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commentary entry

x.xxx.iii-p29.3

x.xxx.iii-p29.3134 words

11. Additional obligations under which Israel lay to God; the prophets and Nazarites, appointed by Him, to furnish religious instruction and examples of holy self-restraint.

of your young men—It was a specimen of Israel's highly favored state, that, of the class most addicted to pleasures, God chose those who by a solemn vow bound themselves to abstinence from all produce of the vine, and from all ceremonial and moral defilement. The Nazarite was not to shave (Nu 6:2, &c.). God left nothing undone to secure the purity of their worship and their faithfulness to it (La 4:7). The same comes from a Hebrew root, nazar, "to set apart." Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist were Nazarites.

Is it not even thus—Will any of you dare to deny it is so?