The Priests Are Consecrated in Public

Exodus 29 gave the instructions for ordaining the priests; this chapter carries them out almost step for step, now that the tent is standing. Much of it can be read line by line against that earlier chapter, which is what the repeated “as the LORD commanded” invites.

Every item carries the definite article in Hebrew: the garments, the oil, the bullock, the two rams, the basket. None of them needs describing, because Exodus 28 to 30 already has. The bread basket is the one of Exodus 29:2-3.

The door of the tent opened onto a court fifty cubits wide, which could not hold the whole congregation. Rashi records a midrash that this was one of the places where a small space held a great many; the plain sense may be that the people crowded the entrance to the court.

The congregation last assembled in Exodus 35:1 to be asked for gifts. This time it gathers for nothing but to watch. The installation of the priests is done in public, before the people they will serve.

Moses’ only words to the people are an attribution, not a speech. The Sifra read this as his guard against a suspicion that he was promoting his own brother: the thing is what the LORD commanded, not what Moses chose.

“Brought” is vayyaqrev, the verb used throughout chapters 1 to 7 for bringing an offering near. Aaron and his sons are brought to the entrance the way animals were brought, and washed, as the inwards and legs of the burnt offering were washed in 1:9.

Moses dresses Aaron himself, garment by garment. “Bound it unto him” is vayye’pod, a verb made from the noun ephod: literally Moses “ephoded” him, tying the waistband so the vestment held.

This is the only place in the Pentateuch where the Urim and Thummim are seen being put in. The words are usually rendered “lights and perfections”, and they begin with the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph and tav. How they gave answers is never described.

The turban goes on last, with the gold plate at the “forefront”, the old English word for the forehead. This is the first of five times in the chapter that a stage ends with “as the LORD commanded Moses” (verses 9, 13, 17, 21, 29).

Exodus 40:9-11 ordered the tent and its contents anointed; this is where it is done. The oil of Exodus 30:23-25, with its myrrh, cinnamon, calamus and cassia, is put on objects before it is put on a person.

Seven sprinklings of oil on the altar are not in any of the Exodus instructions; this detail appears only in the account of what was done. The laver and its stand are anointed with it, as Exodus 40:11 required.

Psalm 133:2 remembers this moment: “like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard”. The oil is poured, not dabbed. Only Aaron’s head receives it at this point.

The sons are dressed but not anointed here, though Exodus 40:15 ordered them anointed. Their anointing comes only in verse 30, by a sprinkling of oil and blood together, not by pouring. The difference in rank is in the way the oil reaches them.

This is the first sin offering in the Bible actually performed. Everything in chapter 4 was law; the first time it is used, the offering is for the priests themselves, and Aaron puts his hands on the head of a young bull, the animal 4:3 required of the anointed priest.

“He slew it” has no named subject, and the same happens in verses 19, 20, 22 and 23; the rabbis supplied Moses. “Purified” is chitte, de-sinned, the verb of 6:26. The altar is cleansed before it has received a single offering.

Moses was never anointed or ordained, yet during this week he performs every priestly act. The Talmud (Taanit 11b) says he served in a plain white garment without a hem. He burns the fat on the altar himself.

Nothing of the bull is kept: hide, flesh and dung all go outside the camp. It matches 4:11-12 for the anointed priest’s sin offering exactly, as though Aaron had already become that priest.

The burnt offering follows the sin offering, purification first and then the gift that goes up whole. From here on Leviticus holds to this order whenever the two are offered together, as it does in the next chapter.

The blood is dashed round about, the burnt offering’s manner, and Moses does it. The men being ordained touch nothing but the animals’ heads; all the blood this week passes through Moses’ hands.

“The fat” here is peder, the rare word of 1:8 for the suet of a burnt offering. The head, the pieces and the suet are burned in the order the law of chapter 1 laid down.

By the rule of 7:8 the officiant kept the hide of a burnt offering, which would give this one to Moses. The chapter is silent. “Burnt sacrifice”, “sweet savour” and “offering made by fire” are all stacked on this one ram.

The ram of consecration, eil hammillu’im, is handled like a peace offering: part is burned, part goes to the officiant, and the rest is eaten by the priests (verse 31). The first sacrificial meal in Leviticus is the priests’ own ordination supper.

“Tip” is tenukh, the ridge or lobe of the ear, a word found only in this rite and in the cleansing of the healed leper, who receives blood on the same ear, thumb and toe (14:14). The two ceremonies are the only places in the law where blood touches a living person this way.

Aaron is daubed first and alone, then the sons as a group. Even in the order of the blood, the high priest is kept distinct from the priests under him.

The right shoulder, which 7:32 makes the officiating priest’s portion, goes onto the altar here. At their own ordination the priests’ usual share of the meat is not eaten by anyone.

One of each kind from the basket: an unleavened cake, a cake of “oiled bread”, challat lechem shemen, rich with oil, and a wafer. The basket had stood “before the LORD” from the start of the rite.

This is the idiom behind millu’im, “filling the hand”, acted out: Moses literally fills their hands with fat, meat and bread. The phrase that means “to ordain a priest” is here a physical act.

Moses takes the portions back off their hands and burns them himself. The new priests hold the offering, but they do not yet put anything on the altar; their hands are filled and then emptied by another.

The breast normally belongs to the priests (7:31). Here it is Moses’ share, the one portion of any offering assigned to Moses in the law, his due for acting as priest during the week.

Oil and blood are sprinkled together on the men and on their clothes. The garments were consecrated with them, and when Aaron died, those same garments were stripped from him and put on his son Eleazar (Numbers 20:26-28).

“As I commanded” is Moses speaking in the first person. The Greek, and some Hebrew readings, have the passive, “as I was commanded”, which fits verse 35. The meat is boiled, bashal, not roasted as the Passover lamb had to be (Exodus 12:9).

Exodus 29:34 gives the reason for burning what is left: “it shall not be eaten, because it is holy”. The ordination meal cannot be kept for later or taken into ordinary life.

“For seven days shall he consecrate you” is literally “he shall fill your hand seven days”, the same idiom as verse 27. For that week the priests may not leave the entrance of the tent even to go home.

Exodus 29:35-36 required a bull for a sin offering “every day” of the seven, so the Sifra and later commentators read this verse to mean that the whole ceremony was repeated on each day, not performed once and then waited out.

“Keep the charge” is shamar mishmeret, to stand watch, the phrase Numbers 3:7 uses for the Levites guarding the tent. “Day and night” makes it a guard duty with no relief, and “that ye die not” is the chapter’s one warning.

Until now Aaron and his sons have only laid hands on heads and held what was put in their hands. This is the first time they are the subject of “did”, and what they did was everything commanded.