Leviticus 9: Fourteen Verses Before the Fire

Most people who know Leviticus 9 know the last verse, with its fire and its shouting, and I think that's a lopsided way to carry the chapter. The longest stretch of it, verses 8 through 21, is fourteen verses of a man doing what he was told, slowly, with blood on his hands. The fire is real and it matters, but it lands on a day that was mostly work, and the work was mostly somebody else's idea.

I read it twice on Thursday before I logged in for work. The second time through I stopped at verse 4 and stayed there longer than I meant to.

The promise comes before the first knife

In verse 3 Moses tells Aaron to speak to the children of Israel and gather their offerings, and verse 4 finishes that instruction with a clause that's easy to skim: "for to day the Lord will appear unto you." So the people are told to expect it before a single animal has been touched.

Moses says it again two verses later, once everything is standing in front of the tabernacle:

And Moses said, This is the thing which the Lord commanded that ye should do: and the glory of the Lord shall appear unto you.

Leviticus 9:6

Read that as an if-then and it falls a little flat, because there's no "if" in it. There's a thing to do and a glory that will appear, and an "and" between them. The promise is in the future tense and it was made before anybody could have earned it, which makes me slow to treat the fire at the end as a wage.

Behind the "eighth day" in verse 1 is a week of waiting, since Leviticus 8 ended with Aaron and his sons told to stay at the door of the tabernacle seven days, "that ye die not" (8:35), and verse 36 says "So Aaron and his sons did all things which the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses." They waited a week with nothing to do but not leave, which I suspect is harder than the offerings.

Why does Aaron start with a calf for himself?

The first act of Aaron's first day in office is a sin offering for Aaron. Moses says so in verse 7, "make an atonement for thyself, and for the people," in that order, and verse 8 doesn't skip it: Aaron "slew the calf of the sin offering, which was for himself."

Moses gives no instruction about how to feel while doing it, and the narrator gives Aaron no lines. A man just walks up and kills a calf for his own sin in front of everybody who has come to see him installed. The same order comes back on the Day of Atonement, where Aaron offers the bullock "which is for himself" (16:6, 16:11) before he touches the goat for the people, so this is how the office works and not a one-time awkwardness. I wrote earlier about the sin offering for someone who was guilty before he knew it, and Aaron's calf is that same logic with the knife in the priest's own hand.

Then there's the animal, since in verse 2 Moses tells him to "Take thee a young calf for a sin offering." This is the man who, in Exodus 32:4, took the gold from the people's ears and fashioned "a molten calf." I don't know that the text wants the echo heard, and nobody in the chapter mentions it. But I couldn't get "a young calf" at the start of his career past the last calf he was involved with.

The offerings in Leviticus 4 don't quite match what chapter 9 asks for, because a priest who sins brings "a young bullock" (4:3) and so does a congregation (4:14), while in chapter 9 the priest brings a calf and the people bring "a kid of the goats" (9:3) for their sin offering. Maybe this day was set apart with its own list, or maybe the two chapters have different jobs. I can't tell which, and the numbers are the kind of thing I'd check before leaning on anyone's explanation.

What's actually going on in verses 8 to 21?

Aaron slays the calf, his sons bring the blood, he puts it on the horns of the altar and pours the rest out at the bottom. He burns the fat and the kidneys and the caul above the liver, and the flesh and hide go outside the camp. Then come the burnt offering and the people's sin offering, then the grain and the peace offerings, and at the very end he waves the breast and the right shoulder. That's the plot, and there isn't more of it.

Every piece was laid out in the first seven chapters of the book, and verse 16 says so in passing: "he brought the burnt offering, and offered it according to the manner." According to the manner. The text assumes Aaron has the manual and so do we, and this is the first time anyone runs the whole thing live. Leviticus 6 has its own instruction about the altar fire, "The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out" (6:13), and whether that means a fire was already burning when Aaron arrived or whether verse 24 is the first fire from the Lord, I'd hold both readings loosely.

"Commanded" turns up five times in 24 verses, in verses 5, 6, 7, 10 and 21. Verse 10 is the one I'd point to, because it sits in the middle of the fat and kidneys, the dullest job in the chapter: "he burnt upon the altar; as the Lord commanded Moses." Nobody was watching that part for the drama.

The sentence gets its note of obedience anyway.

The sons are there too, and in verses 12 and 18 they "presented unto him the blood," and in verse 9 they "brought the blood unto him." They're the ones in the room with him, and two of them won't be by the next chapter.

When the glory of the Lord appeared, what did it land on?

Verse 22 has Aaron lift up his hand and bless the people, and then he "came down from offering of the sin offering, and the burnt offering, and peace offerings." Verse 23 follows: "And Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of the congregation, and came out, and blessed the people: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the people."

Compare Exodus 40:34-35, where the cloud covered the tent and Moses "was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation." Here Moses and Aaron go in and come out again before anything appears. I wouldn't build a doctrine on the difference, since the two scenes are doing different jobs, but the order is odd enough that I noticed it.

Then verse 24:

And there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces.

Leviticus 9:24

What the fire consumes is "the burnt offering and the fat," the very things Aaron laid there in verses 13 and 19 through 20. It takes what he'd been arranging all chapter, and then the people shout first and then they fall down,

Nadab and Abihu are the reason I won't call that fire a reward. Leviticus 10:1-2 has them offering "strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not," and fire goes out from the Lord and devours them. Aaron had four sons, and "Aaron's sons" are the ones holding out blood in this chapter, so those two were very likely standing there on the eighth day. The fire is the same fire, and the two days are close together. I don't know how to line them up neatly.

The people are the last thing I want to look at. Verses 4 and 6 say "unto you" to the congregation, and verse 23 says the glory "appeared unto all the people." What the people did in between was bring animals (verse 5) and "drew near and stood before the Lord." The fourteen verses of work were Aaron's, the first of them for himself. The people watched, and the glory came to them anyway.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Aaron offer a sin offering for himself before the people?

Because the book sets that order for a priest, and I don't think there's a hidden reason beyond it. Leviticus 4:3 assumes an anointed priest can sin like anyone else, and Leviticus 16 repeats the pattern on the Day of Atonement. The step comes built into the office.

What was the fire in verse 24?

The verse says it "came out from before the Lord," and I'd leave it at the verse. It doesn't say lightning, and it doesn't say miracle either, only that everyone saw it and fell on their faces. Anyone who explains it more precisely than that, in either direction, is working from something other than the text.

Why does the chapter begin on the eighth day?

Leviticus 8:33 to 35 had Aaron and his sons stay at the door for seven days, so the eighth is the first day after the waiting, and verse 1 has Moses call them. Whether the number carries a meaning beyond that, nothing in the chapter settles it for me.

Is this the same priesthood the Aaronic Priesthood is named for?

The name comes from here. Doctrine and Covenants 107:13 says that priesthood "is called the Priesthood of Aaron, because it was conferred upon Aaron and his seed, throughout all their generations." What a deacon or a priest does in a ward on Sunday has nothing to do with animal offerings, though the office carries his name all the same.

— D.