Leviticus 21: The Blemished Priest Still Eats the Bread

A man in a class I sat in a few years ago said Leviticus 21 is where God sorts out the imperfect. Blind, lame, broken hands, a flat nose and the answer to every one of them is no. He wasn't being unkind about it, he said it the way you'd mention the weather, and when somebody asked what we do with that today the teacher said we've grown past it and turned the page. It's a technique I've watched work on a lot of verses.

I don't buy the first half.

The chapter does keep certain men from certain places, and I'll get to that. It doesn't keep them from the table, and verse 22 sits two verses from the end of the chapter where anyone can see it. I'm starting with the back half because that's the half my classmate was talking about. Verses 1 to 15 are a different matter, and they come after.

What verse 22 gives the man the list turns away

At verse 16 the chapter turns from the priests in general to Aaron himself, and the subject becomes "whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish" (v. 17), who is not to "approach to offer the bread of his God."

The list in verses 18 to 20 is long and it isn't gentle. A blind man, a lame man, a man with a flat nose or "any thing superfluous," one who is brokenfooted or brokenhanded, crookbacked, a dwarf, someone with a blemish in his eye, scurvy, scabbed. Verse 21 says it again in case anyone skimmed. Then this:

He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy, and of the holy.
Only he shall not go in unto the veil, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries: for I the Lord do sanctify them. (Leviticus 21:22-23)

"The bread of his God" is the same phrase in verses 17 and 21, where he may not offer it, and in verse 22, where he eats it. My classmate stopped reading at 21.

The loss in verse 23 is a real one. He doesn't get the altar and he doesn't get the veil, and he was born into a family whose whole work happens at the altar. The text never says he did something to land on that list, or that his body is a sign of something he did. What it names as at risk is the sanctuaries.

In Leviticus 10 Moses goes looking for the goat of the sin offering and finds it burned, and he's angry with Aaron's two surviving sons:

Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord? (Leviticus 10:17)

So eating was part of the priests' work, and verse 22 puts "the most holy" on the blemished man's plate along with the rest. Whether that makes him a sharer in what the sin offering does, I can't tell from the text.

In verse 24 Moses tells all of this to Aaron, to his sons and to all the children of Israel, which means the men on the list were standing there when it was read out, along with everyone who knew them, and they heard verse 22 in the same breath as the rest.

What the first fifteen verses ask of the rest

Verses 1 to 4 set the rule for ordinary priests and the dead. None of them is to be "defiled for the dead among his people" except for the nearest: mother, father, son, daughter, brother, and a sister who is a virgin and has had no husband. Verse 5 adds the mourning marks, no baldness, no trimmed beard corners, no cuttings in the flesh. Israel as a whole had been told something close in Leviticus 19:28, which I wrote about last Sunday in what the owner is told not to finish. Here it's the priests' own bodies that have to stay unmarked.

The high priest's rule is stricter, and verse 11 says he shall not go in to any dead body, "nor defile himself for his father, or for his mother," and verse 10 says he "shall not uncover his head, nor rend his clothes," which is what Moses told Aaron's sons not to do on the day Nadab and Abihu died (Leviticus 10:6). The reason is on his head. Verse 12 says "the crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him."

Verses 6 to 9 and 13 to 15 cover whom the priests and the high priest may marry, and what happens to a priest's daughter. I have little to add. Verse 9 is hard reading.

Harlan Voss

In the ward we lived in before this one there was a man named Harlan Voss who had been blind since a construction accident at twenty-three. He taught the older boys and he home taught with a cane, and he knew the route to every front step in that part of town better than I did.

I was the elders quorum president then. One night a man in the quorum had thrown his back out and couldn't get up from the couch and his wife called and five of us went over to give him a blessing. He'd asked for Harlan to say it. Harlan found the chair by the sound of its springs, and he found the man's head by asking me quietly to put my hand where his should go. I did, and he laid his over mine, and then moved it onto the man's head once I took mine away. The blessing took about two minutes. The man could stand by Sunday, which I'd like to credit to the blessing but which the doctor, I'm fairly sure, would credit to the ibuprofen.

That has nothing to do with Leviticus, and the General Handbook isn't talking about Leviticus either when it says persons with physical disabilities "may perform and receive ordinances and blessings" and that leaders "make arrangements so these persons can participate to the extent possible" (38.2.1.9). It's current Church policy. I bring Harlan up because when I read verses 18 to 21 he's who I think of, and then verse 23 says the altar rule is real, and I haven't found a way to hold both.

On the way out Harlan walked his cane into the bumper of the wife's car in the driveway and said sorry to it. Nobody laughed harder than he did.

Frequently Asked Questions

Could a priest with a blemish still eat the priests' food?

Verse 22 says yes, he "shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy, and of the holy." What he can't do is go in to the veil or come near the altar (v. 23).

Does Leviticus 21 say a disability is a sin?

The chapter gives no moral reason for any condition on the list, and the reason it states for keeping him from the altar is "that he profane not my sanctuaries." If you're asking whether it means a blemish is deserved, the text doesn't go there and I don't think we should either.

Who could the high priest marry?

A virgin of his own people, and not a widow, a divorced woman or a harlot (v. 14). Ezekiel 44:22 is looser for the priests in its temple vision and allows "a widow that had a priest before," so the rule isn't the same everywhere in the Bible.

Does the blemish rule apply to priesthood holders now?

I don't think so, and the Handbook line above points the same way, but D&C 84 doesn't settle it. Verses 26 and 27 say the law of carnal commandments continued "with the house of Aaron among the children of Israel until John." That tells me when the older law ran. It says nothing about deacons, teachers and priests today, so anyone who gives you a neat answer from those two verses is adding to them.

The thing I'd like to know is what you picture happening at that meal in verse 22. When the others go in to the altar, is the blemished man at the table with them, or waiting for what's left? I've gone back and forth, and I'd like to hear how it reads to someone who has sat there.

— D.