Now, it has been argued that none of the passages which speak of any public activity on the part of the néb?’tm belong to the Elijah- and Elisha-narratives, but to the very valuable ancient ‘ Ahab- source’ (1 K 20, 22). The latter, it is pointed out, knows nothing of guilds of nébvim or of their being directed by Elijah or Elisha, as, conversely, the Elisha-narratives know nothing of a public activity on the part of their béné han-nébvim. The difference between the two sources must at once be acknowledged. But their accounts are not mutually exclusive, although their historical viewpoint is different, and the period involved in the Elisha-narratives is some- what later than the other. A very notable evidence of the continuance of the old view of the nébi’im is found in 2 K 9". The officers of Jehu roundly call Elisha’s messenger, who in v." is expressly reckoned among the béné han-néb?im, a ‘mad enthusiast’ (yp). This implies that there was expected of him, and certainly not of him alone but also of his comrades, an ecstatic condition, and even utterances due to a kind of possession ; which shows that, in spite of the milder character of the later néb7’im, there were still occa- sional outbursts of their old nature, as we make its acquaintance in 1 S 10° and 19".
7, A final trace of the old notion of the prophetic spirit as a mysterious agency which hurries a whole crowd along is found in the narrative of Nu 11’7 »*.. The latter belongs in all probability to the E source, and hence falls within the period with which we are dealing, namely, prior to the rise of written prophecy. A portion of the spirit of Jahweh, which rests upon Moses, suflices to throw 70 of the elders of Israel into a condition of rapture. Two who remained behind in the camp, Eldad and Medad, are seized even there by the spirit of Jahweh because they also are marked out as amongst those destined to share in the leadership of the people (ef. v.17). This endowment with the spirit for more secular ends is indeed foreign to the oldest point of view; but, on the other hand, the seizure of whole groups by the spirit of Jahweh finds its only analogy in the old nébi’im, so that we could not deal with this case except by way of appendix to our account of the latter.
3. Nazirites.—1. Amongst those who served as ex-
ress organs of genuine Jahwism we must, further,
include the Nazirites. The name (713) is gener-
ally explained to mean ‘the consecrated one.’ But EXTRA VOL.—42
it is questionable if the verbal forms to which appeal is made in favour of this sense are not de- rived from the substantive nd@zir, and this again from nézer, the [consecrated] head-ornament (fre- quently used of a diadem, but also of the unshorn hair of the head). In that case ndzt7 would denote originally one whose head is graced with unshorn hair—a view which is supported by the circum- stance that in Ly 25°"! the unpruned vine, which is still decked with its full quota of leaves, is like- wise called ndziv. All the same, we do not mean to deny that the notion of ‘consecrated’ one came, at an early period, to be connected with ndzir ; so especially in the collocation ‘a ndzir of God,’ Jg 13°: 7 161",
2. The few OT passages which inform us as to the Nazirate are all at one as to its being a condi- tion of consecration to God which shows itself in submitting to certain restrictions. Three of these are specified: the leaving of the hair of the head unshorn, abstinence from wine and intoxicating drink, and the avoiding of defilement by a corpse. It is questionable, however, whether these restric- tions were always in force at the same time, and especially is there doubt as to the relation between the obligation for life and the obligation for a fixed period. We must first, therefore, examine the various statements separately.
3. The only historical instance of a Nazirite is Samson. As to Samuel, who is also usually in- cluded among the Nazirites, all that is saidin 18 14 ig that his mother vowed before his birth to give him over to Jahweh for life, and that no razor was to come upon his head. But his not being shorn did not suffice to constitute him a Nazirite ; according to Ezk 44” this was no unusual practice with priests, and it may have meant no more in the case of Samuel ; at all events, he is never called a Nazirite.
The Nazirate of Samson is spoken of in Jg 13*™4 and, indirectly, in 16". According to ch. 13 he was, even before his birth, expressly marked out by the angel of Jahweh as ‘consecrated to God.’ At the same time his mother is bound over—evi- dently prior to, and during, pregnancy—to abstain from wine* and intoxicating drink, and from un- clean food; while no razor is to come upon the head of her child, who, from his mother’s womb down to the day of his death, is to be consecrated. to God. Now, it is surely very surprising that the obligation to abstain from wine and what is un- clean is imposed, not upon the son, for whom such abstinence would have been equally possible, but upon the mother. Everywhere else it is taken for granted that the Nazirite himself abstains from wine. Hence we are forced to the conclusion that the abstinence from wine enjoined upon the mother in vv.*7- 18 was afterwards + inserted by some one who could not conceive of a Nazirate without any such prohibition. Seeing that, in the story of Samson (ch. 14 f.; ef. esp. 141”: 27) the practice of the hero himself gave no countenance to such a theory, recourse was had to the expedient adopted in ch. 13.