Aaron's Sons Died on the Best Day of His Life

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Five Joys Before the Fire Came Down

Elisheba, daughter of Amminadav, stood in the crowd at the Tabernacle that morning and counted the men of her house. Her husband Aaron wore the ephod, twelve tribal names cut into the two stones on his shoulders. Her brother-in-law Moses ruled Israel. Her son Eleazar stood at the head of the priests. Her grandson Phinehas was marked for the priesthood of war. Her brother Nachshon led the tribe of Judah. Five honors in one household, and the day had not properly begun.

Then fire came down on the altar. The whole camp shouted and fell on its face.

In the noise her two eldest, Nadab and Abihu, went to fetch their censers.

The Two Who Walked Behind

Years before, on the climb up the mountain, the order of the procession had been fixed and everyone kept to it. Moses and Aaron went first. Nadab and Abihu came next. The elders of Israel came after them. Walking in that order, staring at the backs of the two old men ahead, the young priests turned over one sentence. When will these two die, so that we lead the people in their place?

Rabbi Yudan in the name of Rabbi Aibo held that they said it out loud, one mouth to the other ear. Rabbi Pinhas held that they never opened their mouths at all, and that the thought stayed inside them, where they believed it was safe.

The answer came back either way. Do not boast about tomorrow, God told them. Many a colt has died before its mother, and its hide was cut and spread across her back to carry loads. Rav Pappa knew the same thing as a saying in the market. Plenty of old camels go about loaded with the skins of the young ones.

Sinai counted against them too. Moses at the burning bush had turned his face away from what he was shown. These two had stood on the mountain, eaten and drunk in the presence, and looked straight into it without flinching.

The sentence was passed on that road. It was not carried out on that road. God waited, the way a king waits who learns on the morning of his daughter's wedding that the best man has done something that carries death. Execute him now and the shadow falls across her day. Better on my own day of gladness than on hers. So the account stayed open until the Tabernacle stood.

What They Would Not Do

They had never married. No woman in the camp had been good enough. "Our father's brother is king, our father is high priest, our mother's brother is prince of his tribe, and we are heads of the priesthood," they said. "What woman is worthy of us?" Girls in the camp grew older waiting for a word that never came.

On the eighth day they asked Moses nothing. They asked their father nothing. They did not even ask each other. Each man took his censer alone and put fire in it that no one had commanded. They had drunk wine. They were not wearing the garments the service required. They had not washed at the laver. They walked toward the innermost room, which had been closed to them, and they walked in separately.

Had either one turned and asked the other, neither would have gone.

Two Threads of Fire

Out of the Holy of Holies came two flames as thin as threads. They split into four. Two went into each man through the nostrils and burned the soul out of him where he stood.

Nothing outside was touched. No scorch on the linen. No mark on the skin. Two young priests lay on the floor in full vestments, looking like men who had lain down in the middle of the service.

An angel shoved them out of the priestly room before they died, so that they fell just past its threshold. Their cousins Mishael and Elzaphan were Levites and could not have crossed that line to reach them. The two took hold of the vestments and carried the bodies out of the camp, because there was nothing about the bodies themselves that had been damaged.

Aaron did not follow. A high priest walks in no funeral procession, not for a stranger and not for his own son. Eleazar and Ithamar had been consecrated that same morning and were held by the same rule. They could not tear their clothes. They could not let their hair down. The service went on, and they went on serving it.

Moses came over and told his brother why it had happened. Aaron gave him no answer. Vayidom (וידם), and he was silent, and that silence was the whole of what he said that day.

The Question He Asked Later

The silence did not hold. Aaron came back with a question and put it in order, the way a man does when he has been turning it for a long time.

"All Israel stood at the Red Sea and looked at You, and nothing happened to them afterward," he said. "All Israel stood at Sinai and looked at You and lived. My sons, whom You yourself ordered to dwell in the Tabernacle, where an ordinary man cannot set foot and survive, went in to see Your strength, and they died."

The answer came through Moses. "I have shown your house a favor and paid it an honor in this burning. I set you and your sons closer to the sanctuary than anyone, closer than your brother Moses. And I decreed that whoever enters the Tabernacle uncommanded is struck with tzaraat (צרעת), the affliction that puts a man outside the camp. Would you rather your sons, who were given the innermost rooms, sat out there among the lepers?"

Aaron heard it out. "I thank You for showing me this," he said. "Better that they died than that they wore out their lives outside the camp. Your kindness is better than life, and my lips will praise You."

Beyond the tents, two Levites were closing two graves they had never expected to dig. Elisheba stood where she had stood all morning, in a house that still held five honors and two sons fewer.