Leviticus 9:1 to 11:47
Rules Don’t Apply
In this week’s reading, Aaron’s two sons, Nadab and Abihu, are suddenly struck dead—on the very day that the people of Israel were to celebrate the start of regular worship in the desert sanctuary (the mishkan). What happened?
Ancient commentators searched through the surrounding biblical verses for a clue as to what Nadab and Abihu had done wrong. Perhaps it was because they had made a mistake with the incense that they were offering; or perhaps they were somewhat (even a little bit!) intoxicated at the time they were performing their sacred duties; or perhaps they were disheveled or dressed improperly at the time.
Whatever the precise reason, it is what their uncle Moses said to Aaron immediately after the incident that is crucial. But what did he say?
In seeking to render Moses’ words as literally as possible, many modern translators obscure the point: One modern Jewish translation thus reads:
Then Moses said to Aaron: “This what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy and gain glory before all the people.”
Almost identical is a popular Christian Bible translation of God’s words:
“Through those who are near Me I will show Myself holy, and before all the people I will be glorified.”
But what exactly does this mean: who are “those who are near Me”? And what does it mean for God to “show Myself holy”?
The answer to the first question is not obvious, but the expression “those who are near Me” refers specifically to the kohanim, the hereditary priests (like Nadab and Abihu) who are to be entrusted with special duties inside God’s sanctuary. The book of Ezekiel makes this explicit when he referred to “the kohanim who are close to the Lord” (Ezek 42:13). As for “show Myself holy,” this is better translated as a passive verb, “I will be shown holy,” paralleling the “I will be glorified” in the next clause. But most important, the relationship between these two clauses is—typically for biblical Hebrew—is not fully explicit. What it means is not “X is so and Y is so,” but “if X, then Y.”
In other words, immediately after the death of Nadab and Abihu, God explained why they died: “If the priests show Me proper respect, then I will be honored by the people as a whole.” (But if they don’t so sanctify Me, then the rest of the people will not honor Me either.) Nadab and Abihu may have made some relatively minor mistake, but because of their special duties in the sanctuary, they were held to a higher standard. This principle cost them their lives, but it needed to be demonstrated for all subsequent generations.
I couldn’t help thinking of this principle in connection with recent headlines about the corona virus. The very same elected officials who promulgate strict rules about “social distancing” (keeping a safe distance between ourselves and others), limiting gatherings to ten people or less, and so forth—these same people then publicly flout the very rules they themselves have urged everyone else to keep.
This is true not only of elected officials of various sorts, but of religious leaders as well: pastors who tell their flock that no ill can befall them while attending services in megachurches, or Haredim (the so-called ultra-Orthodox) who similarly demonstrate that rules are fine so long as they don’t apply to them. As events are demonstrating—alas!—the results can be no less deadly than in the time of Nadab and Abihu.