Canter Bridge

It is precarious to seek psychological dynamics in a highly processed biblical text like Leviticus. Psychology is alien to its origins and purpose. Moses and Aaron are not presented principally as human beings with hearts pinned to their sleeves, but rather as prototypical Lawgiver/Prophet (Moses) and Priest (Aaron).

Yet only pedantic interpretation would force its gaze from the profound dilemma faced by Aaron in the wake of his sons’ death by divine fire.

Chapter sixteen is marked off as a separate unit by a familiar introduction.

Now the Lord spoke to Moses …

The words that follow are less formulaic, describing as they do a poignant circumstance as the lived context of this word from YHWH:

… after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew too close to the presence of the Lord.

If Leviticus is one of the most densely editorialized portions of the entire biblical anthology, one ought to ask why such a biographical frame is applied to this largely cultic, impersonal instruction.

It is a good question, one that arises not only out of our readerly curiosity about forebears and literary actors, but also from the biblical text itself. Indeed, we are not so much permitted as invited towards curiosity.

The directive that Aaron receives from his sons’ Executioner by way of Moses is a curtailment, a discipline, even a chastisement. Yet Aaron is instructed—a feat well known to leaders—to bear it publicly and to endure it nobly. Once again psychology—or at least that expression of it which is prone to self-explanation, even self-pity—remains at considerable remove from this portrait of Israel’s first bona fide priest.

In short, Aaron is told to dress up and get about his priestly business. Though this no longer entails the liberty of unrestricted access to YHWH, Aaron is to put on all the accoutrement of the priestly role. The text allows itself considerable detail.

Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come at will into the Shrine behind the curtain, in front of the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud over the cover. Thus only shall Aaron enter the Shrine: with a bull of the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall be dressed in a sacral linen tunic, with linen breeches next to his flesh, and be girt with a linen sash, and he shall wear a linen turban. They are sacral vestments; he shall bath his body in water and then put them on. And from the Israelite community he shall take two he-goats for a sin offering and a ram for burnt offering. One must imagine the pomp and the sheer regal stride with which Aaron, bereaved father-and only Aaron-undertakes this role on behalf of all Israel. Grief mingles perhaps with the formidable internal need to ask why Yahweh had to answer his dead son’s impertinence with fire. Surely, the One of Sinai had more measured means at his disposal.

If Aaron meets YHWH alone as the people’s Griever-in-Chief, he also does so as its Guilty Man. Iconic, representative, with uncounted eyes upon him as he fulfills his public role, Aaron offers sacrifice first for his own sons. Inescapably in this context, they include those of his sons, now burnt beyond resuscitation by the Holiness that Israel is coming at its own peril to know, if not to understand.

”Aaron shall then offer his bull of sin offering, to make expiation for himself and his household’, we read. Only after this ritual humiliation with all the attendant interrogatives about justice, fairness, and whether Israel had ever been told upon its flight from Egypt that there were worse dangers awaiting in its very desert shrine, does Aaron proceed to ‘slaughter the people’s goat of sin offering, bring its blood behind the curtain, and do with its blood as he has done with the blood of the bull.’

The theatrical nature of Aaron’s priestly role—the Hebrew text makes a verb of it, ‘to priest’—is not for its visual acuity any less effective in the real world of human encounter with the divine Liberator.

Thus shall he purge the Shrine of the uncleanness and transgression of the Israelites, whatever their sins.

Aaron the grief-stricken, the regally dressed, the public figure accomplishes forgiveness in a God-ward direction even as he effects cleansing in the people who look on wondering whether a God like this can be good.

Leaders, priests, those called to dress for the role while the heart breaks, often do.