary:

• Rejects the older picture of "a large class of life-long devotees." Num 6:13-20 legislates the termination of the vow, which assumes most were temporary.
• Setting aside Samson and possibly Samuel, "the texts give us the case of one, possibly two, in the whole expanse of the history of Israel."
• On Samuel he's cautious. The Hebrew of 1 Sam 1:11 doesn't call him a Nazirite - only that he was given to Yahweh for life and no razor would touch his head. The Nazirite reading comes from the LXX, Qumran, Sirach 46:13 and the Mishnah (Nazir 9.5). The LXX inserts "and he will not drink wine or any intoxicating beverage."
  • Ashley's counterpoint: Samuel "did not keep the vow as regards contact with a corpse when he 'hacked Agag in pieces before Yahweh'" (1 Sam 15:33).
• Samson is the clearer case:

The whole Samson cycle can be seen as the story of the disintegration of a Nazirite who breaks his vow.

• Timothy R. Ashley, The Book of Numbers (NICOT)

• The angel's "until the day of his death" isn't a statement that the office is permanent but "a sign of divine foreknowledge of the outcome of the story."
• Webb on Samson's confession to Delilah. Samson has always been in rebellion against his separation. What he wanted was "what every man wanted if he dare admit it: sex, love, and freedom from the too narrow confines of his upbringing. But Samson's Naziriteship had dogged him at every turn, and become an unbearable burden."
  • Then the line: "but the hair of his head began to grow again."
• Waltke adds a covenantal reading. In both Samson's and Samuel's cases the separation is involuntary, imposed before birth, and "his conscription is a type of the covenant people's election to be the people of God."

New Testament Fulfilment

No typological use of the Nazirite vow in the NT. No passage identifies Christ as its fulfilment.

• The claim that Jesus was a Nazirite confuses nāzîr with Nazōraios, "of Nazareth" (Matt 2:23). These are unrelated words. And Jesus drank wine (Luke 7:34).
• John the Baptist may be a partial parallel. Gabriel's "he must not drink wine or strong drink" (Luke 1:15) uses the language of Num 6:3, and Ashley notes the LXX addition at 1 Sam 1:11 in the same terms. But Luke says nothing about hair or corpses, and the announcement is about Spirit-filling from the womb rather than a vow. It's a parallel rather than a fulfilment.

Acts 21 - the Awkward Text

• Acts 18:18 - Paul cuts his hair at Cenchreae because of a vow.
• Acts 21:23-26 - Paul pays the expenses of four men completing a vow and undergoes purification with them in the temple, which on seems to mean participating in the offerings of Num 6.
• This sits uncomfortably alongside Galatians and Hebrews.
• Standard reading: 1 Cor 9:20, becoming as one under the law to win those under the law. It's the reading James proposes in the narrative.
• But it doesn't fully dissolve the difficulty. A purification offering isn't a neutral cultural custom. Something is being conceded there that Hebrews would seem to have made unavailable.
• There's no actual answer.

What Does Survive

• Separation to God, voluntary, marked by visible abstention, available to any believer regardless of office or sex.
• Not typologically fulfilled in Christ, but its universalised in the church. 1 Pet 2:9 makes the whole people a royal priesthood - a more radical version of what the Nazirite vow provided as an exception. Rom 12:1 is the same type of thing.