The Priestly Household Lives Under Narrower Boundaries

The verb changes: the LORD said, vayyomer, where most speeches in Leviticus begin with spake, vaydabber. For the dead is lenephesh, literally for a soul; nephesh here means a dead person, as in Numbers 6:6. The instruction is addressed to the priests themselves.

The list puts mother before father, as 19:3 did. The priest’s wife is not named, but the rabbis read his kin that is near, she’er, as meaning her, since she’er is flesh and husband and wife are one flesh. Ezekiel, a priest, was forbidden to mourn his wife as a special sign (Ezekiel 24:16–18).

A virgin sister who hath had no husband still belongs to her father’s house, so her brother may bury her. Once married, she belongs to her husband’s household, and the priest’s exception no longer reaches her.

Chief man renders ba‘al, a master or husband. The Hebrew is obscure. One reading is that a priest must not defile himself as a husband, that is, for his relatives by marriage; the King James takes it as a statement of his rank. Either way, the exceptions of verses 2 and 3 end here.

Baldness on the head is qorchah, a patch shaved for mourning; Deuteronomy 14:1 forbids it between the eyes, and Amos 8:10 and Jeremiah 16:6 treat it as a normal sign of grief. What 19:27–28 said to all Israel is restated here specifically for priests.

The bread of their God is lechem ’elohehem. The altar portions are called God’s food; Numbers 28:2 says my bread for my sacrifices, and Malachi 1:7 accuses priests of offering polluted bread upon mine altar. The word bread covers meat, fat and grain alike.

Three women are excluded: the prostitute; the chalalah, a woman profaned, which the rabbis read as one born of a union forbidden to priests; and the divorced woman, gerushah, driven out, from the verb used when God drove out the man from the garden (Genesis 3:24).

Thou shalt sanctify him is singular, addressed to Israel as one: the people are to treat the priest as holy. The reason is repeated from verse 6, and the chapter’s ground is the divine title of 20:8, I the LORD, which sanctify you.

Profane in its forms runs through this chapter nine times in the King James, in verses 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15 and 23, and twice here. The daughter who profanes herself profanes her father, since his standing at the altar rests on his household.

The high priest is literally the priest who is greater than his brothers, hakkohen haggadol me’echav, the only use of the full title in Leviticus. When Caiaphas rent his clothes at the trial of Jesus (Matthew 26:65), he did what this verse forbids, though later practice allowed a tear from the hem.

Any dead body is nafshoth meth, plural, the souls of a dead person. Go in to means entering a tent where a corpse lies, which Numbers 19:14 says makes everyone inside unclean for seven days. Even his parents’ deathbed is closed to him.

He may not leave the sanctuary to follow a funeral. The crown of the anointing oil uses nezer, the word for the gold plate on his mitre, the holy crown (Exodus 29:6), and for the Nazirite’s consecration. The oil on his head is itself treated as his crown.

Six words in English. In her virginity, bithulehah, sets a single condition for the high priest’s marriage before the next verse lists the exclusions.

The widow is added to the three exclusions of verse 7. Of his own people, me‘ammav, is read by some as from his own priestly kin. Ezekiel 44:22 gives a similar rule to all priests in his vision, but allows the widow of a priest.

Profane his seed means lowering the status of his children. The office passes from father to son, so the purity of the high priest’s marriage is also the purity of the next high priest’s birth.

A new speech begins. What follows concerns not family and death but the body of the priest himself, and it is spoken to Aaron alone in the next verse, as head of the priestly house.

Blemish is mum, the word used in 22:20–25 for defects that disqualify an animal from sacrifice. The priest who offers and the animal offered are held to one standard of wholeness at the altar.

Flat nose is charum, found nowhere else, perhaps a split or disfigured nose. Superfluous is sarua‘, something overgrown, perhaps a limb too long or an extra digit, like the man with six fingers on each hand in 2 Samuel 21:20.

Brokenfooted and brokenhanded are shever regel and shever yad, a fracture of foot or hand, perhaps a break that has set crooked. The two conditions are paired like the blind and lame of verse 18.

Twelve conditions in all, ending here. Crookbackt is a hunchback; dwarf is daq, thin or withered. A blemish in his eye is tevallul, a mixing, perhaps a white spot, from the root balal. Scurvy is garav, the itch of Deuteronomy 28:27. Stones broken means crushed testicles, as in Deuteronomy 23:1.

He is still of the seed of Aaron the priest, and the verse says so in the same sentence that bars him. Come nigh is nagash, the approach of service, and it is repeated twice in the verse for the two forms of offering.

Most holy comes first, and most holy portions could be eaten only within the court of the sanctuary (6:16, 26). The blemished priest therefore still eats inside the holy precinct, at the priests’ table, only not at the altar itself.

Unto the vail means the inner curtain, where the ordinary priest tended the incense altar and the lampstand. My sanctuaries is plural, the holy things and places. For I the LORD do sanctify them makes God the one who sanctifies places too.

Moses tells Aaron, his sons, and all the children of Israel. The rules for priests are announced to the whole people, so that the congregation knows what its priests are required to be.