Chapter 5 covers the separation from defilement (separation from those unclean). The unclean included the leper and the one defiled by physical secretion or by contact with physical death. This condition incapacitated one to serve the living God, and illustrates the necessity of judging and putting away sin as a barrier to divine fellowship and service.
Restitution had to be made when a person committed wrong in the camp. This restitution is covered in verses 5-10. Unconfessed sin cannot be condoned among God's people. The grace of God, which grants unlimited forgiveness, would be tragic if it did not discipline the believer. As believers, we must deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and live soberly and righteously before God in this present evil world.
Chapter 6 is a continuation of the laws begun in chapter 5. Verses 1-8 cover the vow of the Nazarite. This was a voluntary dedication of a person of himself to the Lord. It involved abstinence from wine, symbolic of the natural pleasures of life ( Psalm 104:15), and even of grapes in any form, representing earthly joys harmless in themselves, but which cannot give the believer the delight in the Lord which his heart craves. The Nazarite vow also involved long hair, which is, in New Testament teaching, considered to be a reproach to a man (1 Corinthians 11:14). His long hair was the outward badge that he was willing to bear rejection for the Lord. The vow also entailed rigid separation from ceremonial uncleanness contracted by contact with a dead body, even that of a close loved one. Although Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist were Nazarites, yet the type finds its complete fulfillment in our incarnate Lord, who, completely devoted to the Father, allowed no natural tie to distract Him from His heavenly mission. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.
Various sacrificial rituals were prescribed for the cleansing of the Nazarite from defilement. All of them point to the finished redemptive work of Christ. Defilement of a dedicated saint is cleansed only by confession and forgiveness (1 John 1:7-9).
