3. Should a man take a vow. Jacob Milgrom proposes that the editorial decision to introduce this section on the laws of vows was dictated by the references to vows or votive offerings (nedarim) at the end of the preceding section (29:39) of laws about sacrifices.

vow . . . oath . . . binding pledge. The first term, neder, as Baruch Levine has shown, refers to a conditional promise made to God: if God will do such-and-such, the vow taker commits himself then to repay God by offering such-and-such. (Jephthah’s vow to sacrifice to God whoever or whatever comes out of his house when he returns victorious from battle is a striking, if outrageous, instance of a neder.) The second term, shevuʿah, is an oath binding from the moment it is pronounced. The distinction between these two and the third term, ʾisar, “binding pledge,” is not entirely clear, though Levine suggests that ʾisar is an oral pledge which is then set down in legally obligating written form.

4. should a woman. Though this section begins with a man who makes a vow or pledge, its real subject is the woman who takes upon herself this sort of obligation. The woman, clearly, has limited legal automony in this society. Before marriage, her vows may be annulled by her father; after marriage, by her husband.

in her youth. The abstract noun neʿureiha refers to the period when she is a naʿarah, a nubile young woman, from puberty until marriage.

6. restrain. That is, abrogate the vow she has made.

10. the vow of a widow or a divorced woman. This is the one category of woman not subject to the authority of a man that biblical law imagines, since it does not allow for the case of the spinster (presumably a great rarity in biblical society with its ubiquitous imperative to marry and procreate).

11. And if she vowed in her husband’s house. The legal autonomy, however, of the widow or the divorced woman is restricted to her present single state. Commitments she made while married are still validated or voided by the say-so of her deceased or former husband.

13. whatever issues from her lips. Throughout these laws, there is a sense that the pronounced word, what comes out of the mouth, is a palpable entity with legally binding force. Jephthah’s daughter’s words in Judges 11:36 perfectly illustrate this notion.

14. to afflict oneself. As in 29:7, this idiom refers in the first instance to fasting.

16. if he indeed annuls them after he has heard, he shall bear her guilt. Although the formulation is rather compressed, the clear sense is as follows: if the husband remains silent when he hears the woman’s vows, and only afterward annuls them, the vows are still binding, and should she now ignore the vow, it is he who must bear the consequences of the violated commitment, having led her to think that the vow was no longer binding.