According to this verse, the husband should make his decision immediately, as soon as he learns about the vow. If he remains silent, the vows are still binding. If his wife then ignores her vow, it is the husband who bears the consequences of the violated commitment (so Alter, page 840).

But if he makes them null and void after he has heard of them is literally “And if to make void he makes them void after he has heard [them].” The Hebrew text uses the same emphatic expression for the verb meaning “make void” as in verse 12 (see the comments there). After he has heard of them renders a different temporal expression in Hebrew than the one used in verse 12. The expression here seems to indicate that a longer period of time is involved (so Ashley, page 582; Noordtzij, page 269), so New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh says “after [the day] he finds out,” TNIV has “some time after he hears about them,” and Good News Translation translates simply “later.”

Then he shall bear her iniquity means the husband must suffer the consequences for the failure of his wife to fulfil her vows. A possible model here is “then she will be guilty, but he will be held accountable for it” (similarly New International Readers Version).

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .