We are beginning three lines from the bottom. The Gemara says that in the previous Mishnah we learned about the concept of a lifelong nazir: a person accepts nazirut upon himself for his entire life. Where do we find this concept? Not only that, but we also learned something significant about a lifelong nazir: if his hair becomes too heavy, he is permitted to cut it from time to time. Where do we find that?
The Gemara says that we have a baraita. Rabbi Meir says that Avshalom, the son of King David, was a lifelong nazir. He was a lifelong nazir for forty years. We will see what those forty years have to do with anything. Avshalom told the king, “I am going to go and fulfill my vows”—the vow that he wanted to fulfill in Hebron. Now let us examine the passages in Tosafot. Which vow was this referring to?
We will also see that Avshalom would cut his hair from time to time. It must be that he was a nazir, and that his hair became heavy periodically; therefore, he would cut it. This is how we know that the vow he was fulfilling involved nazirut. One should not say that this is stated explicitly except in the passage concerning nazirut. Rather, the ordinary meaning of the term nazir is a nazir, and the fact that Avshalom cut his hair at intervals demonstrates that this was a case of nazirut.
The Gemara now asks: According to Rabbi Meir, he was permitted to cut his hair when it became heavy once a year—once every twelve months. How do we know that? The Gemara is going to make several verbal analogies based on the verse concerning Avshalom. The language of the verse is, “And it was after days had passed.” It says that he would go and cut his hair: “And when he shaved his head, it was at the end of days, from time to time.”
We do not know how long “days” means. The verse simply says “days.” Therefore, the Gemara makes a verbal analogy from another place where the word “days” appears, and there we know that it means a year. This is how we know that Avshalom would cut his hair from year to year.
What is the source? The Gemara connects the word “days” in the verse about Avshalom with the word “days” in the laws of houses in a walled city. Let us discuss that case. A person purchases a house in a walled city—let us say, a house in Jerusalem. The seller has one year in which to redeem the house and buy it back. After one year, the sale becomes final.
The verse concerning houses in a walled city says, “And if a person sells a house in a walled city, its redemption shall be until the completion of the year of its sale.” Elsewhere it says, “Its redemption shall be for days.” What do we learn from this? Just as the law of a house in a walled city involves twelve months and uses the word “days,” so too, in the case of Avshalom, the word “days” means twelve months. Thus, Avshalom was able to cut his hair once a year.
The Gemara then says that Rabbi Nehorai offers a different opinion. Avshalom would cut his hair once every thirty days, when his hair became heavy. How does he know that?
Rabbi Yosef says that he could cut his hair from one Friday afternoon to the next—from one Friday to the next. In other words, he was permitted to cut his hair every week, because we find that the sons of kings cut their hair every Friday. A prince, the son of a king, takes a haircut every Friday, and therefore Avshalom did the same.
We now begin analyzing Rabbi Meir’s opinion. Rabbi Meir was the first authority we mentioned, and he said that Avshalom cut his hair once a year. From where did he learn this? He learned it from the laws of houses in a walled city.
Rabbi Meir has a very interesting position concerning the law of houses in a walled city. Everyone agrees that the seller has one year in which to redeem the house, because the Torah says “a year.” Rabbi Meir, however, learns from the word “days” in the verse that the seller cannot begin the redemption process until two days have passed. The singular “day” would mean one day, while the plural “days” means two days. We know that the seller has more than two days in which to redeem the house, but from the fact that the verse says “days,” Rabbi Meir learns that he cannot begin the redemption until two days have passed.
Technically, then, the period extends from the second day until the end of the year. On the day the house is sold, the seller cannot immediately return and say that there was no sale; he must wait two days. This is what Rabbi Meir learns from the word “days” in the verse concerning the year of the sale.
The Gemara asks: If Rabbi Meir learns that “days” means two days, perhaps in the case of Avshalom, when the verse says “days,” it means that he could cut his hair every two days. That does not make sense, however, because the entire purpose of cutting his hair was that it had become heavy. Hair does not become heavy after only two days.
Therefore, the Gemara says that we cannot apply the derivation of “days” meaning two days to the case of Avshalom. Tosafot asks at the top of the page: How could one suggest that Avshalom cut his hair every two days? After two days, his hair would not have become heavy.
The answer is that Rabbi Meir knows that “days” can mean two days, but in the case of Avshalom, the word is referring to the phrase at the end of the verse. Therefore, it must mean a year. The Gemara now examines other places in the Torah where the word “days” appears and where it does not mean a year.
For example, the verse says, “And it was at the end of two years of days.” This refers to two years, and it uses the word “days.” Perhaps, then, Avshalom could cut his hair only once every two years. The Gemara answers that we make the verbal analogy from “days” where the accompanying word “years” is not stated to “days” where “years” is not stated. We do not make the analogy from a verse that contains both “days” and “years.” Since the verse says, “At the end of two years of days,” it cannot be used. When making a verbal analogy, we want the two verses to be as similar as possible.
