2And Moses spoke to the heads of the tribes of the Israelites, saying, “This is the thing that the LORD has charged: 3Should a man take a vow or make an oath to the LORD, to take upon himself a binding pledge, he shall not profane his word. According to all that issues from his mouth he shall do. 4And should a woman take a vow to the LORD and make a binding pledge in her father’s house in her youth, 5and her father hear her vow and her binding pledge that she took upon herself, and her father remain silent to her, all her vows shall stand and every binding pledge that she took upon herself shall stand. 6But should her father restrain her when he hears all her vows and her binding pledges that she took upon herself, it shall not stand, and the LORD will forgive her, for her father restrained her. 7But should she indeed become a man’s with her vows upon her or her lips’ utterance that she made binding upon herself, 8and her husband hear of it at the time he hears and remain silent to her, her vows shall stand, and her binding pledges that she took upon herself shall stand. 9And if at the time her husband hears, he restrains her and annuls her vow that is upon her and her lips’ utterance that she took upon herself as a binding pledge, the LORD will forgive her. 10And the vow of a widow or a divorced woman, all that she took upon herself as a binding pledge, shall stand. 11And if she vowed in her husband’s house or took upon herself a binding pledge by oath, 12and her husband heard and remained silent to her, he did not restrain her, all her vows and every binding pledge that she took upon herself shall stand. 13But if her husband indeed annulled them at the time he heard, whatever issues from her lips in regard to her vows and to her binding pledge shall not stand. Her husband has annulled them and the LORD will forgive her. 14Every vow and every binding oath to afflict oneself, her husband shall let it stand and her husband shall annul it. 15And if her husband indeed remains silent to her day after day and lets all her vows stand or all her binding pledges that are upon her, he has let them stand, for he remained silent to her when he heard. 16But if he indeed annuls them after he has heard, he shall bear her guilt.” 17These are the statutes that the LORD charged Moses between a man and his wife, between a father and his daughter in her youth in her father’s house.
CHAPTER 30 NOTES
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3. Should a man take a vow. Jacob Milgrom proposes that the editorial decision to introduce this section on the laws of vows was dictated by the references to vows or votive offerings (nedarim) at the end of the preceding section (29:39) of laws about sacrifices.
vow . . . oath . . . binding pledge. The first term, neder, as Baruch Levine has shown, refers to a conditional promise made to God: if God will do such-and-such, the vow taker commits himself then to repay God by offering such-and-such. (Jephthah’s vow to sacrifice to God whoever or whatever comes out of his house when he returns victorious from battle is a striking, if outrageous, instance of a neder.) The second term, shevuʿah, is an oath binding from the moment it is pronounced. The distinction between these two and the third term, ʾisar, “binding pledge,” is not entirely clear, though Levine suggests that ʾisar is an oral pledge which is then set down in legally obligating written form.
4. should a woman. Though this section begins with a man who makes a vow or pledge, its real subject is the woman who takes upon herself this sort of obligation. The woman, clearly, has limited legal automony in this society. Before marriage, her vows may be annulled by her father; after marriage, by her husband.
in her youth. The abstract noun neʿureiha refers to the period when she is a naʿarah, a nubile young woman, from puberty until marriage.
6. restrain. That is, abrogate the vow she has made.
10. the vow of a widow or a divorced woman. This is the one category of woman not subject to the authority of a man that biblical law imagines, since it does not allow for the case of the spinster (presumably a great rarity in biblical society with its ubiquitous imperative to marry and procreate).
11. And if she vowed in her husband’s house. The legal autonomy, however, of the widow or the divorced woman is restricted to her present single state. Commitments she made while married are still validated or voided by the say-so of her deceased or former husband.
13. whatever issues from her lips. Throughout these laws, there is a sense that the pronounced word, what comes out of the mouth, is a palpable entity with legally binding force. Jephthah’s daughter’s words in Judges 11:36 perfectly illustrate this notion.
14. to afflict oneself. As in 29:7, this idiom refers in the first instance to fasting.
16. if he indeed annuls them after he has heard, he shall bear her guilt. Although the formulation is rather compressed, the clear sense is as follows: if the husband remains silent when he hears the woman’s vows, and only afterward annuls them, the vows are still binding, and should she now ignore the vow, it is he who must bear the consequences of the violated commitment, having led her to think that the vow was no longer binding.