Elisheva Lost Her Sons on the Day of Glory

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Aaron Asked About Her Brother First

Aaron took Elisheva for a wife, and the Torah gives her two labels where one would have done. Daughter of Aminadav. Sister of Nahshon.

The second label is the one that mattered at the time. A man looking at a bride was told to look at her brothers, because sons tend to come out resembling their mother's brothers rather than their father's. So Aaron looked at Nahshon, who would stand at the head of all twelve princes, and he made his decision about the marriage from there.

She came into his tent as a woman whose family was going up. Her sons were born there: Nadav, Avihu, Elazar, Itamar. Later her son Elazar would marry into a house that ran back through two lines at once, one from Joseph who had beaten down his own inclination, and one from Yitro, who had fattened calves for idols before he ever heard of Israel's God. From that mixed household came Pinchas.

Five Crowns in One Morning

Then came the day the sanctuary opened, and every man in her family was standing somewhere near the top of it.

Moses, her husband's brother, ruled the people like a king. Nahshon, her own brother, had been raised prince over the princes. Aaron wore the high priest's vestments with the stones of the ephod across his chest, and the oil was still shining in his hair. Her two eldest sons served as deputies of the priesthood, standing where nobody else in Israel was allowed to stand. Her grandson Pinchas held the anointing of the priest who goes out with the army.

Five honors, one household, one morning. No woman in the camp had ever held that many at once. Elisheva walked out into a day that smelled of fresh oil and new linen and had nothing left to want.

They Carried In Fire Nobody Had Asked For

Nadav and Avihu took their pans and went in.

The incense was their own idea. Nobody had told them to bring it and nobody had told them to come in at that hour, and they were young enough and close enough to the Presence to think the difference would not matter.

Fire came out from before the Lord. It did not touch the pans or the curtain or the floor. It took the two men who were holding the pans, and it put them down.

They had gone in on their feet. They came out carried, and they came out burnt.

Justice Laughed

Of laughter it was said, it is confounded. The line was written long before her and it landed on her that afternoon, because the attribute of Justice laughed at Elisheva bat Aminadav.

Not one of her five honors was fake. Her brother-in-law really did rule Israel. Her brother really was prince over the princes. Her husband really did wear the ephod, and he went on wearing it, standing in the doorway of the tent, saying nothing at all while men carried his sons past him by their tunics.

That is what made the hour unbearable. Nothing had to be taken away from her for the day to break. The honors all stayed exactly where they were. Two of the five simply stopped breathing inside them.

Her celebration turned into mourning between one service and the next.

Columns of Smoke

She became like columns of smoke. Blackened through, from the pain and from the grief, standing in a camp that still smelled of inauguration incense and now smelled of something else underneath it.

Elazar and Itamar were still alive. They were still in their linen. They would carry the priesthood forward, and their line would run through Pinchas and past him, and the service of that day was not even suspended.

Aaron did not speak. Moses spoke, about strange fire and about glory, and the words went over the top of a woman who had woken up that morning with five crowns in her house and would go to sleep with three.

The camp moved on within the week. The smoke went with it.