Canter Bridge

When we might have expected paternal wrath or rebellious fury or grief’s loudest howling, Aaron gives us only silence. It is an enigmatic, even mysterious, stillness. In the wake of the summary execution by Yahweh of his sons Nadab and Abihu for the offense of offering unsolicited ‘strange fire’ on Yahweh’s altar, Aaron’s quiet is patient of more than one interpretation:

Now Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, each took his censer, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered unholy fire before the LORD, such as he had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is what the LORD meant when he said,
“Through those who are near me
I will show myself holy,
and before all the people
I will be glorified.”‘

And Aaron was silent.

Perhaps Aaron’s silence speaks of his resignation before YHWH’s judicial response to his sons’ innovation. His closed mouth may even represent assent to the circumstance, a tacit recognition that the death of reckless religionists—even when they are flesh and blood—is right and proper.

On the other hand, Aaron’s refusal to take up any of the noisy prerrogatives of bereavement may signal that his perception of events swims against the text’s current. In this light, the rightness of YHWH’s and Moses’ program—for the two cannot be separated—is not self-evident and is perhaps even worthy of suspicion. Here, Aaron is silent because he can not give his ‘Amen!’ to Moses’ interpretation of YHWH’s earlier words about being sanctified and glorified ‘by those who are near me’.

Perhaps for Aaron the good intentions of priests-in-service should earn them a bit of leeway when things go wrong. Aaron’s silence may speak loudly of tumultuous emotion that does not exclude a bristling at YHWH’s lethal harshness.

An interpretation that runs in this direction seems to me to capture the otherwise unnecessary report that ‘Aaron remained silent’. Aaron is wrestling. Aaron is disturbed. Aaron sees daylight between Moses’ way of following Sinai’s God and his own.

If this is right, the text clearly sides with Moses. Indeed, Aaron’s silence becomes something like an indictment.

Flying in the face of casual attitudes towards worship, the book of Leviticus develops a multi-layered argument for precision in following YHWH’s liturgical prescriptions. There is in these instructions for sacrifice little room for spontaneity. The sincerity of the worshipper does not emerge as the Main Thing. The repeated expression ‘just as YHWH commanded’ makes sure of that.

It is good for the reader to ponder the gulf that lies between such a view of worship and those that prevail in our times. In the light of such demands, an Aaronic response—indignant silence?—is one clear option. The biblical text would suggest it is not the appropriate one. One might begin, then, by submitting the idol of self-expression to careful analysis. Is worship really about my self-styled sincerity before God? Or is there perhaps a prior axiom, one that is recognizable in the light of the Leviticus text as a concern for doing ‘exactly what YHWH has commanded’.

Though such a re-think might put the brakes on most of what we do in corporate worship today, the pause is unlikely to damage us. To the contrary, it may give us time to discern in our company the occasional glow of strange fire.