Leviticus9chapter 9

Leviticus 9:1-2

Seven days of consecration ended at Leviticus 8:35, and this is the morning after. Aaron's first act in the office is a sin offering for himself, and the animal named for it is a calf. Adam Clarke and Matthew Henry both pass on the reading of the Jewish writers that the calf was chosen to set Exodus 32 in front of him, and the text gives no reason of its own for the choice.

Leviticus 9:3-4

The people bring a kid, a calf, a lamb, a bullock and a ram, with a meat offering, so four of the five kinds set out in chapters 1 to 7 are handled in one day and only the trespass offering is absent. Verse 4 states what the day is for, that to day the LORD will appear unto you. The promise is given before an animal is killed, so the offerings answer it rather than earn it.

Leviticus 9:5-6

The whole congregation draws near and stands, and it stands there for eighteen verses while Aaron works. Moses fastens the appearing to the obedience in one sentence, the thing the LORD commanded that ye should do, and then the glory shall appear. Exodus 40:34-35 had already filled the tent with that glory and left Moses outside it, and here the same glory comes out to where the people are standing.

Leviticus 9:7-8

Moses hands the work over and stops sacrificing, and Aaron goes to the altar for the first time. The order is fixed and Moses states it twice in one verse, atonement for himself before the offering of the people. Hebrews 7:27 turns on that order, that the high priests offered first for their own sins and then for the people's, and John Calvin reads this verse as the place where the legal priesthood shows what it lacks.

Leviticus 9:9-11

The blood goes on the horns of the altar in the court and none of it is carried inside the tent. That follows what Moses did at Leviticus 8:15 rather than the rule for an anointed priest's sin offering at 4:5-7, where the blood goes in before the vail. Aaron is entering the office in this chapter and has not yet acted inside the holy place. The flesh and the hide are burnt with fire without the camp, and Hebrews 13:11-13 takes up that arrangement and says Jesus suffered without the gate.

Leviticus 9:12-14

Chapters 1 to 7 are the law and this is the law being done, in the same verbs and the same order, slew and presented and sprinkled and burnt. Aaron's sons hand him the blood and he does the rest with his own hands, so the division of labour that later priests keep begins here. The washing of the inwards and the legs at verse 14 is the instruction of 1:9 carried out to the letter.

Leviticus 9:15-17

Aaron now repeats for the people what he did for himself, and the text says as the first instead of describing it again. The meat offering follows, a handful burnt on the altar, and verse 17 adds that all of it was beside the burnt sacrifice of the morning. The daily offering of Exodus 29:38-42 kept its place on the greatest day the camp had seen, so the extraordinary service was laid on top of the ordinary one.

Leviticus 9:18-21

The peace offerings come last, and by the rule of 7:15 these are the parts a worshipper eats. The offerer's list in chapters 1 to 5 puts the peace offering third and the priest's list at 6:8 to 7:38 moves it to the end, and Aaron's first service follows the priest's order. The breasts and the right shoulder are waved and become the portion of the priests, so a day that opened with Aaron's own sin closes with food on his table.

Leviticus 9:22-23

Aaron blesses with lifted hands and comes down from the altar, and Adam Clarke takes the words to be the form written out at Numbers 6:23-27. Then Moses and Aaron go into the tent together, come out, and bless a second time, and the glory appears to all the people rather than to the two men who had been inside. Matthew Henry marks the sequence, that the appearing followed the blessing the lawgiver and the priest gave together.

Leviticus 9:24

Fire comes out from before the LORD, eats the burnt offering and the fat off the altar, and the people shout and fall on their faces. That is the promise of verse 4 kept, and it is the high point of the book to this stage. The next event Leviticus reports is 10:2, where fire went out from the LORD and devoured two of Aaron's sons, told in nearly the same words. The same fire from the same place accepts an offering and kills two priests, and the narrator lays the two side by side and adds nothing.