God Spoke to Aaron Alone After His Two Sons Died

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Fire Came Out and the Camp Went Quiet

Two of Aaron's sons put coals in their censers, laid incense on top, and carried a fire in front of the Lord that nobody had asked them for. Fire came back out and ate them where they stood. Nadav and Avihu died at the door of the Tent on the eighth day, the day the service opened.

Moses turned to his brother and said this was the meaning of being sanctified in those who come near. Aaron held his peace.

Then Moses called in Mishael and Elzaphan, cousins of the dead men, and told them to carry their kinsmen out of the camp. The two came in, took hold of the tunics, and carried the bodies past the altar and out through the tents. Aaron watched them go and did not follow.

Forbidden to Mourn

The order reached him while the smell was still in the air. Do not let the hair of your head go loose. Do not tear your clothes. Do not go out from the door of the Tent, or you will die too and the anger will fall on the whole congregation. Let your brothers, the whole house of Israel, weep for the burning. You stay dressed.

So the camp wailed and the father did not.

He stood in the linen breeches that run from the loins to the thighs, tied with cords, cut like a rider's trousers, made with no opening of any kind. Nobody in Israel would ever see that garment. He stood in the tunic under the sash, and the sash was tied where it is always tied, not below the loins and not above the elbows but level with them, at the place on a man where the sweat comes. The turban sat on his head and his hair showed in the gap between the turban and the gold plate.

The garments were the priesthood. A priest who takes the blood of an offering while one of them is missing has not made an error of dress. The offering is dead and he is standing outside his own office. Two tunics disqualify. A doubled sash disqualifies. So does a bandage under the cloth, a patch, a dead louse, a film of dirt, a loose thread lying where the linen is supposed to touch skin.

Aaron ran his hand down the cords at his thighs and went back to the altar. It was still the same day.

The Cook Who Could Not Look at a Corpse

A king kept a cook who went in and out of the palace all day and looked at the king's own face. One morning the king stopped him in the doorway.

"I decree upon you that you will not look at a dead body as long as you live. You come in here. You see me. You will not carry death into my house."

That is why the command to the priests arrives doubled, said and then said again, for a thing that should have needed saying once. They cross the threshold. They stand in front of the Presence. A man who looks at the King does not bring a corpse in on his clothes.

For Aaron the rule had faces on it. He was the one who could not go near his own dead, and as high priest he could not have gone near them for a father or a mother either. Mishael and Elzaphan had done for Nadav and Avihu the one thing their father was forbidden to do, and the cords at his thighs were the reason.

The Voice That Did Not Go Through Moses

Everything Aaron had ever been told came through his brother. God said to Moses, and Moses said to Aaron. That had been the arrangement since the burning bush.

Then, with two sons dead and the altar still working, a sentence started somewhere else. The Lord spoke to Aaron. Not to Moses about Aaron. To him.

Drink no wine and no strong drink, you and your sons with you, when you come into the Tent of Meeting, and you will not die. Separate the holy from the common and the unclean from the clean. Teach the children of Israel every statute.

A warning and a commission in the same breath, and underneath both of them the plain fact that heaven had used his name without sending it through anyone first.

Words of Torah are a crown for the head and a chain for the neck. They are a remedy for the heart, a salve for the eyes, a cup of root potion for the gut, healing for the whole body of a man. The heart that had been under a stone since the eighth day came up. Aaron was glad, and it showed, and the camp saw the high priest glad on the day he buried nobody.

He Answered His Brother and Won

Later that same day Moses went looking for the goat of the sin offering and found it burned instead of eaten. He rounded on the two sons Aaron had left and demanded to know why they had not eaten it in the holy place.

Aaron answered him. It was the only time he did.

"Today they brought their sin offering and their burnt offering in front of the Lord, and things like this have happened to me. If I had eaten the sin offering today, would that have been good in the eyes of the Lord?"

Moses heard it, and it was good in his eyes, and he let it go.

The father who had not been allowed to tear his clothes had found the one thing he was permitted to say. He said it to the brother who had carried every word to him for a year, and the brother backed down.