Thoughts on Leviticus 10

Today’s reading: Leviticus 10; 1 Timothy 3-4

You don’t often meet someone these days who would put Leviticus in their list of favorite books of the Bible (and by “often” I probably mean “ever”). A lot of people will either skip it or just read it dutifully because they are doing a reading plan and Leviticus is up, so they’ll just power through it. Despite people not loving the book, Nadab and Abihu being struck down by the Lord in Leviticus 10 is still a pretty well-known story.

The reason I want to talk about Leviticus 10 this morning is that it often contributes to the false narrative you hear thrown around as a truism that God was harsh and demanding in the Old Testament, but gentle and loving in the New Testament. This notion is fundamentally false on multiple levels, but it is failing to understand events like this that makes it so easy for people to latch onto this idea. We read it, think, “Holy cow… that seems like an over reaction…,” or “I’m not comfortable with that,” and then we move on without any kind of resolution in our own thinking, and it leaves us vulnerable to this kind of assault on the character of God and/or the Bible.

So let’s try to understand what they did and why it was such a big deal.

What did Nadab and Abihu do?

At the beginning of Leviticus 10 we are told that Nadab and Abihu, two of Aaron’s sons who were ordained as priests with him, are killed because they offer unauthorized fire before the Lord.

Now, at the outset, anything “unauthorized” in the worship of Yahweh was a problem. Part of the reason God was so specific in how they were and weren’t supposed to worship Him is that He was cutting a sharp distinction in their worship of Him versus the ways the other nations worshipped their gods. So we have to realize that this was not these two men going about the prescribed worship rituals and accidentally grabbing the incense out of the wrong jar of incense, and God killing them for making a mistake. This is two of the only people allowed to operate within sacred space actively deciding to worship God in a way contrary to His instructions.

More than likely though, it was more than just these two using the wrong incense. If you jump ahead to Leviticus 16 where we get the instructions for how/when Aaron is to come into the most holy place behind the curtain, it is specifically in the context of the death of Nadab and Abihu. On top of that, Leviticus 10 says that they offered their “unauthorized” or “strange” fire “before the Lord.” When we see the phrase, “before the Lord,” elsewhere in this direct context, it is referring to behind the curtain in the most holy place. This seems to indicate that Nadab and Abihu didn’t just burn the wrong incense in the tabernacle, but they actually went into the most holy place, where they were not permitted to go, in order to do it.

This would have been a problem in a lot of ways. Only the high priest is authorized to enter the most holy place, and we will see that there is a whole process by which he has to prepare himself and the tabernacle to be able to enter. Part of that process is taking incense with him, but it has to be on coals taken from the altar after burning a bull as a purification offering in preparation for entering into God’s presence. So Nadab and Abihu putting random coals in a censor, adding random incense God has not called for, and then bringing it into the most holy place is a serious violation of sacred space and completely fails to regard Yahweh as holy enough or worthy enough to define how He is to be worshipped.

Why was this such a big deal

This is probably already clear from the first section, talking about what they did, but this is such a big deal because Yahweh is holy, His presence is sacred, and you cannot just waltz into the presence of God on your own terms.

If Yahweh was going to be their God and dwell among them, the people of Israel needed to understand that He was not just another god like the rest of the nations worshipped, He was unique, distinct in the heavenly realm, and so His people had to be distinct in the earthly realm. The priests were the representatives of the people before God. So if the priests did not regard God as holy enough to get to declare how He is to be worshipped, how would the people ever recognize the reality of God’s uniqueness?

We have already seen, when God descended on Mount Sinai, that they set up a perimeter and anyone, or anything, that transgressed that barrier without permission was to be stoned to death or shot with an arrow. The tabernacle is the same. Just as God was present on Mount Sinai, He is present in the tabernacle, and His presence has to be properly regarded if He is going to continue to reside among the Israelites.

It is also important to recognize, in understanding why this is such a big deal, that this is the very beginning of the proper worship of Yahweh. This is one of their first acts as officially ordained priests for the worship of Yahweh, and if this is left unchecked, where will the priesthood end up? Later on, we will see Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phineas, violating the priesthood and God eventually has them killed in battle as punishment for their ongoing violations, but that means He allowed them to continue in their wrong worship for a time rather than immediately sending fire out to kill them. The precedent that gets set here at the initiation of properly ordained Yahweh worship will set the tone for how the priests and the people regard Yahweh for the long-haul, so the violation of Nadab and Abihu is more important, in that sense, than the violations of Hophni and Phineas.

Wrapping up

I think the important thing to take away from this is what I said above, you cannot just waltz into the presence of God on your own terms. That was true then and it is just as true today.

When people talk about God or the afterlife these days, there is often a sense that it is all on their own terms. They’ve lived well enough by their own standards that they will get to go to heaven, or they just know God is too loving to send anybody to hell, or all religions and spiritualities lead to God, etc.

But we don’t get to decide who God is or what makes us worthy to live in His presence any more than Nadab and Abihu did. He gets to tell us what He requires of us and how we are to come before Him. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him. You liking that or not doesn’t change the fact that it is the singular means by which God says we can rightly approach Him and live in His presence for eternity.