John the Baptist

135:1.1John had no school from which to grad­u­ate at the age of four­teen, but his par­ents had se­lected this as the ap­pro­pri­ate year for him to take the for­mal Nazarite vow. Ac­cord­ingly, Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth took their son to En­gedi, down by the Dead Sea. This was the south­ern head­quar­ters of the Nazarite broth­er­hood, and there the lad was duly and solemnly in­ducted into this or­der for life. Af­ter these cer­e­monies and the mak­ing of the vows to ab­stain from all in­tox­i­cat­ing drinks, to let the hair grow, and to re­frain from touch­ing the dead, the fam­ily pro­ceeded to Je­ru­sa­lem, where, be­fore the tem­ple, John com­pleted the mak­ing of the of­fer­ings which were re­quired of those tak­ing Nazarite vows.

135:1.2John took the same life vows that had been ad­min­is­tered to his il­lus­tri­ous pre­de­ces­sors, Sam­son and the prophet Samuel. A life Nazarite was looked upon as a sanc­ti­fied and holy per­son­al­ity. The Jews re­garded a Nazarite with al­most the re­spect and ven­er­a­tion ac­corded the high priest, and this was not strange since Nazarites of life­long con­se­cra­tion were the only per­sons, ex­cept high priests, who were ever per­mit­ted to en­ter the holy of holies in the tem­ple.

135:1.3John re­turned home from Je­ru­sa­lem to tend his fa­ther’s sheep and grew up to be a strong man with a no­ble char­ac­ter.

135:1.4When six­teen years old, John, as a re­sult of read­ing about Eli­jah, be­came greatly im­pressed with the prophet of Mount Carmel and de­cided to adopt his style of dress. From that day on John al­ways wore a hairy gar­ment with a leather gir­dle. At six­teen he was more than six feet tall and al­most full grown. With his flow­ing hair and pe­cu­liar mode of dress he was in­deed a pic­turesque youth. And his par­ents ex­pected great things of this their only son, a child of prom­ise and a Nazarite for life.