J
ohn sat on the flat rock in front of the cave that had become his home, legs folded beneath him. His hair still wet from another of the frequent washings he gave it, dripped water on the stone around him. Grasping a handful of the red-brown strands, he combed vigorously, freeing it of persistent tangles. Nazirite! Bazirite! he exclaimed in silent frustration. As soon as it dried, he would oil it and once again, his waist-length hair would be the talk of all the women in Judea. But for now he hated it. He hated his lonely life. He hated this cave. He hated the rock on which he sat. Visions of what his eyes had seen haunted his thoughts. Intruding into his dreams, he now often awoke to find that he had soiled himself in the night. Why? What was happening to him? Why would God allow it? His whole existence seemed unnatural.
His parents were both dead. They had gone to their reward many years ago. His father would have liked for him to enter the priesthood, yet he had known, he said, that his son would become a Nazirite. He had taken the vow when he was twelve years old, when other Jewish boys were going to the Temple in Jerusalem; John had taken a vow to be separated to the Lord. He had never had wine, not so much as a cool, fresh grape. And he had never touched or been near a dead body. Much to the disgust of his parent’s friends, he had not even attended their funerals owing to his zeal for his vow. John had no one. No friends. He had spent most of his life in this wilderness and he was sick of it.
John was not a man who enjoyed people. He was a loner, a man whose judgment of society was usually scornful. He saw others as spending their lives in consumptive living, self-serving and secular. John had become a recluse. Once he became a young man he left his elderly parents and made his way into the wilderness, where he lived in caves and learned how to survive an inhospitable environment. At first, he enjoyed being alone. He held himself aloof from others probably because they considered him eccentric. He was eccentric. He abstained from just about everything. He was, after all, a Nazarite, dedicated and set apart to God from his birth.
John was not like most Nazirites. There were others who had taken the Nazirite vow, but they had done it only for a specific time. A time perhaps to deal with certain issues in their life considered damaging, a way to arrest destructive patterns and set one’s life straight again. Afterwards they would cut their hair and resume normal living.
Not John. His devotion to Yahweh was total, insofar as that is possible for a sinful man. His was the life of an ascetic. Although he had blinding desires he had never, like Sampson, another Nazirite whose sexual escapades were well known, allowed himself any sexual latitude. John felt himself set apart for holy service and therefore profoundly suppressed his sexuality. That is why his encounter at the river had upset him so deeply. It was a weakness in his character, he felt; a burden he did not understand. His was a life of isolation from the rest of the human race and a life of railing against it. He was not well liked but he was respected. His eccentricism attracted as many as it repelled. It was not difficult for him to draw a crowd with his dramatic preaching. “Repent! Or you shall all perish!” John liked to do that. It stirred up controversy. He liked to be controversial.
