Judges 15 · a question people ask
Samson picked up a fresh jawbone of a donkey. Wasn't he a Nazirite?
Chapter 13 says the child "shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb" (13:5), and his mother says, "from the womb to the day of his death" (13:7). Here, "He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, put out his hand, took it, and struck a thousand men with it" (15:15). Numbers 6, the Nazirite law, says, "All the days that he separates himself to the LORD he shall not go near a dead body" (Numbers 6:6), and goes on, "He shall not make himself unclean for his father, or for his mother, for his brother, or for his sister, when they die" (Numbers 6:7). Judges 15 makes no comment on the jawbone either way, and Numbers 6:6-7 names no animal. Christians read it in two main ways.
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
The law speaks of the human dead
Those who hold this view note that Numbers 6 speaks of "a dead body" (Numbers 6:6) and gives as its examples a father, mother, brother or sister "when they die" (Numbers 6:7). They read the rule as about the human dead, and so don't see 15:15 as touching it. They note that the chapter itself raises no question about the jawbone.
Numbers 6:6-7 · Judges 15:15
Uneasy beside his calling
Those who hold this view note that the jawbone was "fresh" (15:15), from a donkey that had died, and that Samson "put out his hand, took it" (15:15). They set it beside the chapter before, where he took honey "out of the lion’s body" (14:9), and read both as Samson handling what came from the dead, in tension with being "a Nazirite to God from the womb" (13:5).
Judges 15:15 · Judges 14:8-9 · Judges 13:5
The verses
“for, behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son. No razor shall come on his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb. He shall begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.””
“but he said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink. Don’t eat any unclean thing, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’””
“He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, put out his hand, took it, and struck a thousand men with it.”
““‘All the days that he separates himself to the LORD he shall not go near a dead body. He shall not make himself unclean for his father, or for his mother, for his brother, or for his sister, when they die, because his separation to God is on his head.”