80 myths · Page 2 of 3
Moses anointed Aaron as High Priest and then told him he could not serve for seven days. He sat at the door of the Tabernacle and watched.
After Phinehas stopped the plague, his enemies attacked his mother's lineage. God answered by publicly establishing his priestly identity through Moses.
A careful reading of two Exodus verses reveals that Aaron preserved the manna beside the Ark within months of it first falling, not decades later.
God called both Moses and Aaron to ascend Sinai together, then specific commands revealed that only Moses could enter the innermost darkness where God was.
On Mount Hor, Moses removed Aaron's priestly robes piece by piece and dressed his son in them. What he saw there never left him.
Aaron's consecration as High Priest began with four measures of living water and ended with God's Name placed on gold above his forehead before all of Israel.
When God told Moses to bring Aaron near for consecration, the Targum adds three words: Aaron was far off because of the work of the calf.
After Korah's rebellion, Aaron ran into the plague with altar fire and incense. He stopped the Angel of Death at the boundary between the living and the dead.
Midrash Tanchuma hears an extra word in the verse and reads it as proof that a heavenly tabernacle rose the same day Moses erected the earthly one.
Blood on a lintel, a convert at the gate, two letters of Torah grammar, Aaron in the Holy of Holies. Four thresholds. One question: who gets across.
Same gold, same hands, different god. Three thousand died after the calf. Then Israel stripped their jewelry and ran it to Moses faster than he could take it.
Three hundred priests carried one curtain to be washed. A handbreadth thick, woven on seventy-two strands, the parokhet guarded the holiest room.
On the road near Bethlehem, seven men robed in white stop a shepherd and dress him in garments of a priesthood he never asked to carry.
The high priest wore twelve gemstones on his chest, each engraved with a tribe's name. When someone asked a question, letters glowed to spell the answer.
On the day Aaron became a priest, one ram's blood wrote the law of the laying-on of hands, and his raised palms carried a blessing to all time.
On the day the Mishkan opened, fire consumed Nadav and Avihu. Moses spoke of Sinai, rumors were sealed, and Aaron answered with silence.
For seven days Moses served alone and the sky stayed empty. On the eighth morning Aaron stepped to the altar, and the Glory finally came down.
On the eighth day Moses called Aaron to the altar as his equal, then fire took Aaron's sons, and Aaron answered the loss with silence.
After Korach challenged Aaron at the altar, God issued a formal written deed. The challenge that meant to end the priesthood instead made it permanent.
Aaron was called holy after the calf because his priesthood carried atonement, plague-stopping mercy, and a line of sons who survived.
Outside the Temple walls, priests used an epithet. Inside, during the morning sacrifice, they lifted their hands and spoke the actual Name.
The plague had killed twenty-four thousand when Phinehas rose from the assembly and moved. He stopped the plague and earned a covenant that has not ended.
Levi was pasturing flocks when grief took him and a mountain appeared. The heavens opened, and God spoke his name from the highest throne.
Two identical goats stood before the High Priest. A lot decided which burned on the altar and which walked alive into the wilderness carrying Israel's sins.
Aaron's first offering as High Priest was a tenth of an ephah of flour. Vayikra Rabbah found in that small measure the whole architecture of divine mercy.
God made Moses install Aaron before witnesses. The robes were barely on before two sons burned. A half-Egyptian man then cursed God and was held for judgment.
The Levites wade into the flooding Jordan with the Ark on their shoulders, certain they are carrying it. Then the water refuses to part.
The priesthood almost went to someone else. Aaron kept it through a bull shaped like a hill, a blessing said backwards, and a lamp God held in reserve.
Aaron's priesthood was bracketed by two catastrophes -- the Golden Calf and Korah's rebellion. Both threatened him. Both failed to destroy him.
When plague swept the camp after Korah, Aaron grabbed his censer and ran into the gap between the dying and the living. Incense held death back.
