[13] He would also shave his head in the outer courtyard of the Temple in Jerusalem, and place the hair on the same fire as the peace offering.
The Septuagint uses a number of terms to translate the 16 uses of nazir in the Hebrew Bible, such as "he who vowed" (euxamenos εὐξαμένος)[18] or "he who was made holy" (egiasmenos ἡγιασμένος)[19] etc.
David Kimhi conjectures that even without this special status, Samson would be allowed to touch dead bodies while doing God's work defending Israel.
[23] Another argument analyzes the semantics of the vow itself; Numbers 6:6 forbids nazirites from coming near a nephesh-mot (a dead body), and though there are cases in the Pentateuch where nephesh is used to refer to animals (see Genesis 1:21, 24; 9:12; Lev.
In any event, the supernatural strength that Samson was given was evidently not taken away at the time of Judges 14, indicating that his nazirite vow was not considered broken.
In addition to the Biblical text of Numbers 6:1–21, the laws are explained in detail in the Mishna and Talmud, tractate Nazir.
[31] A father, but not a mother, can declare his son, but not his daughter, a Nazirite, however the child or any close family member has a right to refuse this status.
[34] The rabbis (along with some but not all academic scholars) view this as simply the appropriate disposal of a sanctified object, rather than being the hair itself being a sacrifice.
[42] If the Nazirite simply enters an area where a grave or graveyard had been ploughed (in which case there is only a chance that he touched human bones), or if he went into a foreign land that was declared unclean by the chazal (sages) and had touched its earth, or if he stands beneath the branches of a tree or a rock that shades the ground (Hebrew: סככות) near a graveyard, he still contracts a level of uncleanness.
[43] Among medieval authorities, Maimonides followed the view of Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar, calling a nazirite a sinner, and explaining that a person should always be moderate in his actions and not be to any extreme.
[47] Reviewing Halakhic and Aggadic literature, Jacob Neusner writes that Jewish sages generally viewed the vow of the nazirite to be shrouded in "arrogance" and "weakness".
[48] According to Rabbi Meir, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a grape-vine, for "nothing brings wailing upon a person like wine".
[49] According to the Mishnah, Queen Helena of Adiabene (c. 48 CE) once placed herself under a Nazirite vow for seven years, on condition that her son returned home from war safely.
When her son returned home safely, she began to perform her Nazirite vow for seven years, after which she brought the required animal offerings to the Jerusalem.
When asked his motive, the youth replied that he had seen his own face reflected in the spring and it had pleased him so that he feared lest his beauty might become an idol to him.
While a saying in Matthew 11:18–19 and Luke 7:33–35 attributed to Jesus makes it doubtful that he, reported to be "a winebibber", was a nazirite during his ministry, the verse ends with the curious statement, "But wisdom is justified of all her children".
The ritual with which Jesus commenced his ministry (recorded via Greek as "baptism") and his vow in Mark 14:25 and Luke 22:15–18 at the end of his ministry, do respectively reflect the final and initial steps (purification by immersion in water and abstaining from wine) inherent in a nazirite vow.
[55] Luke the Evangelist clearly was aware that wine was forbidden in this practice, for the angel (Luke 1:13–15) that announces the birth of John the Baptist foretells that "he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb", in other words, a nazirite from birth, the implication being that John had taken a lifelong nazirite vow.
[57] From Acts 21:23–24 we learn that the early Jewish Christians occasionally took the temporary nazirite vow, and it is probable that the vow of St. Paul mentioned in Acts 18:18, was of a similar nature, although the shaving of his head in Cenchrea, outside of Palestine, was not in conformity with the rules laid down in the sixth chapter of Numbers, nor with the interpretation of them by the rabbinical schools of that era.
[58] If we are to believe the legend of Hegesippus quoted by Eusebius,[59] James, brother of Jesus, Bishop of Jerusalem, was a nazirite, and performed with rigorous exactness all the practices enjoined by that rule of life.
In Acts 21:20–24 Paul was advised to counter the claims made by some Judaizers (that he encouraged a revolt against the Mosaic Law).
[64] Josephus briefly recounts an episode where, in the 12th year of the reign of Nero, during the outbreak of the First Jewish-Roman War, Bernice (the sister of King Agrippa II) had put herself under a Nazirite vow and had come to Jerusalem thirty days before she was to offer her sacrifices, during which time she was to abstain from wine, and after which to shave the hair of her head.
Apharat writes in the 4th century: "The sons of Seth were virtuous in their virginity, but when they became mixed up with the daughters of Cain, they were blotted out with the water of the flood.
"[66][67] John Scully records Ephrem suggesting that "the vines of Paradise rush out to meet only those ascetics who lead a life of virginity and abstain from wine" in the 4th century.
In 1979, Witness Lee of the Local Church movement published the Principle of the Nazarite, a short pamphlet outlining a metaphorical interpretation of the vow for uptake amongst Christians.
[75] Lou Engle, a Charismatic evangelical American leader, has written Nazarite DNA, which outlines a metaphorical interpretation of the vow.