Shalom Reuven,

Your question is an excellent question that requires a good Chazarah of Masechtos Nedarim and Nazir! I have attempted to make some kind of a formula that includes a lot of the cases, although there is a large range of cases.

We are basically discussing a case in which the words that were spoken are not self-explanatory and now we need to somehow decide what the "correct" interpretation of his words is. I would divide these cases into two:

(1) A case in which the words can contain two actual meanings. For example, if there is a street called Broadway in New York City, but there is a street with the same name in Chicago, the word "Broadway" certainly refers to the street name, but we are not sure in what city. In this case, we would try to be "Bodek," to check somehow, what this person in particular means when he says this street name, based on parameters that have to do with this specific person.

(2) A case in which we have a dilemma about what these words could contain, regardless of what the person meant, since universally the words he used have no clear-cut meaning. For example, if a person made a Neder that he will not be "Neheneh" or some other abstract issue, he might have meant something specific in his mind, but it does not affect the semantic meaning of his words, so in this case we would use other rules like "Safek Nedarim l'Hachmir" or other rules that are more universal to all Hilchos Nedarim.

In the Mishnah in Nazir (8a), which you are referring to, we find a combination of the two. There are cases where the words have no real meaning whatsoever, so we need to use both methods. If someone says he will be "a Nazir houseful," we need to understand what a "houseful" means for this person, and once we have a semantic meaning for the sentence he said, we will now apply the usual rules of Nedarim regarding sentences that do not have a clear-cut universal meaning.

I hope this helps,

Aharon Steiner

Rabbi Steiner's answer is excellent, and I would like to add two small points:

1) The Me'iri asks, why do we say Bodkin Oso in the case of "houseful" and "boxful" and not in the previous cases? He answers that the metaphor used (house or box) has two facets: on one hand, a house or a box is only one (as opposed to hair or dust, which are numerous individual particles), which indicates one large Nezirus. On the other hand, both a house and a box fulfill the function of containing many disparate items (to which he hinted by saying a houseful or boxful), which would imply many cycles of Nezirus. Therefore, here we must determine which facet of the metaphor was intended. This is similar to Rabbi Steiner's explanation(a) above.

2) The Keren Orah asks the Me'iri's question and there is a slight intimation that the lack of clarity is not in the intent but rather in the language chosen. If this is so (and please check for yourself in the Me'iri, 8a, DH Gemara Hareini Nazir Melo ha'Bayis), it is perhaps similar to answer (b) above.

S. Brodie