Judges 13:14

13:14 She should not drink ¹  anything that the grapevine produces. She must not drink wine or beer, and she must not eat any food that will make her ritually unclean. ²  She should obey everything I commanded her to do.”

Numbers 6:2-3

6:2 “Speak to the Israelites, and tell them, ‘When either a man or a woman ³  takes a special vow, ⁴  to take a vow ⁵  as a Nazirite, ⁶  to separate ⁷  himself to the Lord, 6:3 he must separate ⁸  himself from wine and strong drink, he must drink neither vinegar ⁹  made from wine nor vinegar made from strong drink, nor may he drink any juice ¹⁰  of grapes, nor eat fresh grapes or raisins. ¹¹ 

Luke 1:15

1:15 for he will be great in the sight of ¹²  the Lord. He ¹³  must never drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. ¹⁴ 

[13:14]  ¹ tn Heb “eat.”

[13:14]  ² tn Heb “eat anything unclean.” Certain foods were regarded as ritually “unclean” (see Lev 11). Eating such food made one ritually “contaminated.”

[6:2]  ³ tn The formula is used here again: “a man or a woman – when he takes.” The vow is open to both men and women.

[6:2]  ⁴ tn The vow is considered special in view of the use of the verb יַפְלִא (yafli’), the Hiphil imperfect of the verb “to be wonderful, extraordinary.”

[6:2]  ⁵ tn The construction uses the infinitive construct followed by the cognate accusative: “to vow a vow.” This intensifies the idea that the vow is being taken carefully.

[6:2]  ⁶ tn The name of the vow is taken from the verb that follows; נָזַר (nazar) means “to consecrate oneself,” and so the Nazirite is a consecrated one. These are folks who would make a decision to take an oath for a time or for a lifetime to be committed to the Lord and show signs of separation from the world. Samuel was to be a Nazirite, as the fragment of the text from Qumran confirms – “he will be a נָזִיר (nazir) forever” (1 Sam 1:22).

[6:2]  ⁷ tn The form of the verb is an Hiphil infinitive construct, forming the wordplay and explanation for the name Nazirite. The Hiphil is here an internal causative, having the meaning of “consecrate oneself” or just “consecrate to the Lord.”

[6:3]  ⁵ tn The operative verb now will be the Hiphil of נָזַר (nazar); the consecration to the Lord meant separation from certain things in the world. The first will be wine and strong drink – barley beer (from Akkadian sikaru, a fermented beer). But the second word may be somewhat wider in its application than beer. The Nazirite, then, was to avoid all intoxicants as a sign of his commitment to the Lord. The restriction may have proved a hardship in the daily diet of the one taking the vow, but it spoke a protest to the corrupt religious and social world that used alcohol to excess.

[6:3]  ⁶ tn The “vinegar” (חֹמֶץ, homets) is some kind of drink preparation that has been allowed to go sour.

[6:3]  ⁷ tn This word occurs only here. It may come from the word “to water, to be moist,” and so refer to juice.

[6:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “dried” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV).

[1:15]  ⁷ tn Grk “before.”

[1:15]  ⁸ tn Grk “and he”; because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, the conjunction καί (kai) has not been translated here. Instead a new English sentence is begun in the translation.

[1:15]  ⁹ tn Grk “even from his mother’s womb.” While this idiom may be understood to refer to the point of birth (“even from his birth”), Luke 1:41 suggests that here it should be understood to refer to a time before birth.