Numbers 6:12

Summary

The verse describes the legal consequence for a Nazirite whose vow was interrupted by contact with impurity: he must begin the consecrated period again and bring a guilt offering, while the days observed before the defilement are declared void.

Key words

• hi.Zir ("he will be a Nazirite", H5144B) — hiphil sequential perfect; the causative stem indicates the person actively resumes/re-imposes the Nazirite status on himself, continuing the narrative sequence begun in the surrounding legal instructions.
• niz.R ("Nazirite vow", H5145G) — masculine singular construct, appearing twice (vv. 12b and 12d) with the pronominal suffix o ("his"), denoting the state or object of consecration itself, not merely the person.
• he.Vi' ("he will bring", H0935P) — hiphil sequential perfect, causative "bring/cause to come," paired with hi.Zir to form the two required actions: renewed consecration and offering.
• ta.Me' ("it has become unclean", H2930A) — qal perfect, a completed state, functioning in the ki ("for/that", H3588A) clause to state the cause of the nullification.
• yi.pe.Lu ("they will fall", H5307J) — qal imperfect of the verb "to fall," used idiomatically for days being forfeited or discounted, not literally falling.

What the text says

The verse is built as a sequence of two hiphil sequential perfects, hi.Zir ("he will be a Nazirite [again]") and he.Vi' ("he will bring"), both governed by the subject established earlier in the chapter. This grammatical chaining presents the resumption of the vow and the bringing of the offering as one continuous required action, not two separate optional steps. The object of consecration, yemei ("days of", H3117G) nizro ("his Nazirite vow", H5145G + suffix), is marked with the direct object marker 'et, showing that what is being re-consecrated to Yehovah (H3068G) is specifically the time period, not the person as such.

The clause introduced by ki ("for", H3588A) supplies the reason for the nullification described by yi.pe.Lu ("they will fall", H5307J): the days are said to "fall" because niz.R ("his Nazirite vow/consecration", H5145G) — repeated a second time with the same construct form as earlier — "became unclean" (ta.Me', qal perfect, H2930A). The repetition of niz.R in both halves of the verse (vv. 12b, 12d) ties the initial consecration and its defilement together lexically, using the same noun for both the object renewed and the object defiled.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the opening verb as a relative clause, "ᾗ ἡγιάσθη κυρίῳ" ("in which he was consecrated to the Lord"), rather than a finite future/sequential verb form as in the Hebrew hi.Zir. Where the Hebrew twice uses niz.R ("Nazirite vow/consecration"), the LXX uses "εὐχῆς" ("vow") in the first instance, and in the second adds "κεφαλὴ εὐχῆς αὐτοῦ" ("the head of his vow"), introducing "head" (κεφαλή), a term absent from the Hebrew. The Vulgate instead reads "sanctificatio ejus" ("his sanctification") for the second niz.R, differing from both the Hebrew noun and the LXX's "head of his vow." For yi.pe.Lu ("they will fall"), the Vulgate uses "irriti fiant" ("shall become void"), while the LXX uses "ἄλογοι ἔσονται" ("shall be without reckoning/uncounted"), both interpretive renderings of the Hebrew idiom of "falling" days.