Leviticus21chapter 21

Leviticus 21:1-4

A priest may bury his nearest kin and nobody else. Verse 2 names his mother, his father, his son, his daughter and his brother, and verse 3 adds a sister who is a virgin and still in the family. The list stops there without naming a wife, and verse 4 has been read two ways, as a rule about his standing as a chief man among his people and as the bar on mourning a wife, which is how Jamieson, Fausset and Brown report the dispute. Ezekiel 24:16-18, where a priest is told not to mourn the wife of his eyes, is where the question comes up again.

Leviticus 21:5-9

The mourning customs forbidden here, a shaved head, a cut beard and cuttings in the flesh, were already forbidden to all Israel at 19:27-28, so the priest carries a rule his neighbours carry too. Verses 7 to 9 then reach into his house and govern whom he marries and what his daughter does. The penalty at verse 9 falls on a woman who never serves at the altar, and the ground the verse gives is that she profaneth her father. The word profane falls nine times in these twenty-four verses and holds the chapter together.

Leviticus 21:10-12

The title high priest occurs here for the first time in Scripture. What Moses forbade Aaron in the hour his sons died at 10:6, an uncovered head and rent clothes, is fixed on the office permanently, and verse 11 closes to him the two funerals an ordinary priest may attend, his father's and his mother's. Verse 12 keeps him inside the sanctuary and gives the reason as the crown of the anointing oil of his God, then ends with I am the LORD. Mark 14:63 and Matthew 26:65 both record a high priest rending his clothes at the trial of Jesus.

Leviticus 21:13-15

The circle narrows at every step toward the altar. An ordinary Israelite may marry a widow, the priest at verse 7 may not marry a harlot or a divorced woman, and verse 14 adds the widow to the list for the high priest alone and requires a virgin of his own people. Verse 15 puts the reason on his seed rather than on himself, since the office passes to his sons, and closes with I the LORD do sanctify him.

Leviticus 21:16-20

Twelve defects are listed across three verses and no reason is given for any of them. The word blemish falls six times in this chapter and governs the animal as well at 22:20-21, so the man who offers and the thing he offers are measured by one standard. The readings on offer differ: Calvin declined to inquire into the particular defects and rested on the rule that only what was perfect came to the altar, Clarke read the list as fitness before the people who watch him, and Gregory of Nazianzus in Oration 2 read the whole of it as a figure of soundness of soul. The text itself settles none of them.

Leviticus 21:21-24

The blemished priest keeps his portion and loses his function. The phrase bread of his God bars him at verses 17 and 21 and feeds him at verse 22, where he eats of the most holy and of the holy with his brethren, and only the vail and the altar are shut to him. Calvin read it that no natural defect kept such a man from the sacred meals and that the bar stood on appearing before God for others. Verse 24 has Moses telling all of it to Aaron, to his sons, and to all the children of Israel, so the law governing the priesthood is read out to the people it serves.