Leviticuschapter 10
20 verses · Moses, by tradition · 15th to 13th century BC · The Law
Key verse
Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense, and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, contrary to His command.
It stands in Strange fire, sudden death, verses 1 to 7.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire before the LORD ‘which he commanded them not’. Fire goes out from the LORD and devours them; they die before the LORD. Moses: ‘this is it that the LORD spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me’. Aaron holds his peace. The bodies are carried out. Aaron and his remaining sons are forbidden to mourn; the people mourn for them. Strong drink forbidden for priests on duty. Moses is angry at Eleazar and Ithamar for not eating the sin offering; Aaron answers wisely. The chapter's warning is stern: the holy God accepts only the worship he commands.
Context
Law · Moses · Leviticus overview
The world of this chapter
- Who
- A camp that had watched fire fall on the altar the same morning and had shouted and fallen facedown, and two young priests who had been consecrated the week before
- Where
- The courtyard of the tabernacle at Sinai, at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, and the ground outside the camp where the bodies were carried
- When
- Israel encamped at Sinai, on the day the priesthood began its service. c. 1445 BC, the eighth day after the seven days of ordination, in the first month of the second year after the Exodus, on the traditional dating that follows the book's own setting
Historical context
The instruction belongs to Moses, and the two men who die are Aaron's eldest sons, consecrated seven days earlier along with their father and their two brothers. Exodus 24:9 had already placed Nadab and Abihu on the mountain with Moses, Aaron and the seventy elders, so these were not junior men.
The day is the eighth, counted from the start of the ordination in Leviticus 8, and the traditional dating puts it in the first month of the second year after the Exodus. Israel is still camped at Sinai, and the tabernacle has been standing for weeks rather than years.
A censer was a shallow fire pan a priest carried by hand. Incense was burned by putting live coals in it and dropping the compound on them, and the coals were meant to come from the altar where fire from the LORD was already burning. A first hearer knew that detail without being told, which is why the text can call the fire unauthorized and say nothing more.
Mourning in this world was a public performance with a fixed vocabulary: loosened hair, torn clothes, ash, wailing at the door. Forbidding the priests those signs at verses 6 and 7 is therefore a heavy instruction, since a man who did not perform grief was understood to be refusing it.
Bodies were carried outside the camp because that is where Leviticus 4:12 already sends the remains of a sin offering, and the camp had a clearly marked inside and outside that everyone living in it could point to.
Significance
The nation had just been told that God would live in a tent in the middle of it. Chapter 9 showed what that meant when the fire fell on the offering and the people shouted. Chapter 10 showed what it meant when the same fire fell on two priests.
For the survivors the practical message was that the work went on. Four priests had been consecrated a week earlier and two were left, and Moses spends the rest of the chapter putting the remaining two back to the portions and the eating that Leviticus 6 and 7 had already set out.
The rule about wine at verse 9 gave the priesthood a working reason for sobriety that was about judgment rather than about propriety. A man who had to decide whether a thing was holy or common, clean or unclean, and then teach the answer, could not be impaired while he did it.
Where the chapter sits
Leviticus 10 falls in Consecration of the priesthood (chapters 8–10). Aaron and his sons ordained; the first service; Nadab and Abihu's strange fire.
Nadab and Abihu. ‘I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me’, a terrible lesson in approach.
Before it: The five offerings, chapters 1–7. After it: Laws of clean and unclean, chapters 11–15.
The whole shape of Leviticus→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Strange fire, sudden death
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 10:1
“Nadab and Abihu - The two elder sons of Aaron Exo 6:23; Num 3:2, who were among those invited to accompany Moses when he was going up Mount Sinai, but who were “to worship afar off,” and not “come near the Lord.” Exo 24:1-2. Censer - See Exo 25:38 note. Strange fire - The point of their offence is evidently expressed in this term. This may very probably mean that the incense was lighted at an unauthorized time.”
