Numbers6chapter 6

Numbers 6:1-2

The word Nazarite enters the King James Bible at verse 2 and stands in twelve verses in all, six of them in this chapter. Behind it is the Hebrew nazir, which Genesis 49:26 and Deuteronomy 33:16 use of Joseph, him that was separate from his brethren. The vow is opened to either man or woman, and it runs for a term the person names, which verse 5 and verse 13 both call the days of his separation.

Numbers 6:3-4

The first abstention takes in the whole vine, wine, strong drink, vinegar made of either, any liquor of grapes, grapes moist or dried, and at verse 4 the kernels and the husk. Leviticus 10:9 kept wine and strong drink from Aaron and his sons whenever they went into the tabernacle, so a lay Israelite takes up for a season what a priest carried on duty. The same Hebrew root that names this man names the unpruned vine of the sabbath year at Leviticus 25:5 and 25:11, which the King James renders thy vine undressed. Numbers gives no reason for the rule, and Judges 13:14 hands the same terms to Samson's mother before he is born.

Numbers 6:5

Hair left uncut is the one mark of the vow that anybody can see. Hannah uses this clause word for word at 1 Samuel 1:11 when she gives Samuel to the Lord, and the angel gives it to Samson's mother at Judges 13:5. Samson keeps this rule and breaks the other two, taking honey out of the lion's carcase at Judges 14:8 and handling the jawbone at Judges 15:15, and the hair is the secret he finally tells at Judges 16:17.

Numbers 6:6-8

An ordinary priest could defile himself for a mother, father, son, daughter, brother or unmarried sister at Leviticus 21:1-3, and the high priest could not, at Leviticus 21:11. Verse 7 puts the Nazarite at the high priest's level and gives the reason in the high priest's own word, since the Hebrew nezer behind consecration here is the word for the golden crown on the mitre at Exodus 29:6 and Leviticus 8:9 and for the crown of the anointing oil at Leviticus 21:12. Clarke renders verse 7 literally as the separation of his God is upon his head, meaning the hair itself. The uncut hair of an ordinary Israelite stands in this law where the high priest wore gold.

Numbers 6:9-11

A death nobody could have foreseen still defiles the vow, and the remedy runs on the seven days and the eighth that Numbers 19:11 sets later in this book for anyone who touches a corpse. He shaves, brings two turtles or two young pigeons, and verse 11 has the priest make atonement for him, for that he sinned by the dead. John Wesley reads that word as the ceremonial pollution rather than a fault of the man's own doing. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown take the sin offering as the mark that even a kept vow needs blood at the end of it.

Numbers 6:12

The days already served are struck off and the whole term starts again, opened with a lamb of the first year for a trespass offering. Wesley notes that the Hebrew behind lost is fall, as a thing falls to the ground and comes to nothing. Matthew Henry reads the rule as the reason a Nazarite kept so far from the dead, since defilement was the one thing that could cost him his time.

Numbers 6:13-15

The vow closes where it was made, at the door of the tabernacle, and it closes with sacrifice. Three animals are named without blemish, a he lamb for a burnt offering, an ewe lamb for a sin offering and a ram for peace offerings, with a basket of unleavened cakes and wafers, a meat offering and a drink offering. Gill points out that the basket of unleavened bread matches the consecration of Aaron and his sons at Exodus 29:2, so the man ending this vow brings what a priest brought at his ordination.

Numbers 6:16-18

Gill notes that the offerings stand here in the order they were made, sin offering first, then burnt offering, then the ram of peace offerings with the basket. The head is shaved at the door in public, and the hair goes into the fire under the peace offering, so the token of the vow burns with the sacrifice. Clarke reads the hair as the man's own offering, since no human flesh could go on the altar and the hair was already reckoned the Lord's property. Paul shaved his head at Cenchrea for a vow at Acts 18:18, and Acts 21:23-26 has him in the temple paying the charges of four men who had one on them.

Numbers 6:19-21

The boiled shoulder with a cake and a wafer is put into the Nazarite's hands and waved, and Wesley takes this as the left shoulder added to the priest's usual right shoulder, a particular thank offering from Nazarites. The release is one clause at the end of verse 20, and after that the Nazarite may drink wine. Verse 21 holds a man to whatever he vowed above the fixed offerings, beside that that his hand shall get. Amos 2:11-12 has God saying that he raised up Nazarites of their young men and that Israel gave the Nazarites wine to drink.

Numbers 6:22-23

God supplies the words, so the priests bless Israel with a given text rather than with whatever they might find to say. Barnes notes that the blessing belongs to Aaron and his sons alone and that Jewish tradition placed it at the close of the daily sacrifice. Two small silver scrolls found by Gabriel Barkay in 1979 in a burial cave at Ketef Hinnom outside Jerusalem carry wording close to these lines and are commonly dated to the late seventh century before Christ, which makes them the oldest known objects bearing words of Scripture.

Numbers 6:24

The three lines lengthen in the Hebrew, three words, then five, then seven, and the name of the Lord stands in every one of them. This first line asks two things, blessing and keeping, the gift and the guard of it. Clarke sets the lines out as three separate blessings, any or all of which a priest might use. Spurgeon, preaching on the passage in Two Choice Benedictions, took the three occurrences of the name as Father, Son and Spirit and said he thought it very likely, while the reading carried in Jewish tradition is of one God named three times.

Numbers 6:25-26

A shining face and a lifted countenance are what a man's face does when he turns toward somebody he is pleased with. The Psalms pray these lines back, cause his face to shine upon us at Psalm 67:1, cause thy face to shine at Psalm 80:3, and lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us at Psalm 4:6. The last word of the last line is peace, and Wesley takes the shalom here as peace with God, with a man's own conscience and with other men, with all prosperity under it.

Numbers 6:27

The verse most readers stop before is the one that says what the blessing was for. Speaking the three lines puts the name of the Lord on Israel, and the blessing itself is God's own act, I will bless them. Wesley reads putting the name as calling them by it and owning them as his people before God. Revelation 22:4 closes the canon with the same picture, his servants with his name in their foreheads.