Numbers 6:2

2. Man or woman Childless parents, says the Mishna, undertook this vow in the hope of obtaining offspring. This course was followed by Manoah’s wife and by Samuel’s mother. If a female Nazarite broke her vow she was liable to forty stripes. According to the Hebrew canons, “The father or the husband may disannul the Nazariteship of his child or of his wife, if he will.” Philo, after describing the votive offerings occasionally made by the people, goes on to say: “And when they have no longer any materials left in which they can display their piety, they then consecrate and offer up themselves, displaying an unspeakable holiness, and a most superabundant excess of a God-loving disposition, on which account such a dedication is fitly called THE GREAT VOW; for every man is his own greatest and most valuable possession, and this even he now gives up and abandons.”

Shall separate The original word signifies the doing of something wonderful or extraordinary, and is the very term used in Leviticus 27:2, for making a singular vow.” It intimates an unusual and intense zeal for Jehovah. From the absence of any prescribed ritual, and from the statements in the Mishna, we infer that this act of self-consecration was a private affair. If the vow was broken, its renewal required a public ceremonial.

A vow of a Nazarite This vow involved the two radical significations of the term Nazarite: separation and consecration. He separated himself from strong drink, and from every production of the vine, even the skins and seeds of the grape; from every instrument of the barber, and from any dead body, even that of his nearest kindred. He was not cut off from marriage, from secular business, and from social life. He was not a monastic, though much of his time may have been devoted to sacred studies and to acts of worship. The descriptions of this character in the Scriptures are chiefly negative rather than positive. The separation is more definite than the consecration.