1And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Man or woman, should anyone act exceptionally to make a nazirite vow to keep himself apart for the LORD, 3from both wine and strong drink he shall keep himself apart, neither wine vinegar nor liquor vinegar shall he drink, no grape steepings shall he drink, and grapes, whether wet or dry, he shall not eat. 4All the days of his naziritehood, of anything made from the grapevine, from seeds to skin, he shall not eat. 5All the days of his nazirite vow no razor shall pass over his head, until the days come to term. That which he sets apart for the LORD shall be holy, to grow loose the hair on his head. 6All the days of his setting apart for the LORD, he shall not come to a dead person. 7For his father and for his mother and for his brother and for his sister he shall not be defiled for them when they die, for the crown of his God is on his head. 8All the days of his naziritehood, he is holy to the LORD. 9And should a dead person die near by him all of a sudden and he defile his nazirite head, he shall shave his head on the day of his purification, on the seventh day he shall shave it. 10And on the eighth day he shall bring two turtledoves or two pigeons to the priest at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 11And the priest shall prepare one for an offense offering and one for a burnt offering and shall atone for him, as he has offended through the corpse, and he shall consecrate his head on that day. 12And he shall keep apart for the LORD the days of his naziritehood, and he shall bring a yearling lamb as a guilt offering, and the first days shall fall away because he defiled his naziritehood. 13And this is the teaching for the nazirite: When the days of his naziritehood come to term, he shall be brought to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, 14and he shall bring forward his sacrifice to the LORD, one unblemished yearling lamb for a burnt offering, and one unblemished yearling ewe as an offense offering, and one unblemished ram as a communion sacrifice, 15and a basket of flatbread of fine flour, cakes mixed with oil, and flatbread wafers coated with oil, and their grain offerings and their libations. 16And the priest shall bring them forward before the LORD and do the offense offering and its burnt offering. 17The ram he shall do as a communion sacrifice to the LORD with the basket of flat-bread, and the priest shall do his meal offering and his libation. 18And the nazirite shall shave his nazirite head at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and he shall take the hair of his nazirite head and put it on the fire that is under the communion sacrifice. 19And the priest shall take the cooked shoulder from the ram and one flatbread cake from the basket and one flatbread wafer and put them on the palms of the nazirite after he has shaved his crown. 20And the priest shall elevate them as an elevation offering before the LORD. It is holy for the priest together with the breast of the elevation offering and the thigh of the donation. And afterward the nazirite shall drink wine. 21This is the teaching for the nazirite who vows his sacrifice to the LORD for his naziritehood besides what his hand may attain. According to his vow that he vows, so shall he do, together with the teaching for his naziritehood.’ ”
22And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 23“Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘Thus shall you bless the Israelites. Say to them:
24May the LORD bless you and guard you.
25May the LORD light up His face to you and grant grace to you;
26May the LORD lift up His face to you and give you peace.’
27And they shall set My name over the Israelites, and I Myself shall bless them.”
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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2. should anyone act exceptionally. Much of the biblical view of the institution of the nazir depends on the interpretation of the verb yafliʾ that is used here. Some modern commentators make it relatively neutral by claiming that, in conjunction with “vow,” it merely means to state the vow expressly. The philological evidence, however, for this technical sense of the verb is slender, as Baruch Levine argues. Some medieval commentators, whom Levine follows, understand it as a synonymous reinforcer of the reiterated verb hazir, “to set apart,” assuming that the root p-l-ʾ is an orthographic variant of p-l-h, which does mean “to set apart” or “to distinguish.” But the common biblical use of the verbal stem p-l-ʾ is in the sense of performing a wonder or acting in a way that is profuse or extraordinary (thus Abraham ibn Ezra). If that is the most likely meaning, then the biblical legislator sees the person who assumes these obligations of self-restriction as doing something extraordinary. Whether this extraordinary act is viewed with admiration or suspicion is not entirely clear.
a nazirite vow. A nazir or nazirite is “someone set apart” (compare Joseph’s blessing, Genesis 49:26, “the one set apart from his brothers,” nezir ʾeḥaw). The word is a phonetic and etymological relative of the word that immediately follows it, neder, “vow.”
3. from both wine and strong drink. The second of these two terms, shekhar, clearly derives from the verb meaning “to intoxicate,” but it is not clear what sort of intoxicant it may have been. Some understand it as a form of ale, but Levine rightly questions whether any kind of fermented grain would have been allowed on the altar. The Targum of Onkelos renders yayin weshekhar as “new wine and old wine,” and since the restrictions on the nazirite are almost obsessively focused on anything connected with grapes, this understanding has a certain plausibility. Or, it might well be grappa.
