John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: April 29

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: April 29


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The Strange Fire—Mourning

Leviticus 10

Among the incidents of Sinai which may be regarded as historical, is one which intimately concerned the family of Aaron. It occurred after he and his sons had been set apart to the priesthood, and—the tabernacle having been erected—the system of ritual worship was in full operation. Aaron had four sons—Nadab, Abihu, Eleazer, and Ithamar, who had daily duties to discharge at the tabernacle. The two former, as the eldest, enjoyed special consideration, and they had been with their father and Moses in the sacred mount, which had not been the case with their brothers. Among the priestly services was that of offering the precious incense upon the golden altar within the tabernacle, at the very time that the daily sacrifice was being consumed upon the brazen altar in the court without. At the time the ritual service had been inaugurated, the fire of the great altar had been kindled from heaven; and it was made an ordinance that this holy fire should always be kept up and preserved, and that this, and this alone, was to be used in all the sacred services. The priests who offered incense had therefore to fill their censers with fire from the great altar when they went into the tabernacle to burn incense. It was in this matter that Nadab and Abihu sinned. Treating this ordinance as of no importance—thinking to themselves that common fire would burn their incense quite as well as the other—or perhaps, as there is reason to fear, having been led into a mistake or neglect by inebriety—they filled their censers with “strange fire”—unhallowed fire, not from the altar, and ventured to bring it into the tabernacle. The altar on which they were to lay it, stood before the veil or curtain which separated the outer chamber from that inner one in which lay the ark of God, and over which “between the cherubim” shone that Divine and burning radiance usually called the “glory of the Lord,” but properly distinguished by the Hebrew term, Shekinah. No sooner did they enter the place with their strange fire, than a penetrating flash shot forth from the symbol of the sacred presence, and laid them dead. The effect was like that of lightning; for the fire which “devoured” their lives, left their sacred vestments unconsumed.

This was an awful thing. Was it not terribly severe? We must answer that it was necessary. At any time the offence would have been very grievous; but at this time, when the ritual service was so newly established, and just coming into regular operation, such an infraction of it by the very persons whose official charge it was to maintain its sacredness, demanded a most rigid punishment—even a miraculous interposition, to protect the sacred service, and indeed the whole law, from that disesteem on the part of the people which might naturally have resulted from it, if passed over without the severest notice.

And what did Aaron say to this—the afflicted father, who saw the two eldest of his sons taken from him at one stroke? He said nothing. “He held his peace.” Never did that eloquent tongue utter words so cogent or so beautiful as was this silence then. It reminds us of him who said, “I was dumb; I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.” This simply natural and touching circumstance raises Aaron in our esteem. We view his veiled sorrows with the respect which the most clamorous grief might vainly claim; and we feel more than ever disposed to extenuate the weakness which belonged to some parts of his career.

The occasion gave Moses the opportunity of enforcing upon the father and brothers, and in them, upon all future high-priests and priests, the obligations of public duty as limiting the indulgence of private feeling. Eleazer and Ithamar, consecrated as they were to the Divine service, were not to adopt the usual signs of lamentation, nor so much as to suspend the offices in which the calamity found them engaged. This was obviously insisted upon, lest a relaxation of the precision of the ritual, on any account, at this early period, before habit had made it familiar, should be looked upon as a dispensation for future negligence. To the deeper feelings of the bereaved father some allowance was shown. The goat of the sin-offering, instead of being partly consumed, and partly reserved for use, to be eaten by the priests as directed, had been wholly consumed on the altar—perhaps because the grief of the bereaved family not allowing them to assemble for a repast, they knew no better way of disposing of it. Moses remonstrated with Eleazer and Ithamar on this negligence: but Aaron said that after what had befallen be had no heart for feasting, and he could not think that such a service would be demanded or accepted by the Lord; and we are told that “When Moses heard that he was content.”

The prohibition to the priests to manifest the customary signs of mourning, because the vows of the Lord were upon them, shows us what were the ceremonies or expressions of mourning in use among the Israelites. The words are “Uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes.” The book of Leviticus contains further regulations on the same subject. In Lev_21:1-5, the priests are forbidden to contract the defilement involved in mourning, except for their nearest kindred; and the high-priest not even for them, not even for his father or mother. The acts prohibited are thus specified: “They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh.” The priests might rend their garments—not, we apprehend, their sacerdotal vestments, but their ordinary raiment; but the high-priest might not do even this; and the priests, though so far allowed to appear as mourners, might not do so to the extent of disfiguring their persons in any manner.

