“ ‘All the days of his vow of separation no razor shall come on his head, until the days are fulfilled in which he separates himself to Yahweh. He shall be holy. He shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow long.
A nazirite must let his hair grow during the period of his vow
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
כָּל־יְמֵי נֶדֶר נִזְרוֹ תַּעַר לֹא־יַעֲבֹר עַל־רֹאשׁוֹ עַד־מְלֹאת הַיָּמִם אֲשֶׁר־יַזִּיר לַיהוָה קָדֹשׁ יִהְיֶה גַּדֵּל פֶּרַע שְׂעַר רֹאשׁוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הוא שצונו שהנזיר יגדל שער, והוא אמרו יתברך גדל פרע שער ראשו. ולשון מכילתא קדוש יהיה גדל בקדושה גדל פרע מצות עשה ומנין בלא תעשה תלמוד לומר תער לא יעבור על ראשו. ושם נאמר הוא מה שנתתי בעשה, החופף באדמה והנותן סמנין, כלומר שהנזיר שם בראשו להשיר השער לא יהיה אז עובר על מצות לא תעשה כי הוא לא העביר כעין תער, ואמנם עבר על מצות עשה והוא גדל פרע וזה לא גדל ולאו הבא מכלל עשה עשה, והוא כמו שהוא שרש אצלנו. וכבר התבארו דיני מצוה זו במסכת נזיר. (נשא את ראש, הלכות נזירות פרק א'):
That is that He commanded us that a nazarite should grow his hair. And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "he shall let grow untrimmed, the hair of his head " (Numbers 6:5). And the language of the Mekhilta is, "'He shall be holy' - its growth is to be in holiness; 'and he shall let grow untrimmed' - is a positive commandment. And from where [do we know that it is also] a negative commandment? [Hence] we learn to say, 'no razor shall touch his head.'" And it is said there, "This is what I have given as a positive commandment [only] - one who scrubs [his scalp] with earth and one who places herbs" - meaning when a nazarite puts them on his head to remove the hair, he would then not be transgressing the negative commandment. For he did not remove it in the manner of a razor. He did however transgress the positive commandment, which is, "he shall let grow untrimmed" - and this one did not grow [it]. As a negative commandment derived from a positive commandment is a positive commandment - that is a principle with us. And the laws of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Nazir. (See Parashat Nasso; Mishneh Torah, Nazariteship 1.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a ritual instruction
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Nedarim 9b expanded it homiletically
- Numbers Rabbah 10:1 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.247-254 read it allegorically
Josephus
- Ant. 4.72 paraphrased it
- War 2.313 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Acts 18:18 affirmed it Paul cuts his hair at Cenchreae for he was under a vow; the identification as a formal Nazirite vow is debated among scholars
- Acts 21:23-26 affirmed it Paul joins and pays for four men completing a Nazirite vow with head-shaving in Jerusalem
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.