The Gemara then says: Perhaps Avshalom could cut his hair every thirty days. There is another verse that uses the word “days” and refers to a month: “Until a month of days.” The Gemara gives the same answer. That verse contains the word “month,” and we would rather make an analogy between two appearances of the word “days” without any additional word such as “month.” Therefore, we cannot use that verse either, because it says “a month of days.”
The Gemara then suggests another verse. One of the judges made a vow after a war. He said that if he won the war, the first thing to emerge from his house would be offered as a sacrifice to God. His daughter came out of the house.
She was placed in a remote area and became consecrated to God. She was removed from society, and according to some opinions, she eventually died there. She had to be consecrated as a sacrifice. Her friends would visit her. The verse says that they would go to visit her four times a year. The full verse says that they would go to mourn with her and grieve with her.
If they visited her four times a year, perhaps that means every three months. Thus, when the verse says “from days to days,” perhaps it means every three months. Maybe Avshalom was able to cut his hair every three months.
The Gemara rejects this derivation because the wording is not identical. One verse says “days,” while the other says “from days to days.” We need “days” corresponding to “days,” not “days” corresponding to “from days.”
The Gemara asks: What difference does that make? The teaching of Rabbi Yishmael states that when one word appears in one verse and a similar word appears in another, the verbal analogy may still be made. For example, one verse says “and he will return,” while another says “and he will come,” and the derivation treats them as expressing the same concept. This shows that the words do not always have to be absolutely identical.
The Gemara answers that when there is no alternative, there is no problem using words that are not one hundred percent identical. But here, in the case of the houses in a walled city, we have the exact word “days” in both places. Since a more precise verbal analogy is available, why would we choose the less precise one?
The Gemara offers one more reason that we cannot derive a three-month period from the verse concerning the judge’s daughter. We assumed that her friends visited her at equal intervals—every three months. But who says that the visits were evenly spaced?
The verse says only that they visited her four times a year. Perhaps they visited her after four months, then two months later, then after another four months, and then two months later. In other words, the visits may have been arranged as four months followed by two months, rather than at equal quarterly intervals.
Once we recognize that the visits may not have occurred at equal intervals, it would not make sense to learn from this verse that Avshalom cut his hair once every three months. In the case of a nazir, we establish a consistent cutoff at which he may cut his hair. We would not say that he could cut his hair once after four months and the next time after two months. Therefore, we do not derive Avshalom’s practice from this verse. It says only that the friends visited her four times a year; it does not say that they visited her quarterly.
We now return to the next opinion: Rabbi Nehorai says that Avshalom could cut his hair every thirty days. How does he know this? The Gemara says that the source is the law of the priests. We know that a priest cuts his hair every month. What is the logic? His hair becomes heavy after a month. The same is true in the case of Avshalom: his hair would become heavy after thirty days.
The word used for this is “heaviness.” Just as a priest cuts his hair every thirty days because his hair has become sufficiently heavy that he is instructed to cut it, so too, Avshalom could cut his hair every thirty days.
There is a problem, however. This is a strange derivation. We are deriving the law of Avshalom from the priests: just as a priest cuts his hair every thirty days, so too Avshalom. But how do we know that a priest cuts his hair every thirty days? We actually learn that from the ordinary nazir. If so, why not learn the law of a lifelong nazir directly from an ordinary nazir?
This is the question Tosafot asks: Why is the matter of heaviness stated specifically concerning the priests? One might answer that the priests themselves learn from the nazir through the principle of “hair” and “hair,” since we know that an ordinary nazir has a thirty-day period. If so, the law of a lifelong nazir should also be learned from an ordinary nazir, and the period should be thirty days.
The Gemara answers that it is not logical to learn a permanent sanctity from a temporary sanctity. A lifelong nazir has a permanent status, whereas an ordinary nazir has a temporary status. It is more appropriate to learn the law of a lifelong nazir from a priest, whose sanctity is also permanent. A priest remains a priest permanently and cannot cease being a priest. Therefore, although the priests themselves are learned from the ordinary nazir, once that comparison has been established, it is more analogous to learn the law of a lifelong nazir from a priest. Just as the priest has a thirty-day point at which he cuts his hair, so too, a lifelong nazir has that same point.
The Gemara then continues with Rabbi Yosef’s opinion: Avshalom could cut his hair once a week, every Friday, if his hair had become heavy. The reason is that the sons of kings cut their hair from one Friday to the next.
The Gemara asks: What is the difference between Avshalom and his brothers? Avshalom was a prince, the son of a king, and his brothers were also sons of a king. If his brothers cut their hair once a week and Avshalom was a lifelong nazir who also cut his hair once a week, did his nazirut not change anything? Was the law for him exactly the same as the law for his brothers, who were not nazirs? There should be some difference, since he was a nazir.