It is remarkable that the book of Job, usually considered as produced in the same age as the Pentateuch, embodies notices of nearly all the ancient and subsisting practices of eastern mourning. Two of those here indicated, are produced in one verse. The patriarch, when informed of the death of his children, as the climax of his trials, “Arose, rent his mantle, shaved his head, and fell upon the ground and worshipped.” Note: Job_1:20. Other early instances are those of Reuben rending his clothes, when he found not Joseph in the pit; Note: Gen_37:29. and of Jacob also doing this when he understood that his beloved son was killed. Note: Gen_37:34. This is certainly not the least significant or impressive of the acts of mourning in the demonstrative grief of the East. It is, in a certain degree, a natural impulse, and as such has kept its ground while many mere conventional tokens of sorrow have passed away. It is to be recollected, that by such means the ancient as well as modern Orientals, including the Jews, sought to obtain the result which we ourselves achieve by a distinctive dress. They had no mourning dress, and therefore denoted their condition by rent clothes, by lack of ornaments, and even by personal disfigurements.

It is somewhat remarkable, that there is in Scripture no indication that any of the people, except the priests and military men wore any covering upon their heads. It would therefore seem at first view, that the clause forbidding them to “uncover their heads” in mourning, signifies that they were not to lay aside the turbans peculiar to their office. That this was included in the prohibition is very likely. But it must also mean more; for if they were not to forego this covering of the head, much less might they cut or shave away their hair, as from the instance cited from Job, and from others that will occur to the reader, appears to have been customary. Shaving the head is now common throughout Western Asia, as it was among the ancient Egyptians; and it has hence, as an act of mourning, become extinct. This may seem to us too deliberate an act to be a natural expression of mourning. But eastern grief, though demonstrative, is deliberate; besides that, the word does not necessarily mean shaving with a razor, but may mean any mode of cropping or shearing the hair with knife or scissors. However, there is not really more of formal deliberation in having the head shaven, even with a razor, than in being measured for a suit of mourning clothes. What is directed to be avoided may be seen in the Apocryphal book of Baruch, Note: Letter of Jeremiah 6:31 where the mourning practices of heathen priests are indicated—“Their priests sit in their temples, with their clothes rent, and their heads shaven, and have nothing upon their heads; and they roar and cry before their gods, as men do at the feast when one is dead.”

This, in fact, recognizes these acts as common customs of mourning among the Jews; but the writer is, as a Jew, surprised at their being exhibited by priests. Compare this with Jeremiah, Note: Jer_41:5.—“There came from Samaria fourscore men having their heads shaven and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves,” etc. This was in token of affliction.

Much curious speculation has been applied to “the corner of the beard” which it is forbidden to “shave off.” Some take it to mean that it is the beard as a whole which the mourning priest is forbidden to disfigure in mourning. It seems rather, however, to signify, that they were not to destroy the whiskers or upper extremities of their beards. This implies that the Israelites, although so recently from Egypt, did allow their beards to grow ordinarily, contrary to the practice of the Egyptians, from whom they were thus distinguished. On the other hand, it appears from the representations to be found of Syrian and Arabian foreigners upon the monuments of that people, that some of these nations did trim away the whiskers, while they allowed the beard to grow.

The text would therefore intimate, that the practice of the Israelites in preserving the “corners of their beards,” distinguished them also from these nations, and that distinction was not to be destroyed, even in the act of mourning.

The slashing of the flesh with knives or lancets in the transport of grief or enthusiasm, still occurs often enough in the East; but is not now a regular custom of mourning, though it may be found as such among some American tribes. Herodotus states, that it was not an Egyptian custom, but affirms that it was a Syrian one; and in this he is confirmed by the remarkable case of the priests of Baal, who “cut themselves, after their manner, with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.” Note: 1Ki_18:28. From this statement, it is easy to see how many regulations, apparently of small consequence, must have operated to distinquish the Israelites from the various nations among whom they were placed, and thus tend towards the maintenance of their existence as a separate people. As an act of mourning, the cutting of the flesh seems to have been retained by the Israelites, Note: Jer_16:6; Jer_48:37. it having been seemingly understood as forbidden only to the priests, in whom it might have been regarded as a religious act, and might so had to the notion, that the sight of human suffering was pleasing to God, or might tend, even when self-inflicted, to excite his compassion or move his purposes. In this sense the custom is not extinct among the devotees of the Pagan or Moslem East. In the latter there are—fewer now indeed than formerly—certain calenders. or dervishes, who treat themselves after this fashion.