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The last mishnah of tractate Nazir deals with the question of whether Samuel, the biblical prophet, was a nazirite.
The case of Samuel is truly puzzling: was he or wasn’t he a nazirite? When Hana prays to God to give her a child, she promises that if she does have a male child, no “morah (razor) shall ever touch his head.” The obvious meaning seems to be that just as Samson’s mother was promised that he would have a child and that her boy was to become a nazirite and “no razor shall touch his head”, so too Samuel’s mother was promising that he would be a nazirite. This is the gist of Rabbi Nehorai’s argument. However, unlike Samson’s mother, Samuel’s mother does not promise the other two nazirite prohibitions, that her son will not become defiled through contact with the dead or eat/drink anything from the vine. Samuel is not subsequently referred to as a nazirite, nor does he seem to act as one.
The Tosafot Yom Tov suggests that the correct place for this Mishna would have been as an introductory statement at the beginning of the Massekhet, although Rabbeinu chose not to put it there since identifying Shmu’el as a nazir is a matter of disagreement.
We explore the differences between Shmuel and Shimshon.