Leviticus10chapter 10

Leviticus 10:1-2

Nadab and Abihu are Aaron's two eldest sons, and Exodus 24:9 has them going up Sinai with Moses and Aaron and the seventy elders. One verse earlier fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the offering on the altar, and here fire goes out from the LORD and devours the two men, in nearly the same words. The phrase strange fire occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and its only other occurrences, Numbers 3:4 and Numbers 26:61, both name these same two priests. The verse gives one reason, which he commanded them not, and never says what made the fire strange.

Leviticus 10:3

Moses answers by naming something the LORD had spoken, that he will be sanctified in them that come nigh him and glorified before all the people, and the words I will be sanctified fall only here and at Ezekiel 20:41. Aaron held his peace, and the chapter gives him no speech until verse 19. Keil and Delitzsch read the strange fire as common fire rather than coals taken from the altar, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown report the drink reading as one many have entertained on the strength of the rule at verse 9, and others have put it down to incense burned at an hour not appointed. The chapter settles none of it.

Leviticus 10:4-5

Moses calls two first cousins of Aaron, Levites rather than priests, because Aaron and his surviving sons may not leave the door of the tent. They carry the bodies out in their coats, so the priestly garments came through the fire whole. The fire took the men and left their clothing, and the bodies go out of the camp, which is where Leviticus 4:12 sends the remains of a sin offering.

Leviticus 10:6-7

Aaron and his two remaining sons are forbidden the signs of grief, and the whole house of Israel is told to do the mourning in their place. They cannot leave the door of the tent because the seven days of their consecration are not finished, Leviticus 8:33, and because the anointing oil of the LORD is upon them. The words lest ye die fall at verses 6, 7 and 9, three of the five places the phrase occurs in the King James Bible, the first being Eve's answer to the serpent at Genesis 3:3.

Leviticus 10:8-9

Leviticus opens thirty-three passages with the LORD speaking to Moses, and this is the one place in the book where he speaks to Aaron directly. The rule bans wine and strong drink while the priests are in the tent and makes it a statute for ever. Its position immediately after the funeral is the ground on which Jamieson, Fausset and Brown report that many have read drink into verse 1, and the chapter itself never joins the two.

Leviticus 10:10-11

The reason given for a clear head is two jobs. The priest is to put difference between holy and unholy and between unclean and clean, four categories in two pairs, and chapters 11 to 15 are that distinction worked out at length. He is also to teach the children of Israel all the statutes, so instruction belongs to the priestly office, and Malachi 2:7 holds later priests to this verse when it says the priest's lips should keep knowledge.

Leviticus 10:12-13

On the day of the funeral Moses goes back over the priests' portions that Leviticus 6 and 7 had already laid down. Four priests were consecrated a week ago and two are left, so the work does not stop and the survivors carry it. Eating the offering is put to them as an order rather than a privilege, since verse 13 ends for so I am commanded.

Leviticus 10:14-15

The chapter names two portions and two places to eat them. The meat offering is most holy and is eaten beside the altar, while the wave breast and heave shoulder out of the peace offerings are eaten in any clean place by the priest's sons and daughters together. Holiness is graded here by who may eat and where he stands, and Leviticus 22:12 sets a limit on which daughters keep the right.

Leviticus 10:16-18

The goat is the people's sin offering from Leviticus 9:15, and it was burnt when the law at Leviticus 6:26 required the priests to eat it, since its blood had not been carried inside. Moses is angry, and he brings the charge against Eleazar and Ithamar rather than against their father. Verse 17 gives his reason and is the only place in Scripture with the phrase to bear the iniquity of the congregation, which puts the priests' eating inside the atonement rather than after it.

Leviticus 10:19-20

This is the only speech of Aaron recorded in Leviticus. He does not dispute the rule, and asks instead whether the offering eaten by a man in his position that day would have been accepted, which answers on fitness rather than on procedure. Moses heard it and he was content, a sentence that occurs once in the whole King James Bible. Adam Clarke observes that God gave no sign of displeasure at the irregularity, and Matthew Henry reads the exchange by the rule that God will have mercy and not sacrifice.