Leviticus8chapter 8

Leviticus 8:1-3

Everything done in this chapter was commanded in Exodus 29, before the tabernacle stood. Leviticus 8 is that order carried out, and the narrator marks it by saying as the LORD commanded Moses five times over. The first instruction is to gather the whole congregation to the door, so no part of the making of a priest happens where Israel cannot watch it.

Leviticus 8:4-5

Moses runs the ceremony and produces his warrant before he begins, telling the assembly this is the thing which the LORD commanded to be done. He installs an office he will never hold, and it passes to his brother's line rather than to his own sons. Hebrews 5:4 reaches back to this scene when it says no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.

Leviticus 8:6-7

Water comes before the garments. The washing here is of the whole body, which is a different act from the washing of hands and feet at the laver that Exodus 30:19-21 requires of a priest daily, and Leviticus 16:4 has the high priest bathe his flesh again before he goes inside on the day of atonement. Aaron is then dressed one piece at a time, coat, girdle, robe and ephod, in the order Exodus 28 set down.

Leviticus 8:8-9

The Urim and the Thummim go into the breastplate and Scripture never says what they were. They appear seven times in the Old Testament, they decide a question at Numbers 27:21 and give Saul no answer at 1 Samuel 28:6, and no verse describes their shape, their material or how a priest read them. Adam Clarke takes them as objects distinct from the breastplate itself, and the text leaves a reader nothing to settle it with. The golden plate on the mitre carried the words Exodus 39:30 records, HOLINESS TO THE LORD, worn on the forehead where anyone could read it.

Leviticus 8:10-11

The oil goes on the building before it goes on any man. The tent was new and had never been used, and it is still treated as needing to be sanctified before the men who will serve in it are. The altar alone receives seven sprinklings, and Exodus 29:37 gives it seven days of atonement of its own, so the place where atonement is made is cleansed before it makes any.

Leviticus 8:12-13

Aaron is anointed by pouring and his sons are only clothed. The Hebrew verb used here is the root behind the noun messiah, so the word anointed comes from the ceremony being performed in this verse. Psalm 133:2 remembers the moment as ointment running down Aaron's beard and makes it the picture of brethren dwelling together in unity. The sons get their share of the oil at verse 30, mixed with blood and sprinkled rather than poured.

Leviticus 8:14-15

The first sacrifice offered at the new tabernacle is a sin offering, and it is offered for the men about to become priests. Aaron and his sons lay their hands on the head of the animal and Moses kills it, because the office is not theirs yet. The blood goes on the horns of the altar and the verse says the altar was purified and sanctified by it, so the instrument of atonement is atoned for before it is used, which Leviticus 16:18-19 does again on the day of atonement.

Leviticus 8:16-17

The fat burns on the altar and the rest of the bullock is carried outside the camp and burned there. Leviticus 6:26 gives the flesh of a sin offering to the priest who offers it, and Leviticus 4:11-12 sends a priest's own sin offering out of the camp instead, so these men receive nothing back from the animal they brought for themselves. Hebrews 13:11-13 takes up that arrangement, says the bodies of those beasts are burned without the camp, and sets Jesus suffering without the gate on the same ground.

Leviticus 8:18-21

Chapters 1 to 5 list the burnt offering first and the sin offering fourth, and when the offerings are actually made here the sin offering goes first and the burnt offering follows it. Guilt is dealt with before devotion is presented, and later practice kept that order. Verse 21 calls the whole burnt ram a sweet savour where verse 17 said nothing of the kind over the sin offering, and the pattern holds across the book, since the phrase falls sixteen times in Leviticus and never once on a sin offering or a trespass offering.

Leviticus 8:22-24

The Hebrew behind consecration here means a filling of the hands, and the ceremony about to follow fills them. Blood is put on the tip of the right ear, the thumb of the right hand and the great toe of the right foot, on Aaron first and then on his sons. Leviticus 14:14 marks a cleansed leper at those same three places with blood, and 14:17 marks them again with oil, so the man restored from exclusion and the man raised to the priesthood are touched at identical points. Matthew Henry and Adam Clarke both read the three as what a priest hears, what he does and where he walks, and the text names the places without giving a reason.

Leviticus 8:25-28

The fat, the rump, the right shoulder and three kinds of unleavened bread are laid on the hands of Aaron and his sons and waved before the LORD. Their hands are filled with the offering, which is what the word for consecration says. Moses then takes it all back off their hands and burns it on the altar, so the first thing a priest holds in his office is the thing he gives away.

Leviticus 8:29-30

The breast is Moses' part, the only portion of the ram that goes to him, and waving it is the last priestly act he performs before the work belongs to Aaron. Oil and blood are then mixed and sprinkled together on the men and on their clothes. The sons were not anointed by pouring at verse 13, and this is where the oil reaches them, carried with blood taken from the altar.

Leviticus 8:31-32

The consecration ends in a meal, eaten at the door where the congregation had been standing. Whatever is left by morning is burned, the rule the passover carries at Exodus 12:10 and the thank offering at Leviticus 7:15. A priest eats from the offering he has just been part of, and he eats it in the one place he is now bound to.

Leviticus 8:33-35

Seven days at the door, day and night, with the sacrifices of the first day repeated on each of them. Verse 34 says the purpose of the whole business was to make an atonement for you, so the men who will make atonement for Israel had it made for them first, which is the point Hebrews 5:3 presses. Verse 35 gives the reason for staying, that ye die not, and the warning stands here before anything has gone wrong.

Leviticus 8:36

The chapter closes on obedience and gives the credit to the command rather than to the ceremony. What follows is the eighth day of chapter 9, when fire comes out from before the LORD, consumes the offering, and the people shout and fall on their faces. At 10:2 fire comes out from the same place and kills Nadab and Abihu, so the priesthood installed here is tested within days of its ordination.