Nazarite Vow - Numbers 6

Chapter 6 deals with the vow of being a Nazarite, which was a person who could dedicate their lives to the service of God, sometimes for life but usually just for a short period of time like a few years. At first I thought that only the Levite tribe could make this vow, but it seems like anyone from Israel could do it, both men and women. The caveat for the genders is that a father could nullify his daughter’s vow and a husband could nullify his wife’s vow. They made 3 specific vows, 1. No wine, strong drink, grape juice, or even grapes, 2. Can’t cut their hair, must let it grow naturally the whole time they are in service, 3. Can’t go near a dead body, even if it was a loved one. Some notable Nazarites were Samuel the boy prophet, Sampson, and John the Baptist.

Now as far as what Nazarites did, TB says, “Nazarites were not some kind of weird hermits… Nazarites had no special food prohibitions apart from not eating grapes or grape products and they still had to eat Kosher, as did all Hebrews. Further they could marry, so celibacy was not a part of it. They wore normal clothing. They generally held normal jobs and worked at everyday crafts. The thing that marked them as different, more than anything else, was the wild hair that came with time. Otherwise they remained fully part of normal Israeli society.” Google notes “they were set apart as ‘holy to the lord,’ a higher standard than even priests in some ways.”

I thought I remembered hearing in one of TB’s lectures a few weeks ago about Nazarites doing some menial tasks around the parts of the temple that were open to them, so that might be a part of it, but TB’s lecture, nor chapter 6 itself describe any duties or obligations that come along with the Nazarite vow that have to do with working in the temple or participating in any of the religious ceremonies. It would make sense that they might be more involved in like the less prominent or important tasks at the temple though. It would kind of be like taking a vow to dedicate your life to God and then part of your duties is to clean the church building every week with others who have taken the same vow. This is an interesting idea though because I usually don’t clean the church building because I work most Saturdays but on the few times that I have done it, I’ve felt the Spirit so strongly and been taught by the Spirit too, which was very unexpected for me. It also begs the question why don’t I make an effort to clean the church every week? Laziness mostly but also because I work most Saturdays.

So it appears that taking a Nazarite vow was essentially dedicating your life to God for a period of time through a few limiting factors but also mostly through personal service to Him. So really, there would be nothing prohibiting us from doing something similar, unofficially. It also makes me wonder if the not cutting the hair thing, which then translated into having crazy looking hair, if that was a physical aspect of the vow that was meant to keep the person in remembrance of the vow. Does that make sense? Like if it was some physical reminder of their state of dedication, and if so is there something similar we could do to remind us to focus on God, again, informally?