5–6. no razor shall pass over his head . . . he shall not come to a dead person. There are, then, three different restrictions involved in the vow of the nazirite: abstention from all products of the grape, abstention from haircutting, and avoidance of any sort of contact with a corpse. The last of these three restrictions reflects a general regulation regarding impurity, and is unambiguously shared with the priesthood. The renunciation of wine is specific to the nazirite: though the biblical writers variously register the dangers of drunken excess, there is no general code of abstinence from drink, no biblical ethos of asceticism. Allowing the hair to grow uncut has been the subject of much anthropological speculation. The simplest inference is that it served as a very visible outward sign of the nazirite’s being “set apart,” and that it then could become a product of his body he could actually offer up—in flame—on the altar. (There are no indications in these laws that the nazirite was to refrain from sexual activity or joyous celebrations.) A late-ninth-century B.C.E. Phoenician inscription seems to reflect an offering of hair to Astarte. One suspects that a practice roughly resembling that of the biblical nazirite, and involving the renunciation of haircutting and then an offering of hair, was an established devotional regimen among the West Semitic peoples. The Bible, then, is by no means inventing or imposing this practice but recognizing it as something that certain individuals, in emulation of established pagan tradition, might want to do. The aim of the legislation is to regulate the practice and integrate it in the procedures of the official cult.
5. the days come to term. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “the days are filled.”
7. the crown of his God is on his head. The Hebrew turns on a pun: nezer is a common word for “crown,” but in context it also means “naziritehood.” The abundance of uncut hair, crowning the head of the vow taker, is, as the visible manifestation of his vow (neder), also a synecdoche for his naziritehood. Thus, in verse 9, “his nazirite head” could also be rendered as “the crown of his head.”
12. and the first days shall fall away. That is, the days until the moment he defiled himself by contact with the corpse are to be canceled, and he must begin anew the count of days of the period he has vowed to be a nazirite.
14. an offense offering. What offense (ḥataʾt) has he committed? The consensus of medieval and modern commentators is that by now removing his person from the realm of the consecrated to the ordinary realm of the profane, he is taking something away from God and so must make an offense offering. An antithetical construction is also possible: this “acting exceptionally” to set oneself apart for holiness, renouncing the pleasures of wine and letting one’s hair grow long, expresses a kind of presumption, an aspiration to spiritual superiority, and thus is an offense.
20. elevate them as an elevation offering. This was a performative act of gesturing that formally conveyed what was elevated to God’s jurisdiction. Practically, this meant that it was conveyed to God’s agent, the priest.
21. besides what his hand may attain. The sacrifice just stipulated is the constitutive obligation of the nazirite vow. If the person who makes the vow has the means and desire to pledge more than this as an offering, he is free to do so.
23. Thus shall you bless the Israelites. This cadenced threefold blessing came to play a central liturgical role for both Jews and Christians, and probably began to serve that function even in the biblical period. Remarkable for its rhetorical stateliness and its emphatic use of repetition and overlapping terms, it is not, in strictly formal terms, a poem, but it does exhibit a remarkable degree of formal organization. Jacob Milgrom aptly characterizes its three clauses as embodying “a rising crescendo of 3, 5, and 7 words, respectively”; and this pattern, he goes on to observe, is coordinated with the number of stressed syllables (3, 5, and 7), and the total number of syllables (12, 14, and 16). A nearly identical version of this blessing was found on two silver filigree amulets in a burial cave at a site called Kateph Hinnom, in Jerusalem, in 1980. The amulets have been dated to the seventh century or early sixth century B.C.E. The version of the blessing on the amulets is somewhat abbreviated, which has led some scholars to conclude that they register the “original” text. It seems more plausible, however, that the text was abbreviated in order to fit it on the small amulets: the shortened form does not preserve the just mentioned formal elegance of the version in our text. Levine speculates that the prayer to be favored and guarded by God may have been applied, given the fact that Kateph Hinnom was a burial place, to safeguarding in the underworld, though that is hardly the original intention of the blessing.
25. light up His face to you. In biblical idiom, the shining of the face (or eyes) toward someone is a showing of favor or affection. Lifting up the face has the same meaning.
27. and I Myself shall bless them. The device of emphasis—the insertion of the first-person pronoun ʾani before the conjugated verb, which because of its conjugation would normally make the pronoun superfluous—is not reflected in most translations. It is particularly important here because it underscores the idea of God’s special relationship with Israel: after the pronouncing of the threefold blessing, God’s name, a kind of divine proprietorship, will be set over Israel, and God Himself will carry out the blessing.