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of the temple service of that period, and so have brought the business to its tedious
conclusion in the elaborate manner above described, is just as credible as that Luther in
his old age should have performed a pilgrimage to Emsieden with peas in his shoes, and
that Calvin on his death bed should have vowed a gold-embroidered gown to the Holy
Mother of God" (Farrar, ref. to Hausruth).
But in view of the Apostle's avowed willingness to be made "all things to all men"
already expressed in the quotation from I Cor. 9:, we can see that for Christ's sake he
would have endured, with pity and with prayer, the tedious ceremonial attached to the
liberation of a Nazarite vow, could he thus disarm those who misunderstood and attacked
his testimony of the grace of God to the Gentiles. We must remember, moreover, that the
Temple still stood at Jerusalem, that Israel, as Israel, were still a people before God, that,
until the apostle reached Rome, the hope of Israel was not deferred, and that while the
law as a means of salvation had been set aside by the sacrifice of Christ, yet the Jew,
during the period of the Acts did not cease to be a Jew by becoming a Christian. He still
worshipped the God of his fathers, and continued to do so until the dispensation changed.
Paul had never taught the Jew to "forsake Moses" in the sense that his adversaries
alleged; neither had he said that they ought not to circumcise their children, but much of
his teaching could easily be so misrepresented as to convince the zealot of the law that he
was a most dangerous heretic.
"What is it therefore? The multitude must needs come together, for they will hear that
thou art come. Do therefore this that we say to thee: We have four men which have a
vow on them; them take and purify thyself with them, and be at charges with them, that
they may shave their heads; and all may know that those things, whereof they were
informed concerning thee, are nothing; but that thou thyself walkest orderly, and keepest
the law" (Acts 21: 22-24).
Let us acquaint ourselves with the meaning of this proposition. The word agnizo,
"purify thyself with them", is the word used in the LXX for nazar in Numb. 6: 3. We
have already seen that Paul had "polled his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow"
(Acts 18: 18), but he still needed to complete that vow, for the word keiramenos, "to
poll the head", is not the same as xuresontai "shave the head" of Acts 21: 24. The
former word, used in Acts 18: 18, is never used by the LXX of the final Nazarite
shaving of the head at the expiration of a vow. The fact that a vow had been taken in
Cenchrea which demanded fulfillment at Jerusalem, seemed to the leaders at Jerusalem a
heaven-sent opportunity which they immediately seized. Let the whole thing be done as
publicly as possible, and let Paul undertake the cost attaching to the ceremonial
purification of these four men, as others had done before him; "be at charges with them".
It was the custom for a wealthy Jew to assist his poorer brethren in this way. Lewin says:
"There was not a more charitable act in the estimate of the Jews, or one more calculated
to acquire popularity, than to assist the poor Nazarite by supplying the necessary funds."
Josephus records the return of Agrippa from Rome, and how he "offered all the sacrifices
that belonged to him, and omitted nothing which the law required; on which account he
ordered that many of the Nazarites should have their heads shorn" (Ant. 19: 6, 1).