Numbers 6:4

Summary

Numbers 6:4 specifies that throughout the entire duration of the Nazirite vow, the person under this vow must not eat anything derived from the grapevine, explicitly including both seeds and skins.

Key words

• niz.R ("Nazirite vow", H5145G) — masculine singular construct with pronominal suffix o ("his"), forming "his vow of separation"; this noun gives the passage its technical designation for the vow itself.
• ye.'a.Seh ("it is made", H6213H) — niphal (passive) imperfect; the passive form indicates that the action of "making" or "producing" is done to the product of the vine, not by the vine itself.
• Ge.fen ("vine of", H1612) — masculine singular construct, tied to ha.Yayin ("the wine", H3196) to form "the vine of wine," specifying the source category being restricted.
• char.tza.Nim ("seeds", H2785) — masculine plural, marking one boundary of the prohibition.
• yo.Khel ("he will eat", H0398) — qal imperfect, negated by lo' ("not", H3808), forming the direct prohibition "he will not eat."

What the text says

The verse opens with kol yeMei nizRo ("all the days of his Nazirite vow"), a construct chain establishing the temporal scope of the prohibition before naming the prohibition itself. The core restriction follows: mikKol 'aSher ye'aSeh miGefen hayYayin — "from all that is made from the vine of wine." The niphal verb ye'aSeh frames grape-derived products as passively "made" or "produced," broadening the prohibition beyond wine itself to any processed product of the vine.

The phrase meCharTzanim ve'ad zag ("from seeds and unto skin") uses the preposition pair min...'ad ("from...unto") to establish a merism — two extremes (seeds and skins) that together represent the totality of the grape, including its smallest and most marginal parts. This construction signals that no part of the grape, however minor, escapes the prohibition. The clause ends with the negated verb lo' yoKhel ("he will not eat"), placed at the very end of the Hebrew sentence, which follows a common Biblical Hebrew pattern of placing the verb after the extended list of objects it governs.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders nizRo ("his Nazirite vow") as τῆς εὐχῆς αὐτοῦ ("his vow" or "prayer"), a more generic term than the specific Hebrew technical term for the Nazirite status. The Vulgate expands the phrase with Domino consecrantur ("consecrated to the Lord"), an addition not present in the Hebrew construct phrase itself. Where the Hebrew merism reads meCharTzanim ve'ad zag ("from seeds unto skin"), the Vulgate renders it ab uva passa usque ad acinum ("from a raisin/dried grape unto a grape-stone"), shifting the specific items named in the merism.