Numbers 6:18

Verse Numbers 6:18. Shall take the hair - and put it in the fire] The hair was permitted to grow for this purpose; and as the Nazarite was a kind of sacrifice, offered to God through the whole term of his nazarate or separation, and no human flesh or blood could be offered on the altar of the Lord, he offered his hair at the conclusion of his separation, as a sacrifice - that hair which was the token of his complete subjection to the Lord, and which was now considered as the Lord's property.

The Hindoos, after a vow, do not cut their hair during the term of their vow; but at the expiration of it they shave it off at the place where the vow was made.

That the hair of the head was superstitiously used among different nations, we have already had occasion to remark; (Leviticus 19:27;) and that the Gentiles might have learned this from the Jews is possible, though some learned men think that this consecration of the hair to a deity was in use among the heathens before the time of Moses, and in nations who had no intercourse or connection with the Jews.