Numbers 6:1-21 introduces a concept that’s generally overlooked in Judeo-Christian history, the Nazirite or “consecrated” or “separate” person, either male or female, who took a special vow and ascetic life, as Everett Fox explains. While he notes that the vow can be for a definite period, that’s not what we see with some of the more famous Nazirites in Scripture.
Samson’s mother, for instance, desperate to conceive, makes a promise, as does Samuel’s mother later. In “Tests of Weakness: Samson and Delilah” (Congregation: Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible), Phillip Lopate writes: “Before Samson is even born, he is in God’s debt. His body itself doesn’t quite belong to him — it’s a sacred weapon for God to inhabit with His spirit when He so desires. Moreover, without any choice in the matter, Samson is pledged to be a Nazirite: one who is consecrated, abstinent, separate from others, pure. No wonder Samson acts ‘bad’: he is trying to make space for his own life inside the one already owed to his parents and God.” His hair, apparently, is his last connection to the requirements that include celibacy and avoiding wine and corpses.
There are mentions of many more, though they go unnamed.
In the New Testament, we also have John the Baptist (or as I prefer, the alternative translation as John the Immerser) and possibly even Jesus the Nazirite, rather than Nazarene, as well as his brother James to consider. On top of it all, I now wonder about the Apostle Paul and his implicit intensely private, personal struggles. Well, there’s none of the sexuality and prowess we have with Samson.
There’s also scholarship contending that Samson draws heavily on the mythological figure Hercules. Oy vey, I’d say.
As Light Is Sown 