ספר במדבר

Numbers 30,3. “when a man utters a vow, etc.;” In ‎a book called Shaarey Orah, (a kabbalistic volume by ‎Rabbi Joseph ben Avraham Giktalia, earliest printing 17th cent.) ‎the word ‎נדר‎ is broken down into ‎נון דר‎, the letter ‎נ‎ referring to ‎Israel’s faith in G’d, Who in turn supervises our fate in all His ‎Mercy at all times and wherever we are, not abandoning us for ‎even a second. When this letter is found in the Torah written in ‎an inverted form, as in Numbers 10,35 or in Job 38,1, it points to ‎G’d’s supervision of the various parts of His universe. While the ‎letter ‎נ‎ in that verse in Job is not inverted but rather is a final ‎letter in the middle of a word, our sages in Nedarim 8 concluded ‎that a vow applies even to the promise to perform a ‎commandment when it is the result of the person making this ‎vow having experienced proof of G’d’s supervising His universe. ‎On such an occasion the person who has had this religious ‎experience decides to abstain even from matters which-as far as ‎the Torah is concerned- he is within his rights to enjoy.‎‎[In order to understand this, it is necessary to ‎remember that the vows discussed in the Torah and the Talmud ‎involve use of the name of G’d, something severely punished ‎when used in vain, as per the third of the 10 Commandments. ‎Although the Talmud in Nedarim uses a verse from psalms ‎as the justification, our author feels that the remarks by the ‎author of the book ‎שערי אורה‎ reinforce what we have learned in ‎the Talmud. Ed.]‎