1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,YHWH tells Moses to tell the Israelites some details about pledging themselves to God as "Nazirites."
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the LORD:
3 He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried.
4 All the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree, from the kernels even to the husk.
5 All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the LORD, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow.
6 All the days that he separateth himself unto the LORD he shall come at no dead body.
7 He shall not make himself unclean for his father, or for his mother, for his brother, or for his sister, when they die: because the consecration of his God is upon his head.
8 All the days of his separation he is holy unto the LORD.
9 And if any man die very suddenly by him, and he hath defiled the head of his consecration; then he shall shave his head in the day of his cleansing, on the seventh day shall he shave it.
10 And on the eighth day he shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons, to the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation:
11 And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering, and make an atonement for him, for that he sinned by the dead, and shall hallow his head that same day.
12 And he shall consecrate unto the LORD the days of his separation, and shall bring a lamb of the first year for a trespass offering: but the days that were before shall be lost, because his separation was defiled.
13 And this is the law of the Nazarite, when the days of his separation are fulfilled: he shall be brought unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation:
14 And he shall offer his offering unto the LORD, one he lamb of the first year without blemish for a burnt offering, and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish for a sin offering, and one ram without blemish for peace offerings,
15 And a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, and wafers of unleavened bread anointed with oil, and their meat offering, and their drink offerings.
16 And the priest shall bring them before the LORD, and shall offer his sin offering, and his burnt offering:
17 And he shall offer the ram for a sacrifice of peace offerings unto the LORD, with the basket of unleavened bread: the priest shall offer also his meat offering, and his drink offering.
18 And the Nazarite shall shave the head of his separation at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and shall take the hair of the head of his separation, and put it in the fire which is under the sacrifice of the peace offerings.
19 And the priest shall take the sodden shoulder of the ram, and one unleavened cake out of the basket, and one unleavened wafer, and shall put them upon the hands of the Nazarite, after the hair of his separation is shaven:
20 And the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before the LORD: this is holy for the priest, with the wave breast and heave shoulder: and after that the Nazarite may drink wine.
21 This is the law of the Nazarite who hath vowed, and of his offering unto the LORD for his separation, beside that that his hand shall get: according to the vow which he vowed, so he must do after the law of his separation.
22 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
23 Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them,
24 The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:
25 The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
26 The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
27 And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.
If they take the plunge, they have to swear off the following: alcohol and all grape-based products, cutting their hair, and touching corpses. (Well, there go my weekend plans!)
But you know how sometimes you just can't help getting up close and personal with a dead person? Like the time a bouncer at Carol Doda's club was crushed to death during an after-hours liaison with a dancer. The "floating" piano accidentally lifted and pinned him to the ceiling. She survived, spending the night sandwiched between the piano and the dead man, until the day crew freed her. Variety tastefully titled the story "He Died Smiling."
Well, if you're a Nazirite and that happens to you, you need to shave your head on the seventh day (Seven days after your brush with deadness? I might have thought it meant the seventh day of the week, but for the next instruction). "On the eighth day he shall bring two turtles, or two young pigeons, to the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." Again, the "turtles" are turtledoves to be sacrificed, one each as a sin offering and a burnt offering. Plus, a lamb is sacrificed as a trespass offering.
If you're a Nazarite who's defiled by a cadaver, the days of service before you become born-again don't count. But count for what?
Apparently, at some point you finish your vows and go back to your normal life in the wilderness with two million other Israelites. And you can resume drinking wine, perhaps to self-medicate against the madness of forty-years of limbo.
When you've served your hitch, you bring in a ram, a lamb,
At the ceremony, you shave your hair and burn it.
After you shed those long locks and carry out the rest of the ritual, God will shed his grace on thee, and on the Israelites in general.
8 comments:
I had forgotten about that Nazarite thing. I thought that "no alcohol" shit only applied to Baptists...
"Well, there go my weekend plans!"
You will have me laughing all day! Thanks.
