Numbers 6:6-8

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. 6:8 All the days of his separation he must be holy to the Lord.

[6:6]  ¹ tn The Hebrew verb is simply “enter, go,” no doubt with the sense of go near.

[6:6]  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 Lord, avoiding all such contamination would be a witness to the greatest separation, even in a family.

[6:7]  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.

[6:7]  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.

[6:7]  ⁵ tn The word “separation” here is metonymy of adjunct – what is on his head is long hair that goes with the vow.

[6:7]  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.