The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
Judges 13:5BSB
For behold, you will conceive and give birth to a son. And no razor shall come over his head, because the boy will be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hand of the Philistines.”
Earlier text
"Speak to the Israelites and tell them that if a man or woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the LORD, he is to abstain from wine and strong drink. He must not drink vinegar made from wine or strong drink, and he must not drink any grape juice or eat fresh grapes or raisins. All the days of his separation, he is not to eat anything that comes from the grapevine, not even the seeds or skins. For the entire period of his vow of separation, no razor shall pass over his head. He must be holy until the time of his separation to the LORD is complete; he must let the hair of his head grow long. Throughout the days of his separation to the LORD, he must not go near a dead body. Even if his father or mother or brother or sister should die, he is not to defile himself, because the crown of consecration to his God is upon his head. Throughout the time of his separation, he is holy to the LORD.
The angel's announcement that Samson "will be a Nazirite to God from the womb" (נְזִיר אֱלֹהִים … מִן־הַבָּטֶן, nəzîr ʾĕlōhîm … min-habbāṭen) realizes the Nazirite legislation of Numbers 6:2-8 in a narrative instance — the razor prohibition and corpse-avoidance both stand behind Samson's life. It is an instance-to-institution bond, not a demonstrable verbal citation. The shared vocabulary's whole rarity rides on נָזִיר (H5139), the institution's own obligatory technical name: a narrator cannot describe a Nazirite without it, so the co-occurrence is compelled by subject matter rather than chosen for resonance. And the one clause where a quotation would live — the razor prohibition — uses different lexemes in the two texts: Numbers 6:5 reads תַּעַר (H8593), Judges 13:5 reads מוֹרָה (H4177). An author citing his source keeps the source's word. Samson's Nazirite status also differs dramatically from Numbers 6: it is lifelong rather than temporary, imposed by divine decree rather than voluntary vow, and begins prenatally. That movement from voluntary separation to divinely appointed consecration marks Samson as uniquely set apart for YHWH's service as Israel's deliverer, even as his later violations of the Nazirite code demonstrate the tragedy of squandered consecration.
Weight: Supporting / thematic. The link is real and load-bearing for the Nazirite trajectory's principal OT narrative case, and is never to be deleted; but it is not CRITICAL, because CRITICAL on an OT→OT pair asserts a demonstrable interpretive citation that the Hebrew here will not underwrite. The pair is recognized in the literature as an allusive, ironic organizing theme of the Samson story rather than as legal exegesis of Numbers 6; the sibling Samson-Nazirite parallel (Judges 13:5 → 1 Samuel 1:11) is catalogued only as non-exegetical type-scene material. No christological warrant runs through this OT→OT bond.