Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Numbers 6:12

And he shall consecrate unto the LORD the days of his separation, and shall bring a lamb of the first year for a trespass offering: but the days that were before shall be lost, because his separation was defiled.

12. he shall separate &c.] He shall separate anew the whole period of the vow upon which he had originally entered.

a guilt-offering ] This was the most expensive part of the ritual. Opinions differ as to the exact force attaching to it. But the distinctive feature of the offering in other cases seems to have been that it involved an act of reparation for wrong done (see on Num 5:6-8). In the present case it is probably reparation for the delay in the completion of the vow and therefore of the sacrifices which consummated it.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

The days of his separation; as many days as he had before separated or vowed unto God. Lost, i.e. not reckoned or imputed to him. Heb. full, to wit, to the ground, i.e. be void or of none effect.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

And he shall consecrate unto the Lord the days of his separation,…. He was to begin his account again, from the time of his shaving his head, and devote as many days to the service of the Lord as what he had vowed before:

and shall bring a lamb of the first year for a trespass offering; we see how much trouble and expense were brought by a single act of pollution, and that involuntary too; how much more need is there of an atoning sacrifice for the sins of men, even for all of them, and for which only the sacrifice of Christ is sufficient?

but the days that were before shall be lost; which were before the pollution, how near soever the time of Nazariteship being at an end was, whether his vow was for thirty days, or a hundred, or a whole year; be it what it will, and the pollution happened on the last of those days, all were lost; he was obliged to begin again, and go through the whole time he at first vowed; and this was the case if he drank the least quantity of wine, or shaved ever so little of the hair of his head, or was any ways polluted by the dead; and this severity, as it may seem, was used to make him cautious that he broke not his vow by any means:

because his separation was defiled; in the case instanced in, by the dead, but it was the same if he broke the law of Nazariteship in any of the other articles of it.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

12. Consecrate Separate. The term of his original vow must begin anew, and the previous days count for nothing. For the spiritual lesson, see Eze 33:13.

Trespass offering See Lev 5:6, note, and introductory note. This was the proper offering for an inadvertent sin. See Lev 5:15, note. He has become delinquent “for having prolonged the days of separation through his carelessness with regard to the defilement; that is to say, for having extended the time during which he led a separate, retired, and inactive life, and suspended his duties to his own family and the congregation, thus doing injury to them, and incurring a debt in relation to them through his neglect.” Knobel.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments