Judges 13:5

thou shalt conceive The present in Genesis 16:11 RV. and Isaiah 7:14 RVm.; the future is more suitable here.

a Nazirite unto God lit. one separated unto God; this, the full term, came to be abbreviated nâzîr, i.e. separated, devoted, a Nazirite. It is to be noticed that (1) the consecration took effect from birth; it was not voluntary, but due to the call of God, in this respect resembling the case of the prophets, Jeremiah 1:5; Isaiah 44:2; (2) it was life-long and not temporary; (3) the special sign of consecration was the unshorn hair, no razor shall come upon his head, cf. Judges 16:17; 1 Samuel 1:11; this seems to have been the one essential characteristic; and (4) the object or task of the person thus devoted was to wage war and effect a deliverance. The connexion between (3) and (4) is illustrated by the custom of Arab warriors to wear the hair long when they vowed inveterate war, probably too by the long hair of the chiefs in Deborah's Song (see on Judges 5:2). In old Israel the Nazirite was no doubt a familiar figure; but besides Samson, the only other and not quite certain example is Samuel (1 Samuel 1:11), though he is not called a Nazirite till Sir 46:13 (in the Hebr., not in the Gk. text), and in Talmudic tradition (Nazir66 a -Samuel was a Nazirite according to the teaching of R. Naharaï"). There was nothing ascetic about a Nazirite in the early days, as the story of Samson proves (Judges 14:10); abstinence from wine did not become a mark of this type of devotee till a later time (Amos 2:12), and then probably as a protest against Canaanite habits (cf. the Rechabites, Jeremiah 35:9 ff.). What was probably a later development still appears in the detailed law of the Nazirite in Numbers 6; there abstinence from wine has become the principal feature; the hair is treated as a hair-offering; instead of preserving it unshorn, the Nazirite is to shave when the period of the vow is over; the vow itself is not life-long but temporary and voluntary; and contact with a dead body is strictly forbidden, a prohibition which cannot have existed in the early days (Judges 14:19; Judges 15:8; Judges 15:15; 1 Samuel 15:33). The obvious differences between Nazirites of Samson's type and those of the type laid down in the law formed a topic of discussion among the Rabbis (Talmud B. Nazir4 a, b). After the Exile temporary Nazirites were numerous down to the fall of Jerusalem (1Ma 3:49; Jos., Ant.xix. 6, 1, Warsii. 15, 1; Acts 21:23 ff.).

The treatment of the hair, whether preserved unshorn or offered as a sacrifice, is based upon a widely spread and primitive belief that the hair is a part of a man's self; if it is never shorn, his strength is undiminished, he is intact; if it is shorn and offered at the sanctuary, it is in a measure an offering of oneself 1 [51].

[51] See Gray, Journ. of Theol. Studiesi. 201 211 (1900) and Numbers57 ff. (1903) Frazer, Golden Boughi. 193 207; Rob. Smith, Rel. of Sem., 314 f., 462 ff.

begin to save Israel … the Philistines In chs. 14 16, however, we find not a work of national deliverance, but intermittent feats of private revenge or daring. The view of Samson's history indicated by this remark shews that ch. 13 must be somewhat later than 14 16. It is doubtful whether beginimplies that Samson was regarded as the forerunner of Samuel and Saul in the struggle against the Philistines (Wellhausen, Composition d. Hex., p. 231; S. A. Cook, Notes on O.T. Hist., p. 34); the word probably means no more than -shall be the first to," as in Judges 10:18.