Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr.

Amos 2:11-12 mention prophets and Nazirites in the context of those who have been raised up by YHWH. This passage is often appealed to as an early example of an early, charismatic Nazirite that should be seen distinct from the later temporary ritual vow found in Numbers 6 (see Niditch “My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man”: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel, pp. 74-75 for the latest proponent of this view). However, does the text really do all that? Read more…

Yairah Amit’s review of Susan Niditch’s Judges: A Commentary (Old Testament Library) is posted over at the Review of Biblical Literature (link here). On the whole, the review is a balanced piece. It ends, however, on a rather sour note:

However, I feel that I have to finish this review with a personal touch. The book begins with sixteen pages of bibliography (xiii–xxviii), which include some Hebrew items too. But, alas, my commentary on the book of Judges, published in 1999 as part of the series Mikra Leysra’el by Magnes Press of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is absent. I am sure that if it was mentioned in Niditch’s book, at least more English readers could have known about my isolated one.

Ouch. I noticed the same absence when I recently read Niditch’s “My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man”: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel, but I chalked it up to the popular nature of that work.  However, Niditch even failed to mention Marc Brettler’s The Book of Judges (Old Testament Readings), a very accessible overview of Judges in English (which makes use of Amit’s Hebrew work).

Moral of the story: do your lit review. The source you omit might be your reviewer!

After my post earlier this week Why Does a Nazirite Need a Sin Offering? I was able to get a copy of  Roy Gane’s thoughts on the subject with a littel help from John Hobbins. Roy Gane puts forward an interesting argument for the reason behind the Nazirite vow in his article “The Function of the Nazirite’s Concluding Offering,” in Perspectives on Purity and Purification in the Bible pp. 9-17.

Gane bases his understanding of the חטאת offering in Numbers 6:13-21 on analogy to the initiation of the priests in Lev 8. In both cases the sacrifice purifies the participant and makes them more holy to YHWH.

Before this sacrifice, he [the Nazirite] has already been holy from the beginning of his votive period. But after this, he is to shave his hair and put it on the fire under the well-being offering (Num 6:18), thereby relinquishing the token portion of himself that represents his separation to holy YHWH. The irrevocable and therefore permanent dedication of hair would consecrate the Nazirite, pars pro toto, to a higher level of holiness. This extraordinary votive gift of symbolic self-sacrifice to YHWH (cf. v. 2) is as close as the Israelite cult comes to human sacrifice. (p. 14)

This is a bold idea. Not only would it explain why the Nazirite has a purification offering right before giving up his/her vow, it would also answer the more fundamental question of what the heck a Nazirite vow was supposed to do. But, there’s a catch: it’s predicated on an understanding of hair rites that really doesn’t with the biblical understanding of these rites.

Saul Olyan has shown quite persuasively that hair rites (like the one found in Num 6:19) indicates a status change on the part of the participant;  see his article “What Do Shaving Rites Accomplish and What Do They Signal in Biblical Ritual Contexts?” JBL 124 (2005): 601-16. The understanding of the hair representing the individual pars pro toto is not found in biblical ritual texts; it’s been imported from other cultural contexts (ultimately going back to William Robertson Smith’s Lectures on the Religion of the Semites).

As such, Gane is able to explain one element at the cost of another. His understanding of the חטאת offering as the ultimate push of purification, based on analogy to the priestly consacration, is more in line with the offering’s use elsewhere than is Milgrom’s proposal. However, he then has to punt on what comes next by falling back on the idea of hair as self-offering.

In short, Gane’s theory both explicates and further problematizes the text for me.

I am currently working through Numbers 6:1-21 as I put the finishing touches on a paper I’m giving at the MAR SBL later this month. Most of my work on this passage to date has focused on the ritual proscriptions in vv.1-12, but  the actual ritual instructions (תורה) are contained in vv. 13-21.

In vv. 14-15  a list of offerings and materials are listed. While v.15 expalins required grain offerings, what through me for a loop was v. 14:

והקריב את קרבנו ליהוה כבש בן שנתו תמים אחד לעלה וכבשה אחת בת שנתה תמימה לחטאת ואיל אחד תמים לשלמים

6:14 As their offering to YHWH they shall present: one male first-year lamb without blemish as a burnt offering; one female, first-year lamb without blemish as a sin offering; one ram without blemish as a community offering…

A required burnt offering (עלה) and community offering (שלמים)  make sense in the context of this ritual. The burnt offering serves as a general catch-all in Priestly texts; and the community offering helps underly the sense of joy at the completion of the vow. But, why is there a sin offering (חטאת) ?

According to Jacob Milgrom, sin offerings are used to purge the sanctuary from sin. In Priestly circles, the sanctuary is like a sponge that sucks up all the accumulated sins of the people. The sin offering (and the riuals of Yom Kippur) are meant to cleanse the sanctuary of this patina of pollution before the presence of God can no longer abide in the sanctuary. That being the case, how does a Nazirite faithfully completing their vow cause the sanctuary to be defiled?

In a note on Numbers 6:14 in the JPS Numbers Commentary, Milgrom himself answers the question with an appeal to the rabbis:

It is Ramban (followed by Abravanel) who points to the most likely answer: his [the Nazirite’s] self-removal from the sacred to the profane realm requires sacrificial expiation. (48)

In essence, the return of a Nazirite to a quotidian state would send off impurities but without “sin” per se. This seems most akin to what David Wright refers to as “permisable impurites” such as menstration, ejaculation and childbirth — actions that create impurity but are not seen as sinful or bad.