The Gemara answers that there is a difference when a festival falls in the middle of the week. For example, if a festival falls on a Wednesday, the brothers would cut their hair before the festival. They were princes, and they could cut their hair before the festival as well as on Friday. Avshalom, however, could cut his hair only every Friday. Thus, although both he and his brothers generally cut their hair once a week, there was a difference: when a festival fell during the week, the brothers could cut their hair early, whereas Avshalom, because he was a nazir, could cut his hair only at the regular time on Friday. This created a distinction between his nazirut and the law applying to the other princes.
At the beginning of the discussion, the Gemara mentioned that this occurred after forty years, when Avshalom said that he was going to fulfill his vow of nazirut. We now want to know: forty years from what point? What is the starting point for this calculation?
It could not mean forty years from the time David became king, because David was king for only forty years. We know that after the story involving Avshalom, David remained king for another five years. Therefore, this did not occur at the very end of David’s entire reign. It must have been forty years from an earlier point.
The Gemara asks: From which point? It answers that it was forty years from the time the Jewish people asked for a king. In the days of Shmuel HaNavi, the Jewish people asked for a king. Shmuel had already been ruling the Jewish people for approximately ten years. He was, in effect, the unofficial king of Israel. Then the people asked for a king, and Shaul HaMelech was appointed. After that came David.
The point is that the forty years were counted from the time the Jewish people asked for a king in Israel, which was the tenth year of Shmuel’s leadership. Forty years from that time, Avshalom went to fulfill his vow and bring his offerings, or whatever it was that he was fulfilling. That is the conclusion of the Gemara.
This was also the episode involving Avshalom’s rebellion against his father. He rebelled and attempted to dethrone his father, and he even tried to have his father killed. That is the context of the story. It took place forty years after the Jewish people asked for a king.
We now come to the next Mishnah, which presents a basic rule: an ordinary nazirut is thirty days. A person accepts nazirut upon himself for thirty days. Of course, there is a lifelong nazir, and there is also the special category of a nazir like Samson, but ordinary nazirut is thirty days.
The question is: How do we know that? We take it for granted, but the Gemara presents a fundamental dispute between Rav Peda and Rav Matna. How do we know that the period of nazirut is thirty days?
Rav Matna says that the source is the verse concerning the nazir, which says, “He shall be holy.” The numerical value of the word “holy” is thirty. The commentators explain that the verse could have stated that he would be holy without using this particular word. Therefore, the fact that the word appears is intended to teach us the duration of the nazirut through a numerical interpretation.
Rav Peda offers a different explanation. He says that the source is the number of times the Torah uses the words nazir, his nazirut, and related forms. If one counts all the occurrences, one finds twenty-nine such references.
Rav Peda lists them: “to vow a vow of a nazir, to abstain, his nazirut, the vow of his nazirut, to abstain, his nazirut, his nazirut, and his nazirut.” He goes through twenty-nine occurrences in the Torah involving the words nazir, his nazirut, and similar terms. From this, Rav Peda derives that ordinary nazirut lasts only twenty-nine days. It is thirty minus one.
The Gemara then asks: Why do you count all twenty-nine occurrences? Some of them have already been used for other derivations. Once an occurrence has been used for a separate interpretation, it cannot be counted again. The Gemara gives two examples rather than going through all the occurrences that are used for other derivations.
One example is the verse that says, “From wine and intoxicating drink he shall abstain,” as we learned on the previous page. What do we derive from that? When a nazir accepts nazirut upon himself, not only is ordinary wine prohibited, but even wine associated with a mitzvah is prohibited.
For example, suppose a person made an oath that he would drink wine. That would be wine connected to a mitzvah, and nevertheless, the wine would still be prohibited for him to drink as a nazir. Thus, that occurrence of the word has already been used for a derivation.
A second derivation teaches that one period of nazirut can overlap with another period of nazirut. A person may accept upon himself sixty days of nazirut. One might think that this is simply one large period of nazirut, but the law is that once the first thirty days have passed, he must begin again. This is derived from the wording of the verse, which allows a person to accept two periods of nazirut upon himself.
Rav Matna is therefore saying that he cannot simply rely on the count. He has already shown that at least two occurrences are used for other derivations. How, then, did Rav Peda arrive at twenty-nine? Rav Peda responds that he did not mean that all twenty-nine occurrences are available to be counted without exception. Some are used for derivations, but others remain available for the count. As long as some of the occurrences remain available for counting, the remaining occurrences can be counted. If all twenty-nine had already been used for other derivations, Rav Matna’s objection would be valid; but since some remain available, the count can still be made.