Leslie, my alternative weekend plans are to knock out a few more chapters of Numbers, after a busy couple of weeks with light posting.
Things to do in Boston when you're forbidden to touch the dead.
Nazirite, from NZR ("Nazir"), just means "separated"; this is traditionally interpreted as meaning "consecrated to God" (as in "separated [from the others due to holiness]"), but probably really originated with the sense of "isolated", which would be more in keeping with the Nazirite cult. The word "Nezer", from the same root (NZR), eventually came to mean "crown" (etymologically this usage derived from [NZR] being taken in the sense of "consecrated"/"holy").
A point that will become significant (much) later is that in Greek, "was a Nazarene" (ie. "was a Nazirite") is indistinguishable from the phrase "was from Nazereth". The triconsonantal root NZR is NOT to be confused with the (possibly related) root NSR, meaning "branch"; the latter triconsonantal appears in the Book of Isaiah, in the phrase "...a shoot from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall come forth of this root...", which Christians misinterpret as referring to Jesus (hence "root of Jesse").
"Nazirite" should also not be confused with "Nazareous". The latter occurs in several places, including Deuteronomy, but is sometimes rendered as "Nazirite" in english versions (though this is technically justified, as they are essentially from the same root, and essentially look the same in the masoretic text). "Nazareous" (aka "Nazirite", unhelpfully) just means "prince"/"[a] noble", and derives from the fact that "Nezer" came to mean "crown" ("Nazareous" is basically "crown-ish").
This text is part of the priestly code, specifically one of the later priestly writers who added on their own bits of laws; this bit about the Nazirites is written by the same writer who wrote the later elements in the previous chapter, who is occasionally called the "Teacher"/"Priestly Teacher"/"Pt" by scholars, on account of the style of writing. This writer is considered to be one of the earliest of the "later priestly writers"; there's more from this writer in chapter 15.
Despite being mentioned here in the priestly code, the Nazirites were an ancient religious "devotion" (for want of a better description), mentioned in texts as old as the Book of Amos (much older than the priestly code), and the Book of Judges. However, the rules laid out here are clearly different from the reality of the ancient Nazirite cult; so different were they, in fact, that Jewish tradition clearly distinguishes between the two types, as if they were distinct and parallel rituals. In the ancient cult, the vow was life-long, the hair was NEVER cut, and there doesn't seem to have been any prohibition against wine nor against contact with the dead - I won't spoil the later stories (or what really underlies them), but I'm sure you've heard of Samson; Absalom (who you'll read about in the Books of Samuel) is likely to have been a Nazirite, in the original stories about him, but this seems to be glossed over by most of the surviving text.
It was the Rechabites who never drank wine; the Rechabites are never mentioned by the Priestly Code, and its possible that the priestly code has accidentally conflated them with the Nazirites, and also possible that its tried to do this deliberately. Either way, the priestly code is always trying to restrain the older religion to fit within the priestly code's Aaronid theological views, in which the priest is always an intermediary between man and god. The Rechabites, who seem to have been more aescetic (at least superficially), may have originally arisen as a schism among the Nazirites.
The not-cutting-the-hair is the real core of what it was to be a Nazirite. In the related ancient cultures of Arabia (now Saudi Arabia/east Jordan/etc.), not-cutting-the-hair was a ritual practiced to enlist divine help in war or revenge (eg. "I shall not cut my hair again until I have my revenge"); "co-incidentally" the Arabic practice was that once the victory had occurred, the hair would be cut off and offered to the deity (like verse 18). The ritual here in the Priestly Code is a bastardisation of this, twisted to comply with the Priestly Codes' obsession with standardised sacrifices.
The Book of Amos makes a quite enigmatic statement about the Nazirites, putting them in association and contrast to the "prophets"; the usual thing that the "prophets" are associated and contrasted with are the priests ("the priests and the prophets", etc.) - hence Amos indirectly suggests that the Nazirites can in some way take the place of priests. The Nazirites seem to be remnants from part of the older polytheistic religion of Canaan, perhaps the priesthood of some deities in particular (in which case Shamash is one of the likely deities, for reasons that will become clear when we get to the Samson narrative).
