The Ordination Offerings

Sacrifices & Feasts of the Old Testament collection. Seven-day ceremony, repeated in full daily, installing Aaron and his sons. Whole thing is about making a mediator fit to stand where a sinner can't. It works, but it was fragile - Lev 10

Setup

• Exod 29 = the instruction. Lev 8 = the execution. Details differ slightly. Milgrom's explanation (via House): Leviticus is concerned with procedural order, Exod 29 supplies a random inventory of required materials, which was a standard scribal style in the ANE. There's no significance attached to the differences.
• Materials: a bull (purification offering), a ram (burnt offering), a second ram = the ram of ordination (millu'îm, literally "fillings"), a basket of unleavened bread with loaves, oil-mixed cakes and wafers.
• Seven days (8:33, 35), with the first-day rites including the atoning sacrifices repeated each day (Exod 29:35-37).
  • Sklar reads the number (7) as underscoring completeness - atonement fully accomplished, bringing them into ritual holiness so they could minister in the holy palace of the holy King.
• Couldn't leave the courtyard for the whole seven days, on pain of death (8:33, 35). Leaving a holy place for a non-holy place mid-consecration = disregarding the process itself.

The Rite - Read It as a Ceremony

A ceremony brings about a change in status through rites directly related to its purpose. His comparison is a wedding - special clothing sets the couple apart as principals, rings symbolise commitment, vows are public declarations. Here the purpose is to make Aaron and his sons ritually holy priests.

• Washing (8:6). Movement toward a higher state of ritual purity. Levites in the parallel rite shaved all body hair (Num 8:7).
• Vesting (8:7-13). Aquinas's summary of the eight high-priestly vestments is worth having for the two that carried the tribes - ephod with two onyx stones on the shoulders engraved with the names of Israel, and the breastpiece with twelve stones bearing the same:

in token that the priest bore the burden of the whole people, since he bore their names on his shoulders; and that it was his duty ever to think of their welfare, since he wore them on his breast, bearing them in his heart, so to speak.

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II Q. 102

• Anointing (8:10-12). Oil poured on Aaron's head. Aquinas connects it to Ps 133:2 - the power of consecration flows from him to others "just as oil flows from the head on to the lower parts of the body."
• Purification offering (8:14-17). A bull, to atone for their sin and impurity so they could serve before a holy King.
• Burnt offering (8:18-21). A ram, wholly consumed.
• Ram of ordination (8:22-29). Hand-leaning, slaughter, then the distinctive rite: blood on the right ear, right thumb, right big toe of each priest. Then portions of fat, right thigh and bread placed in their hands and waved (see The Wave & Heave Offerings). Then burned.
• Final sprinkling (8:30). Moses takes anointing oil and blood together, sprinkles priests and garments. Sklar reads the repetition of both as signifying "the deep extent of this consecration."
• Eating (8:31-32). Holy meat and bread boiled and eaten at the tent entrance. Holy food, holy people, holy place. Leftovers burned.

Ear, Thumb, Toe

• Aquinas's reading is the traditional one: ear touched "to denote that they should be obedient to God's law in offering the sacrifices," hand and foot "to signify that they should be careful and ready in performing the sacrifices." Hearing, doing, going.
• The same three points are daubed in the cleansing of a person healed of skin disease (Lev 14:14).
  • The rite that restores an outcast to the camp is the rite that installs a priest in the sanctuary.
  • Whatever else is happening, blood on the extremities marks the boundary of a body as consecrated territory - regardless of whether that person is being brought back in or sent further in.

The Priest Is Atoned For First

• Order matters, which Hebrews emphasises. Before Aaron can mediate for anyone, a bull dies for him. Purification offering comes first in the sequence.
• And it's repeated seven days running. Pretty savage for those who need to be cleansed (dude, you REALLY need cleansing).

It Worked, but It Was Fragile

• Lev 9-10 is the necessary sequel and House reads them together.
• Priests begin to lead worship and at first obey perfectly (9:1-22). Approval = fire consuming the sacrifices while God's glory appears (9:23-24). The people shout.
• Then Nadab and Abihu offer "unauthorised fire" that God "had not commanded them" (10:1), and fire from the same presence kills them.

The text does not specify the offense committed by the two young priests; it merely states that they brought an offering that had not been specifically ordained. Indeed that is the point. The priests disobeyed God's word and thereby committed the root sin of the human race.

• Paul R. House, Old Testament Theology

• Two duties then attached to the office (10:10-11):
  • Teachers - revelatory bridges relaying God's standards to the people.
  • Facilitators of atonement (10:17).
• Kaiser, via House: "those who by virtue of their office are called to draw near to God constantly place themselves in a perilous, as well as privileged, position."
• Worth carrying into any discussion of ministry. Ordination in Leviticus isn't primarily a promotion. It's a licence to stand somewhere lethal on other people's behalf - and the licence is renewed by blood every single day for a week before anyone is allowed to use it.

New Testament Fulfilment

Christ Needs No Ordination Offering

• Heb 7:26-28 inverts Lev 8 point by point.
  • Bull for the priest's own sin > unnecessary, no sin. "holy, innocent, unstained."
  • Seven-day repetition > unnecessary, "once for all."
  • Washing > unnecessary, "unstained."
  • Ram of ordination > unnecessary, because "he offered up himself." A category the Levitical ceremony had no room for: the ordinand as the victim.
• Emadi adds that the Levitical priesthood was constituted by law and inherited by descent - which is why its holders kept dying (Heb 7:23). Christ's is constituted by divine oath and held "forever," so the ordination never has to be repeated for a successor.

The Church as an Ordained Priesthood

• 1 Pet 2:5, 9. "a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices"; "a royal priesthood… that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you."
• 1 Peter's opening already gestures at priestly consecration - believers chosen "for obedience and for sprinkling with the blood of Jesus" (1:2), recalling both the Sinai covenant ratification (Exod 24:3-8) and, plausibly, the priestly ordination.
• Both duties of Lev 10:10-11 pass to the church. Proclamation, and the offering of sacrifices - now praise, good works and generosity (Heb 13:15-16).
• Hezekiah's rededication: the whole assembly "consecrated themselves" using a verb normally reserved for priestly ordination: "As in David's day, the whole people set themselves apart for God as his priests to offer worship (as in Exod. 19:6; 1 Pet. 2:4, 9-10)."
  • The trajectory from Exod 19:6 to 1 Pet 2:9 was visible in Israel's own history before the NT completed it.

On Laying On of Hands

• Practice passed from the apostles into the church, and later came to be regarded in some traditions as a sacrament conferring an indelible character and a special "spirit" of office.
• Bavinck's objection is exegetical: "according to Scripture it does not bestow, but rather presupposes, the charismata required for office." Acts 6:3 requires deacons to be full of the Spirit beforehand.
• His conclusion: ordination is "the solemn public declaration before God and his congregation that the person called has been sent by way of a lawful process and hence by God himself."
• Closer to Lev 8 than the sacramental reading is. Aaron didn't receive priestly aptitude from the oil. He received public, God-authorised installation - and then had to go and do the job carefully enough not to die.