Blemished - Leviticus 21

Leviticus chapter 21 is a little bit intense, it goes back to instructions for the Levite priests. The first topic is “there shall none be defiled for the dead among his people.” This means the priests aren’t allowed to come in contact with dead bodies except for his mother, father, son, daughter, brother, or unmarried virgin sister. This offers an interesting insight into the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Levite priest had a donkey and was the only one who could have realistically carried the injured man to get help but he refused and one of the reasons was that the injured man might have appeared to be dead and the Levite priest didn’t want to become ritually unclean and have to undergo the cleansing process for 7 days in which he would have had to destroy the clothes he was wearing and go without his priestly pay. Just an interesting insight. Another interesting thing about this commandment is that the people included in the group of bodies the priest could come in contact with did not include this man’s wife. TB says that this is because she was not a blood relative and therefore not included.

These priests were also not supposed to alter their appearance in a way that resembled the priests who were in the surrounding areas of Canaan which was to shave their heads or cut their beards or cut their skin. Reading this 4,000 years in the future, it could be tempting to try to read into to why exactly the shaving the head or other things were wrong and then adopt it into our religious practices but I think for a significant portion of these commandments, they are just trying to get Israel to separate themselves from the other people in the surrounding areas that they were prone to be influenced by.

Daughters of the priests who were sexually immoral were to be executed with fire and burning to death. Pretty extreme serious, but I guess it would have to be. Think about how much trouble Israel, and all populations for that matter, had keeping sexual immorality out of their society even when the punishment for such acts was death. Now imagine how much worse it would have been if the punishment WASN’T death.

Now we discuss issues that pertain to the High Priest specifically. We have the office of High Priest today, but this position was significantly different for the Hebrews anciently. The IM says, “As the chief priest, he was the representative of Jehovah among the people. As such, he was required to guard against all defilement of his holy office. (The Old Testament high priest was an office in the Aaronic Priesthood, not an office in the Melchizedek Priesthood as it is today. The high priest was the presiding priest, or head, of the Aaronic Priesthood. Today the presiding bishop holds that position.)” So these are all pertaining to basically one man at a time.

The High Priest had to marry a virgin, widows, prostitutes, the profane, or harlots were excluded and the wife had to come from “his own people” which meant that she had to be from a specific set of families. Additionally, and interestingly, the High Priest couldn’t have any defects or “blemishes” such as blindness, deafness lameness, flat nose, broken feet, legs or hands, crookbackt, dwarf, eye blemishes, scurvy, scabbed, or “hath his stones broken” which I don’t know what that means. That seems pretty harsh especially if we have a requirement of personal righteousness, it would be tempting for a “blemished” man who was passed over for the office of High Priest to think that personal righteousness didn’t matter all that much if it could all be cast aside because of a physical ailment over which he has no control, at least that would be my thinking.

But there are a couple of flaws in that thinking, first was that the office of High Priest was about serving and representing God, there should be no ego involved and anger over being passed up for the office because of a physical condition is all ego driven. Truly it is at the will and pleasure of God as to who serves Him and if God were to decide that I was not the one to hold that position for any reason, then I would need to respect his decision and serve in whatever capacity He deems fit for me with gratitude for the opportunity. Second, if we think about the animals that were chosen to be sacrificed, they all had to be without blemish, because they were symbolic of Christ who was without blemish when he sacrificed himself for us. So the reality was that the office of High Priest was highly Symbolic and being without blemish was part of that symbolism to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah. And all this really begs the question, exactly what the definition of blemish was because no one is perfect, no animal is perfect, so there was always going to be one thing or another that would have been questionable. And I really have to ask myself just how many times this exact situation played out, how many times one man out of all the Israelites was passed up for the one office because he was physically imperfect to that extent. My guess is that it wasn’t a super common occurrence. The last note is that Tb pointed out that any man who was passed up for the office because of the blemishes still maintained his status, and was still paid, given his portion of the sacrifices, and still participated in other priestly duties.