Exodus 4:14-17
A mouth for the mouthless
God is angry at Moses and the answer to the anger is a brother. Aaron is already on the road, and the two meet at the mountain and kiss.
People of the Bible
Aaron
Spoke for the man who could not, made the calf, and was made the first priest anyway.
Aaron is sent out to meet his brother in the wilderness after forty years apart, and becomes his mouth. He stands in front of Pharaoh, holds up Moses’ arms until the sun goes down, and then, left in charge for forty days, collects the gold and makes a calf, and tells his brother it came out of the fire on its own. He is still the man clothed in the ephod and the breastpiece and consecrated at the door of the tent, and the priesthood carries his name for the next thousand years.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Aaron
- 01
- 02
Exodus 32:1-6, 21-24
It came out of this calf
The people ask for gods they can see and he does not refuse. Asked afterwards what happened, he says he threw the gold in the fire and the calf came out by itself.
- 03
Leviticus 8:1-9:24
Set apart at the door
Washed, clothed, anointed and kept at the entrance seven days. On the eighth he lifts his hands and blesses the people, and fire comes out.
- 04
Leviticus 10:1-7
Strange fire, and silence
Two of his sons offer fire that was not commanded and do not come back out. He is told not to mourn them publicly, and Scripture says only that Aaron held his peace.
- 05
Numbers 20:22-29
The garments taken off on the mountain
He climbs Hor, the priestly clothes are transferred to his son in front of him, and he dies up there. The nation weeps for him thirty days.
Why it matters
Aaron is the argument that the priesthood was never about the worthiness of the priest. The same hands that shaped the calf carry the incense that stops a plague, running into the middle of a dying crowd and standing between the dead and the living. His line becomes the only one permitted at the altar, and the New Testament reaches past it to Melchizedek precisely because a priest who dies and a priest who fails cannot be the last word.
27 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
