6:6 “‘All the days that he separates himself to the Lord he must not contact 1 a dead body. 2 6:7 He must not defile himself even 3 for his father or his mother or his brother or his sister if they die, 4 because the separation 5 for 6 his God is on his head.
1 tn The Hebrew verb is simply “enter, go,” no doubt with the sense of go near.
2 tn The Hebrew has נֶפֶשׁ מֵת (nefesh met), literally a “dead person.” But since the word נֶפֶשׁ can also be used for animals, the restriction would be for any kind of corpse. Death was very much a part of the fallen world, and so for one so committed to the
3 tn The vav (ו) conjunction at the beginning of the clause specifies the cases of corpses that are to be avoided, no matter how painful it might be.
4 tn The construction uses the infinitive construct with the preposition and the suffixed subjective genitive – “in the dying of them” – to form the adverbial clause of time.
sn The Nazirite would defile himself, i.e., ruin his vow, by contacting their corpses. Jesus’ hard saying in Matt 8:22, “let the dead bury their own dead,” makes sense in the light of this passage – Jesus was calling for commitment to himself.
5 tn The word “separation” here is metonymy of adjunct – what is on his head is long hair that goes with the vow.
6 tn The genitive could perhaps be interpreted as possession, i.e., “the vow of his God,” but it seems more likely that an objective genitive would be more to the point.