2 more voices on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Leviticus 10:1
“The sons of Aaron also, who set upon the altar a strange fire not commanded by the Lord, were at once blotted out in the sight of the avenging Lord. These examples, you will see, are being followed wherever the tradition which comes from God is despised by lovers of strange doctrine and replaced by teaching of merely human authority.”
Cyprian· written before 258· Treatise I. On the Unity of the Church 18-19patristic
Leviticus 10:1
“Now as this was forbidden implicitly; chap. vi, 12, especially when God himself made a comment upon that text, and by sending fire from heaven declared of what fire he there spake; so it is more than probable it was forbidden expressly, though that be not here mentioned, nor was it necessary it should be.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Leviticus 10:2
“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).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 more voices on this verse
Leviticus 10:2
“From the Lord - From heaven, or rather from the sanctuary. Devoured them - Destroyed their lives; for their bodies and garments were not consumed. Thus the sword is said to devour, 2 Sam. ii, 26.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Leviticus 10:2
“The fire which had just before sanctified the ministry of Aaron as well pleasing to God, now brought to destruction his two eldest sons because they did not sanctify Yahweh in their hearts, but dared to perform a self-willed act of worship; just as the same Gospel is to one a savor of life unto life, and to another a savor of death unto death 2Co 2:16.”
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 10:3
“Rather, I will sanctify myself in them that come near to me (i. e. the priests), and I will glorify myself before all the people. The words used by Moses on this occasion are not found elsewhere in the Pentateuch. But the sense is implied in such passages as Exo 19:22; Exo 28:41; Exo 29:1, Exo 29:44. Aaron’s silence (compare Psa 39:9) on this occasion may be compared with his reasonable and natural expostulation with Moses when his surviving sons were rebuked for not having eaten the flesh of the sin-offering Lev 10:19.”
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 10:4
“The first cousins of Aaron Exo 6:22 are selected by Moses to convey the bodies of Nadab and Abihu out of the camp and bury them, probably because they were the nearest relations who were not priests. See Num 9:6.”
Leviticus 10:5
“Coats - See Exo 28:39. Life had been extinguished as if by a flash of lightning, but neither the bodies nor the dresses were destroyed.”
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 10:6
“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.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 10:6
“Uncover not your heads, etc. - They were to use no sign of grief or mourning, 1. Because those who were employed in the service of the sanctuary should avoid every thing that might incapacitate them for that service; and, 2. Because the crime of their brethren was so highly provoking to God, and so fully merited the punishment which he had inflicted, that their mourning might be considered as accusing the Divine justice of undue severity.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Leviticus 10:7
“Ye shall not go from the tabernacle - Where at this time they were, because this happened within seven days of their consecration. The oil of the Lord is upon you - You are persons consecrated peculiarly to God's service, which therefore it is just you should prefer before all funeral solemnities.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
No wine when you enter the tent
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 10:9
“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.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
2 more voices on this verse
Leviticus 10:9
“Priests given to wine are both condemned by the apostle and forbidden by the old law. Those who serve the altar, we are told, must drink neither wine nor shechar. Now every intoxicating drink is in Hebrew called shechar, whether it is made of corn or of the juice of apples, whether you distil from the honeycomb a rude kind of mead or make a liquor by squeezing dates or strain a thick syrup from a decoction of corn. Whatever intoxicates and disturbs the balance of the mind avoid as you would wine.”
