Leviticus 10: Strange Fire and What Aaron Did Next
The explanation for what Nadab and Abihu did wrong is five words long, and it sits at the very end of verse 1. Before that we only get what they did. Each of them took his censer and put fire in it and incense on top, and then "offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not" (Leviticus 10:1).
There's no motive given and no earlier warning, and neither brother says a word. Verse 2 is a single sentence that moves faster than the first. The fire goes out from the Lord and devours them, and they die before the Lord.
What was the strange fire in Leviticus 10?
The chapter before gives us one fixed point, which is that in Leviticus 9:24 "there came a fire out from before the Lord" and consumed the offering on the altar, and the people shouted and fell on their faces. Leviticus 6:13 had already said the fire upon the altar was to keep burning and never go out, and I take that to mean this altar. So two men carrying their own fire in a censer, one chapter after the whole camp watched the Lord's fire arrive, makes the obvious guess an easy one. The fire came from the wrong place. That's my reading and I'd hold it loosely.
Incense had rules of its own in Exodus 30, where verse 9 says "Ye shall offer no strange incense" on that altar, and verses 34 through 38 give a recipe that nobody may copy "to yourselves." That's the neighborhood, and it's close. But Leviticus 10 says fire where Exodus says incense, and it points to no earlier command. Numbers 3:4 tells it again in nearly the same words, "when they offered strange fire before the Lord, in the wilderness of Sinai," and adds that "they had no children." Two books tell it in the same few words.
Some readers have filled the gap with drunkenness, because wine turns up a few verses later. I'll get to that. The chapter already gave its reason in verse 1, and the reason is that the fire was not commanded.
Why couldn't Aaron mourn his sons?
Moses speaks first, and what he says goes to Aaron.
Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the Lord spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.
Leviticus 10:3
After that come the logistics, because Moses calls Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel, who was Aaron's uncle. They carry the bodies "in their coats out of the camp" (verses 4 and 5). Aaron and his remaining sons Eleazar and Ithamar are told to leave their heads as they are and keep their clothes whole, "lest ye die, and lest wrath come upon all the people." Those were the ordinary gestures of grief. Jacob rent his clothes for Joseph in Genesis 37:34 and mourned many days. Here the mourning is handed to somebody else: "let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord hath kindled" (verse 6).
Aaron lost two sons that day, in front of everyone, the same day he was installed as priest, and he was told the people would do his crying for him. When I dedicated a grave for a man from my old quorum, the wind pulling at the tent, what I remember is the work of staying still.
The same warning, "lest ye die," is attached to the mourning rule in verses 6 and 7 and again to the wine rule in verse 9. Aaron is being told what is at stake with the bodies barely out of the camp.
Leviticus 16 opens its instructions for the Day of Atonement by saying the Lord spoke to Moses "after the death of the two sons of Aaron" (Leviticus 16:1).
Does verse 9 mean Nadab and Abihu were drinking?
Not that I can see, and what the text does say is odd enough to stop on. In verse 8 the Lord speaks to Aaron himself and gives him a rule: no wine or strong drink when going into the tabernacle, "lest ye die," as a statute "for ever throughout your generations."
Then comes the reason, and the brothers don't appear in it. The rule is there so that "ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean," and so that "ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord hath spoken" (verses 10 and 11). Ezekiel 44 repeats it. Priests are not to drink wine when they enter the inner court, and they are to "teach my people the difference between the holy and profane" (Ezekiel 44:21, 23).
So the first thing the Lord says to Aaron after the burning is that the job needs a clear head and that the job includes explaining things to everybody else. It is also the one place in the chapter where the Lord speaks to Aaron himself, with no Moses in between. We have our own rule about wine and I could draw a line from this verse to it. The verse is about priests at the tabernacle, so I'll leave it there.
Why does the chapter end on a goat?
In verse 16 Moses "diligently sought the goat of the sin offering," finds it burnt instead of eaten, and is angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, "the sons of Aaron which were left alive." The rule he's holding them to is in Leviticus 6, the same chapter where restitution comes before the ram. A sin offering whose blood is brought inside the holy place is burnt. One whose blood stays outside is eaten by the priest in the holy place (Leviticus 6:26, 30). Moses says the blood wasn't brought in, so they should have eaten it.
Aaron's answer is the only time he speaks in the whole chapter.
And Aaron said unto Moses, Behold, this day have they offered their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord; and such things have befallen me: and if I had eaten the sin offering to day, should it have been accepted in the sight of the Lord?
Leviticus 10:19
And then: "when Moses heard that, he was content" (verse 20).
Aaron gives Moses a question and no defense, and what he says what had happened to him that day and asks whether the eating would have been accepted. Moses, who has just been angry, hears it and leaves it there. What I notice is that Aaron said it to Moses' face, in words, which is the thing nobody in verse 1 got to do.
The priests' portions in verses 12 through 15 are the same wave breast and heave shoulder I covered in the Leviticus 7 post on the three-day rule. Even in this chapter, with two bodies carried out of the camp, the eating schedule goes on being enforced.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "strange fire" mean in Leviticus 10?
Fire the Lord had not commanded, which is all verse 1 gives. I'd be wary of anyone who says exactly where it came from.
Why did God punish Nadab and Abihu so severely?
It sits hard with me. The chapter's own answer is verse 3, that God will be "sanctified in them that come nigh me," which says what the sanctuary is and says nothing about proportion.
What happened to Aaron's priestly line after this?
It went on through the two sons who were left, since Numbers 3:4 says Nadab and Abihu "had no children," and that Eleazar and Ithamar "ministered in the priest's office in the sight of Aaron their father." So Aaron was alive and watching while his younger sons started the work.
Does this chapter apply to priesthood holders today?
Some of it does, and the most I'd take from it is a habit of asking what I've actually been asked to do before I add something of my own. Anybody who uses it to scare a deacons quorum has read less of the chapter than they think.
When Moses "was content" in verse 20, do you hear a man who was persuaded or a man who had simply stopped pushing a grieving father? Tell me which you hear.
— D.