The Gemara now returns to the Mishnah: “Ordinary nazirut is thirty days.” According to Rav Matna, this is understandable. He holds that nazirut lasts thirty days, and that is exactly what the Mishnah says.
According to Rav Peda, however, there is a difficulty. Rav Peda says that nazirut lasts twenty-nine days, based on the twenty-nine occurrences in the Torah. The Mishnah should therefore say that on the thirtieth day he goes to the Temple, cuts his hair, and brings his offerings.
Rav Peda answers that when the Mishnah says, “Ordinary nazirut is thirty days,” it means that the thirty days include the day on which he performs the procedure of cutting his hair and bringing his offerings. According to Rav Peda, the period itself is twenty-nine days, but the thirtieth day is the day of the offerings and the haircut.
We therefore have a fundamental dispute: According to Rav Peda, nazirut lasts twenty-nine days. According to Rav Matna, it lasts thirty days.
There is another dispute between Rav Peda and Rav Matna concerning whether a portion of a day is considered equivalent to the entire day. According to Rav Matna, the offerings are brought on the thirtieth day, and that thirtieth day is also counted as one of the days of nazirut. The thirtieth day serves both purposes: it is the thirtieth day of the nazirut and the day on which the offerings are brought.
Rav Peda, however, does not accept the principle that part of a day is equivalent to the entire day. He requires twenty-nine complete days. On the thirtieth day, the nazir brings the offerings, but that day is not part of the count of the nazirut. The practical difference is whether we describe the situation as thirty days of nazirut or as twenty-nine days followed by the procedure on the thirtieth day.
The Gemara now raises a question against these opinions. We learned: If a person says, “I will be a nazir,” he cuts his hair on the thirty-first day. Whom does this sound like? It sounds like Rav Matna. If nazirut lasts thirty days, then the thirty days are completed, and on the thirty-first day he begins the process of cutting his hair and bringing his offerings.
But perhaps the Mishnah supports Rav Peda as well. The question is: Where did we get thirty-one? The Gemara quoted only the first part of the Mishnah and failed to quote its conclusion. The end of the Mishnah says that if he performed the procedure on the thirtieth day, he has fulfilled his obligation. Clearly, then, the thirtieth day is also valid.
What should we do with this Mishnah? One part of it appears to support Rav Matna, while another part appears to support Rav Peda. Rav Peda can say that the first part of the Mishnah refers to a person who explicitly said, “I will be a nazir for thirty complete days.” Everyone agrees that in such a case, he cannot cut his hair or bring his offerings until the thirty-first day.
The Mishnah is teaching that when a person simply accepts ordinary nazirut, the rabbis recognized that people generally understand “thirty” as a complete number. Twenty-nine is not a round number, and one might assume that the person intended a complete period of thirty days. Therefore, the rabbis required him to wait until the thirty-first day.
That is the initial explanation. If a person explicitly says “thirty complete days,” there is no question: he must wait until the thirty-first day. But when he merely says that he will be a nazir, the rabbis require him to be stringent and bring the offerings on the thirty-first day, because he probably intended a complete number in his mind. Nevertheless, if he brought the offerings on the thirtieth day, he has fulfilled his obligation.
Thus, Rav Peda has no difficulty with this Mishnah. According to him, the nazirut itself has already ended after twenty-nine days. The thirtieth day is valid for bringing the offerings. The first part of the Mishnah, which requires the thirty-first day, reflects the concern that when a person says “nazir,” he may have intended thirty complete days. The rabbis therefore imposed an additional day, but this does not disprove Rav Peda’s position.
Tosafot explains that the requirement to wait until the thirty-first day is a rabbinic safeguard because of a person who might say “thirty complete days.” As the explanation of the Rosh clarifies, the rabbis required every person to wait until the thirty-first day for that reason.
The Gemara then asks another question. If, according to Rav Matna, the nazirut itself lasts thirty days, why does the second part of the Mishnah say that the offerings may be brought on the thirtieth day? According to Rav Matna, one should have to wait until the thirty-first day, because the nazirut lasts thirty days and the offerings should be brought only afterward.
Rav Matna answers that he accepts the principle that part of a day is equivalent to the entire day. Therefore, the thirtieth day serves two purposes: it completes the thirty days of nazirut, and it is also the day on which the nazir brings his offerings and performs the haircut. Rav Peda does not accept this principle. According to Rav Peda, one needs twenty-nine complete days; the thirtieth day is the day on which the procedure may be performed.
Accordingly, the Mishnah can be understood according to Rav Peda: legally, the nazirut ends after twenty-nine days, and the procedure may be performed on the thirtieth day. Because of the concern that a person may have intended thirty complete days, the Mishnah also refers to the thirty-first day. However, if the procedure was performed on the thirtieth day, he has fulfilled his obligation.
That concludes the discussion. May God bless the entire world. Amen.