Jerome· written before 420· LETTER 52.11patristic
Leviticus 10:9
“At other times they were allowed it (it was not expected that every priest should be a Nazarite), but during the time of their ministration they were forbidden it. This was one of the laws in Ezekiel's temple ( Ezek. xliv. 21 ), and so it is required of gospel ministers that they be not given to wine, 1 Tim. iii.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
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 10:10
“That we may put difference between holy and unholy - This is a strong reason why they should drink no inebriating liquor, that their understanding being clear, and their judgment correct, they might be always able to discern between the clean and the unclean, and ever pronounce righteous judgment. Injunctions similar to this were found among the Egyptians, Carthaginians, and Greeks. Indeed, common sense itself shows that neither a drunkard nor a sot should ever be suffered to minister in holy things.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Leviticus 10:11
“16 And Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin offering, and, behold, it was burnt: and he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron which were left alive, saying, 17 Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the L ORD ?”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Eat your portion in a holy place
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 10:12
“The argument is, that as such meals were appointed in honor of Yahweh Himself, they ought to be conducted with due reverence and discretion. Lev 10:12 Beside the altar - What is called “the holy place” in Lev 10:13, Lev 10:17: it should be rather, a holy place, any part of the holy precinct, as distinguished from a merely “clean place” Lev 10:14, either within or without the court of the tabernacle. Lev 10:14 Wave breast and heave shoulder - See Lev 7:30 note.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 10:12
“The meat-offerings, being annexed to the burnt-offerings, were intended only and wholly for the glory of God; but the peace-offerings were ordained for the furtherance of men's joy and comfort; the former therefore were the more sacred, and to be had more in veneration.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Leviticus 10:13
“Now the law of the sin-offerings was that if the blood of them was brought into the holy place, as that of the sin-offerings for the priest was, then the flesh was to be burnt without the camp; otherwise it was to be eaten by the priest in the holy place, ch. vi.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
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 10:14
“In a clean place - In any of your dwellings, or any place in the camp, which was kept clean from all ceremonial defilement. In any place where the women as well as the men might come, for the daughters of the priest might eat these as well as their sons, if they were maids, or widows, or divorced, chap. xxii, 11-13.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The burned goat and Aaron's answer
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 10:16
“Moses diligently sought the goat - The goat which was offered the same day for the sins of the priests and the people, (see Lev 9:15, Lev 9:16), and which, through the confusion that happened on account of the death of Nadab and Abihu, was burnt instead of being eaten. See Lev 10:16-18.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 10:16
“He was angry with Eleazar - He spares Aaron at this time, as overwhelmed with sorrow, and because the rebuking him before his sons might have exposed him to some contempt; but he knew that the reproof though directed to them, would concern him too.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Leviticus 10:17
“God hath given it to you - As a reward of your service, whereby you expiate, bear, and take away their sins, by offering those sacrifices, by which God through Christ is reconciled to the penitent and believing offerers.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Leviticus 10:18
“Behold, the blood of it was not brought in within the holy place,.... When that was the case, indeed, the flesh of the sin offering was not to be eaten, but burnt, see Lev 6:30 but this was not the case now, and therefore its flesh should have been eaten, and not burnt: ye should indeed have eaten it in the holy place, as I commanded, Lev 6:26.”
1 more voice on this verse
Leviticus 10:18
“The holy place,” as it is called in our version, within the tabernacle (see Exo 26:33; Exo 28:29, etc.) into which the blood was carried, is regularly called in Hebrew, simply, “the holy” (as the innermost chamber is called “the holy of holies”), the adjective being used substantively; while the precinct in which the flesh of the sin-offering was eaten is generally called in full the holy place, the substantive being expressed Lev 10:13.
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.
Leviticus 10:19
That is: “Behold this very day, in which we have done our part in sacrificing sin-offerings and burnt-offerings to the Lord, this great calamity has befallen me. Could it have been well-pleasing to the Lord if those who have been so humbled as I and my sons have been by the sin of our relations and the divine judgment, had feasted on the most holy flesh of the sin-offering?”
Leviticus 10:20
“When Moses heard that, he was content - The argument used by Aaron had in it both good sense and strong reason, and Moses, as a reasonable man, felt its force; and as God evidenced no kind of displeasure at this irregularity, which was, in a measure at least, justified by the present necessity, he thought proper to urge the matter no farther.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Andrew Bonar, A Commentary on Leviticus; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: The Pentateuch and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.