Struck Down - Leviticus 10

I’m not sure on the exact timeline but it seems like as soon as the 7 day initial inauguration of the tabernacle ordinances were done by Moses, Aaron and his sons take over and start to do them. This is when the fire comes from the sky and ignites the ashes of the sacrifices and this is the fire that is to be guarded day and night to keep it lit. I’m not exactly sure how much, if any, time passes between God’s fire coming down to the altar and when Aaron’s first two oldest sons “took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.” The word “strange” here is explained to mean unauthorized, so these two men did something that they weren’t supposed to do and paid for it with their lives. It seems pretty overboard to kill people because they did the ordinance wrong because I think we can all relate to accidentally messing something up, especially in the beginning. I mean think about the temple ordinances, they can read from que cards if they are 100% sure of the right words.

TB makes it seem like this wasn’t some trivial mistake where they were trying their best but mixed up some words. He says that while the exact offense against God isn’t stated, it would have had to be such that they knew what they were doing was expressly forbidden by God and that it allowing them to act in this way would have influenced the population to do wickedly as well. That’s kind of my take on it from what I heard from TB and read in the IM. There very much could have been a component of “I’m going to make an example out of them,” but it was a serious enough offense that they knew better and it was going to be a problem.

There is no explanation about what they did that caused this to happen to them, but TB speculates that they violated the Hoy of Holies and went in when they weren’t supposed to. He also said that if we look further into what God commands Aaron later in the chapter about being sober during the rituals, that they were drunk. The IM speculates that they might have taken the fire for their scepters from a source other than what they were commanded to do. But all of this is just speculation because there is no specific reasoning given.

I could only imagine what it would have been like to be there, watching these sacrifices, Fire comes down from heaven and ignites the altar and all the people are amazed, then suddenly fire comes down and kills the two men officiating the rituals. That would have been wild, talk about shocking. I wonder if the people watching even noticed that they did something wrong or if it had to be explained to them later. Then you have Aaron standing there and his two oldest sons, the oldest who was probably his protégé who was slated to take over for him when he died, everything is fine, then suddenly both of his boys and piles of ashes. I can’t even imagine how Aaron felt at that moment.

Quickly Moses calls their cousins over to take what’s left of the bodies outside of the city so that the rituals could continue and none of the priests would have had to become unclean. Moses further instructs a probably very traumatized Aaron and their relatives not to mourn for the loss of these two men because it would imply that God was wrong in his judgement

After the rituals were done, Moses tells Aaron and his other sons to eat the sacrificial offerings as was allowed by the rules, but they struggled with it because they were so upset by what happened. Aaron was really stuck in a hard place here because his two oldest sons were killed right in front of him and he was obviously upset but was told he couldn’t act upset otherwise God would punish him and then he is told he has to eat. There is a mourning ritual that was supposed to be followed but also he was commanded not to mourn and follow the eating rules too. It was too much. Moses noticed that Aaron wasn’t eating and told him to do it. Aaron answered basically “it’s been a horrible day, I don’t want to offend God by eating the offering when I’m supposed to be mourning but I can’t mourn.” When Moses heard Aaron’s explanation, “he was content.” TB notes that the important distinction here is that Moses okayed Aaron’s reasoning instead of God approving it, and God seemed to respect Moses’s decision at this point which is interesting.