Verse 8 here is particularly interesting, as it directly contradicts the requirement here of the Nazirite to bring a "sin offering"; the "sin offering" was brought for violations of the ritual taboos, yet verse 8 says that the Nazirite is always ritually pure. The contradiction was noticed by classical (circa 1st-3rd century) Judaism, but they had trouble explaining its reason, and came up with a wide variety of excuses.
The majority of Jewish authority figures in the Classical era were vehemently opposed to aesceticism, particularly aescetic sects like the Essenes; many classical Rabbis claimed that anyone taking the Nazirites vow was evil.
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The second half of this chapter is a later addition by a different writer, but who is again one of the priestly writers who can't stop adding their own laws and rituals onto an already bulging collection; this writer is thought to be from a later date than the "Teacher". Notice the sharp edge caused by verse 22, and also notice how different verses 1-2a (...to Moses, tell the Israelites...) is to verses 22-23 (..to Moses, tell AARON and "his sons", ...say to the Israelites .... ), with the latter writer insisting on Aaron being the intermediary between the Israelites and god.
This blessing seems to be older than the priestly code itself, as parts of it are quoted by two of the psalms (many psalms are older than the priestly code, and some are ancient); the psalms are 4 and 67. It became the main blessing in Jewish religious ceremonies, particularly in synagogues; Leonard Nimoy (who played Spock in Star Trek) is Jewish, and the "vulcan" hand thing ("live long and prosper") is actually the hand gesture that Jewish would-be-priests (ie. people whose surname is Cohen, or variations, like Kohn, and Coen; Kohen is the Jewish word for priest, its appearance as a surname is a genealogical claim by the Jews who chose that surname) use when speaking this blessing.
Since it was prominent in Judaism, it also appeared in Christianity, care of Saint Francis of Assisi. It will be familiar to many people who attend Evensong, for example, where it is often the very final set of words spoken by the priest.
I forgot to mention that the priestly blessing is copied from the Egyptians (like a lot of priestly source things). It appears in Egyptian texts from as far back as the first intermediate period (2130-2040BC), such as letters to the dead.
The Egyptian versions are slightly shorter, but retains the feature of being built around precise poetic measurements. Both versions are structured in verses of 3 words, then 5 words (on the next line), then 7 words (on the next line) - at least in the Hebrew (of the biblical text) and the Demotic (of the Egyptian text); like much biblical poetry, the verse structure tends to be preserved (in the masoretic text, septuagint, and other ancient versions) by special symbols, unlike the prose elements of the biblical text, which tend to now be broken up into verses more erratically). This, rather pretty, structure isn't so obvious in English, but is what causes some of its subtler poetic qualities.
The biblical version has a pair of actions ("may the LORD XXX and YYY") in each verse, but the Egyptian one only has one action; the biblical version is basically an expansion (eg. "the FACE OF the great GOD will BE GRACIOUS UNTO YOU" becomes "the LORD make HIS FACE to shine over you and BE GRACIOUS UNTO YOU").
So, its originally a blessing TO THE DEAD. Well, it turns out that the biblical one continued to be a blessing to the dead as well. In 1978 they found the biblical version inscribed on 7th century BC amulets in Israel, which was hailed as the oldest surviving copy of any part of the bible (which remains true); what they didn't publicise so openly was the fact that the amulets were tomb offerings (and found in tombs).
Fascinating comments, as always, my anonymous friend!
I'm an atheist who has been "studying" the Bible since the early 1960s. I think I've hit on a blog that will help to further those "studies". I'm anxious to read what you have to say on how God handles the situation should a man suspect his wife of adultery. I think I know why the potion the woman was forced to drink contained dust from in front of the altar.
Mary,
Welcome to the Bible Study!
Wasn't sure from your comment if you knew that the adultery test is just one chapter back.
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