6 And Moses said to Aaron and to Eleazar and Ithamar, his sons, Do not let your hair be loose, and give no signs of grief; so that death may not overtake you, and his wrath come on all the people; but let there be weeping among your brothers and all the house of Israel for this burning of the Lord's fire.
That now you are turned back from the Lord? and, because you are false to him today, tomorrow his wrath will be let loose on all the people of Israel.
But the children of Israel did wrong about the cursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the family of Judah, took of the cursed thing, moving the Lord to wrath against the children of Israel.
Again the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and moving David against them, he said, Go, take the number of Israel and Judah.
Did not Achan, the son of Zerah, do wrong about the cursed thing, causing wrath to come on all the people of Israel? And not on him only came the punishment of death.
But the tents of the Levites are to be round the Tent of meeting, so that wrath may not come on the children of Israel: the Tent of meeting is to be in the care of the Levites.
Son of man, see, I am taking away the desire of your eyes by disease: but let there be no sorrow or weeping or drops running from your eyes. Let there be no sound of sorrow; make no weeping for your dead, put on your head-dress and your shoes on your feet, let not your lips be covered, and do not take the food of those in grief.
All the time he is separate he may not come near any dead body. He may not make himself unclean for his father or his mother, his sister or his brother, if death comes to them; because he is under an oath to keep himself separate for God.
And the Lord said to Moses, Say to the children of Israel, You are a stiff-necked people: if I come among you, even for a minute, I will send destruction on you; so take off all your ornaments, so that I may see what to do with you.
Let your hair be cut off, O Jerusalem, and let it go, and let a song of grief go up on the open hilltops; for the Lord is turned away from the generation of his wrath and has given them up.
So David made selection of the disease; and the time was the days of the grain-cutting, when the disease came among the people, causing the death of seventy thousand men from Dan as far as Beer-sheba. And when the hand of the angel was stretched out in the direction of Jerusalem, for its destruction, the Lord had regret for the evil, and said to the angel who was sending destruction on the people, It is enough; do no more. And the angel of the Lord was by the grain-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. And when David saw the angel who was causing the destruction of the people, he said to the Lord, Truly, the sin is mine; I have done wrong: but these are only sheep; what have they done? let your hand be against me and against my family.
Who said of his father, Who is he? and of his mother, I have not seen her; he kept himself separate from his brothers and had no knowledge of his children: for they have given ear to your word and kept your agreement.
But on the day after, all the children of Israel made an outcry against Moses and against Aaron, saying, You have put to death the Lord's people. Now when the people had come together against Moses and Aaron, looking in the direction of the Tent of meeting, they saw the cloud covering it, and the glory of the Lord came before their eyes. Then Moses and Aaron came to the front of the Tent of meeting. And the Lord said to Moses, Come out from among this people, so that I may send sudden destruction on them. And they went down on their faces. And Moses said to Aaron, Take your vessel and put in it fire from the altar, and sweet spices, and take it quickly into the meeting of the people, and make them free from sin: for wrath has gone out from the Lord, and the disease is starting. And at the words of Moses, Aaron took his vessel, and went running among the people; and even then the disease had made a start among them; and he put spices in his vessel to take away the sin of the people.
And he will make the woman come before the Lord with her hair loose, and will put the meal offering, the offering of a bitter spirit, in her hands; and the priest will take in his hand the bitter water causing the curse;
And the Lord said to Moses, Say to the priests, the sons of Aaron, Let no man make himself unclean for the dead among his people; But only for his near relations, for his mother or his father, his son or his daughter, and his brother; And for his sister, a virgin, for she is his near relation and has had no husband, he may make himself unclean. But let him, being a chief among his people, not make himself unclean in such a way as to put shame on himself. They are not to have their hair cut off for the dead, or the hair on their chins cut short, or make cuts in their flesh. Let them be holy to their God and not make the name of their God common; for the fire offerings of the Lord and the bread of their God are offered by them, and they are to be holy. They may not take as wife a loose or common woman, or one who has been put away by her husband: for the priest is holy to his God. And he is to be holy in your eyes, for by him the bread of your God is offered; he is to be holy in your eyes, for I the Lord, who make you holy, am holy. And if the daughter of a priest makes herself common and by her loose behaviour puts shame on her father, let her be burned with fire. And he who is the chief priest among his brothers, on whose head the holy oil has been put, who is marked out to put on the holy robes, may not let his hair go loose or have his clothing out of order as a sign of sorrow. He may not go near any dead body or make himself unclean for his father or his mother; He may not go out of the holy place or make the holy place of his God common; for the crown of the holy oil of his God is on him: I am the Lord. And let him take as his wife one who has not had relations with a man. A widow, or one whose husband has put her away, or a common woman of loose behaviour, may not be the wife of a priest; but let him take a virgin from among his people. And he may not make his seed unclean among his people, for I the Lord have made him holy.
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Commentary on Leviticus 10 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 10
Le 10:1-20. Nadab and Abihu Burnt.
