NOTES for Num 6:1-27
The law concerning the Nazirite may seem somewhat strange. What was the goal of the Nazirite, and why was the mentioned abstinence from all strong drink required? What is this - some temperance movement? Or a brotherhood of ascetics? But then why is the matter specifically abstinence from strong drink, and not from meat or from married life, since the overwhelming majority of ancient ascetic practices presupposed both? If there is asceticism here, it is of a very distinctive kind. In addition, the issue is not a permanent vow for one's whole life, but a temporary vow. It is not known whether making a Nazirite vow for life was possible. And still, Naziriteship was a kind of ascetic practice, though not in the usual sense of the word.
It is not accidental that abstinence from strong drink comes to the foreground here. Incidentally, in ancient Israel there was an entire movement whose members used neither wine nor other drinks connected with fermentation at all. These are the so-called Rechabites, literally "those living on the streets." On the streets because they made a point of rejecting not only wine and other strong drinks, but settled life in general: even in cities they demonstratively pitched their tents and lived in them, convinced that otherwise, in a city house, one could not remain a true Yahwist.
They rejected wine for the very same reason they rejected city dwellings: both were incompatible with the life of a nomad, and for the Rechabites only the nomad was a Yahwist. Wine, it goes without saying, is a great rarity for a nomad, since a nomadic way of life leaves no room to speak of one's own vineyards. Something roughly similar, though on a smaller scale, takes place in the case of Naziriteship: abstinence from wine and other strong drinks was meant first of all to remind a person of the wilderness, of the Exodus, of the path the people had to walk from Sinai to the promised land.
Here, of course, it was not enough merely to abstain from wine. Much had to be remembered, lived through anew; one had to return in thought to the origins, to the place where everything began, where the Torah was given, where God first revealed Himself to Moses. Such experiences could spiritually renew a person and make him gather himself inwardly, look anew at his relationship with God and at his life in general. Of course, there could be no guarantees here, but the possibility of such renewal was offered to everyone. The rest depended on the person himself.