Numbers 6:12

12 And they shall consecrate unto the LORD the days of their Nazariteship and shall bring a lamb of the first year for their guilt; but the days that were before shall be lost because their Nazariteship was defiled.

Numbers 6:12 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 6:12

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.

Numbers 6:12 In-Context

10 And on the eighth day they shall bring two turtledoves or two young pigeons to the priest to the door of the tabernacle of the testimony,
11 and the priest shall offer the one as the sin and the other as a burnt offering and reconcile the one that sinned upon the dead and shall sanctify their head that same day.
12 And they shall consecrate unto the LORD the days of their Nazariteship and shall bring a lamb of the first year for their guilt; but the days that were before shall be lost because their Nazariteship was defiled.
13 This is, therefore, the law of the Nazarite, in the day in which their Nazariteship is fulfilled: they shall be brought unto the door of the tabernacle of the testimony;
14 and they shall offer their offering unto the LORD, one he lamb of the first year without blemish for a burnt offering and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish as the sin and one ram without blemish for peace offerings,
The Jubilee Bible (from the Scriptures of the Reformation), edited by Russell M. Stendal, Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2010