Aaron Held His Peace

Two young men die in front of the sanctuary, and their father is told he may not mourn. Then Moses speaks the words quoted here, and they can sound like a manager explaining the rules while the bodies are still on the floor. Nadab and Abihu are Aaron's sons. Two of Aaron's cousins carry them out of the camp. Their father stands there in his new priestly clothes, on the very day he began serving as high priest, and he is forbidden to tear those clothes in grief.

Look carefully at what the text tells us and what it leaves unsaid. It tells us this: they "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." That last phrase is the charge. Two men did something in God's presence that He had not commanded, on nothing more than their own say-so.

Everything else, the text keeps to itself. It never explains what made the fire "strange." People fill the gap anyway. They say it was the wrong censer, or the wrong hour, or coals taken from the wrong place. Some say the men were drunk, because the ban on wine for priests comes a few verses later and looks like a clue. The text draws no line between those verses, and neither should we. Filling that silence is how this chapter turns into a rule against whatever the preacher already dislikes.

The only explanation given is one sentence about coming near: "I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified." At the end of the chapter before, fire came "out from before the LORD" and burned up the offering on the altar, and the people "shouted, and fell on their faces." It was the same fire, from the same place, on the same day. The first time it received the offering God had commanded. The second time it consumed what He had not.

Even the mourning is not cancelled. It is handed to others: "let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the LORD hath kindled." The whole nation weeps, while the anointed priests stay at their post, "for the anointing oil of the LORD is upon you."

"And Aaron held his peace." No answer reached him that day. So take the warning as it stands. Coming near to God has never been a safe thing to do carelessly, and the people who work closest to holy things are the ones most likely to start handling them like tools. Yet the same chapters show what God is like. He still wanted priests near Him, and He sent His fire to meet the offering He had asked for. He is holy, and He has always made a way for people to come near on His terms.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 38 is Family Name (2 Corinthians 6:18).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two