1. the sons of Aaron, &c.—If this incident occurred at the solemn period of the consecrating and dedicating the altar, these young men assumed an office which had been committed to Moses; or if it were some time after, it was an encroachment on duties which devolved on their father alone as the high priest. But the offense was of a far more aggravated nature than such a mere informality would imply. It consisted not only in their venturing unauthorized to perform the incense service—the highest and most solemn of the priestly offices—not only in their engaging together in a work which was the duty only of one, but in their presuming to intrude into the holy of holies, to which access was denied to all but the high priest alone. In this respect, "they offered strange fire before the Lord"; they were guilty of a presumptuous and unwarranted intrusion into a sacred office which did not belong to them. But their offense was more aggravated still; for instead of taking the fire which was put into their censers from the brazen altar, they seem to have been content with common fire and thus perpetrated an act which, considering the descent of the miraculous fire they had so recently witnessed and the solemn obligation under which they were laid to make use of that which was specially appropriated to the service of the altars, they betrayed a carelessness, an irreverence, a want of faith, most surprising and lamentable. A precedent of such evil tendency was dangerous, and it was imperatively necessary, therefore, as well for the priests themselves as for the sacred things, that a marked expression of the divine displeasure should be given for doing that which "God commanded them not."
2. there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them—rather, "killed them"; for it appears (Le 10:5) that neither their bodies nor their robes were consumed. The expression, "from the Lord," indicates that this fire issued from the most holy place. In the destruction of these two young priests by the infliction of an awful judgment, the wisdom of God observed the same course, in repressing the first instance of contempt for sacred things, as he did at the commencement of the Christian dispensation (Ac 5:1-11).
3. Moses said … This is it that the Lord spoke … I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me—"They that come nigh me," points, in this passage, directly to the priests; and they had received repeated and solemn warnings as to the cautious and reverent manner of their approach into the divine presence (Ex 19:22; 29:44; Le 8:35).
Aaron held his peace—The loss of two sons in so sudden and awful a manner was a calamity overwhelming to parental feelings. But the pious priest indulged in no vehement ebullition of complaint and gave vent to no murmur of discontent, but submitted in silent resignation to what he saw was "the righteous judgment of God" [Ro 2:5].
4, 5. Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan—The removal of the two corpses for burial without the camp would spread the painful intelligence throughout all the congregation; and the remembrance of so appalling a judgment could not fail to strike a salutary fear into the hearts both of priests and people. The interment of the priestly vestments along with Nadab and Abihu, was a sign of their being polluted by the sin of their irreligious wearers.
6. Uncover not your heads—They who were ordered to carry out the two bodies, being engaged in their sacred duties, were forbidden to remove their turbans, in conformity with the usual customs of mourning; and the prohibition "neither rend your garments," was, in all probability, confined also to their official costume. For at other times the priests wore the ordinary dress of their countrymen and, in common with their families, might indulge their private feelings by the usual signs or expressions of grief.
8-11. Do not drink wine nor strong drink—This prohibition, and the accompanying admonitions, following immediately the occurrence of so fatal a catastrophe [Le 10:1, 2], has given rise to an opinion entertained by many, that the two disobedient priests were under the influence of intoxication when they committed the offense which was expiated only by their lives. But such an idea, though the presumption is in its favor, is nothing more than conjecture.
12-15. Moses spake unto Aaron, &c.—This was a timely and considerate rehearsal of the laws that regulated the conduct of the priests. Amid the distractions of their family bereavement, Aaron and his surviving sons might have forgotten or overlooked some of their duties.
16-20. Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin offering, and, behold, it was burnt—In a sacrifice presented, as that had been, on behalf of the people, it was the duty of the priests, as typically representing them and bearing their sins, to have eaten the flesh after the blood had been sprinkled upon the altar. Instead of using it, however, for a sacred feast, they had burnt it without the camp; and Moses, who discovered this departure from the prescribed ritual, probably from a dread of some further chastisements, challenged, not Aaron, whose heart was too much lacerated to bear a new cause of distress but his two surviving sons in the priesthood for the great irregularity. Their father, however, who heard the charge and by whose directions the error had been committed, hastened to give the explanation. The import of his apology is, that all the duty pertaining to the presentation of the offering had been duly and sacredly performed, except the festive part of the observance, which privately devolved upon the priest and his family. And that this had been omitted, either because his heart was too dejected to join in the celebration of a cheerful feast, or that he supposed, from the appalling judgments that had been inflicted, that all the services of that occasion were so vitiated that he did not complete them. Aaron was decidedly in the wrong. By the express command of God, the sin offering was to be eaten in the holy place; and no fanciful view of expediency or propriety ought to have led him to dispense at discretion with a positive statute. The law of God was clear and, where that is the case, it is sin to deviate a hair's breadth from the path of duty. But Moses sympathized with his deeply afflicted brother and, having pointed out the error, said no more.