The long period during which we have studied the specifications for, the erection of and the consecration of the mishkan – the desert sanctuary – comes to an end in Parashat Shemini. At the end of Parashat Tzav, the previous parashah, we learned that Aaron and his sons were to remain in, or at the entrance to, the tent of meeting, for seven days after their ritual anointing. It is on the day after that period, the eighth day, from which our portion takes its name, that the process of mishkan preparation is to be completed with the offering of the initial sacrifices.
The first part of Shemini, the ninth chapter of Leviticus, details the initial sacrifices. After the sacrifices are prepared and placed on the altar, Aaron blesses the people. The he and Moses enter the Tent of Meeting. We are not told what happens during the time they are together in the tent, but we assume that they have some experience of God’s presence. When they come out of the tent, they both bless the people. Presumably, all has been done to God’s satisfaction because immediately after that blessing ‘Fire came forth from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the fat parts on the altar. And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces.’ (NJPS Lev: 9:24)
The text is explicit in describing the reaction of the people. The Hebrew is unambiguous: col ha’am, all of the people, saw and shouted and fell on their faces. And that unity of experience and expression, we are told, is the point of the entire long and meticulously detailed process of the creation of the mishkan and its implements. It was meant to simultaneously create both the sanctuary and a unified people with a common direction and understanding. That unity would be essential to their survival and to their accomplishment of the purposes for which God had liberated them.
We have also learned from our study of the last several parshiot that – except for the two blessings mentioned above – the sacrificial and ordination rituals were silent. No words of offering or dedication or ordination were spoken. In silence, especially such a deep and awesome silence as would accompany these terribly consequential rituals – the impact of any action is magnified. And, incredibly, as the people had fallen on their faces at the display of God’s might and favor, action was taken that was unauthorized and specifically contrary to God’s command.
In Exodus Chapter 30 we read that a special altar was to be created for the burning of incense. Aaron is responsible for burning the incense on that altar in the morning and at twilight. The incense to be burned there is special. It is ‘refined, pure, sacred’ and ‘it shall be held by you sacred to the Lord’. The incense altar is first used by Moses (Ex 40:27) when he burns incense on it ‘as the Lord commanded.’ So, how, where and when incense is to be burned is an important matter. The first verses of Lev Chapter 10 read:
‘Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the Lord alien fire, which He had not enjoined upon them. And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them; thus, they died at the instance of the Lord.’ (Lev 10:1-2 NJPS)
The rabbis and commentators have struggled with this episode throughout the ages and many explanations for the severity of the punishment of these two eldest sons of Aaron have been advanced. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks provides a list of some of those. “Nadav and Abihu died because: they entered the holy of holies; they were not wearing the requisite clothes; they took fire from the kitchen not the altar; they did not consult Moses and Aaron; nor did they consult one another…; they were guilty of hubris; they were impatient to assume leadership roles themselves; they did not marry…’[1] These are all quite specific to the transgression, though, and to the transgressors themselves. But the motivation for such a dramatic and immediate divine action must, it seems, be equally consequential. It must go beyond the two perpetrators and their specific action. What might that be?
One of the conversations that surround the question of Nadab and Abihu concerns the character of the fire upon which they placed the incense. The Hebrew phrase for the fire is esh zarah. We have seen that the issue of the incense is an important one and at Exodus 30:9 Aaron is told ‘You shall not offer alien incense – ketoret zarah – on it.’ The only reference to the fire to be used for incense burning is about its location. It is to be on the altar specially created for the twice-daily incense offerings. But the text uses the same adjective to describe a fire about which something is not correct as it does to describe defective incense.
The word zarah (zayin-resh-heh in Hebrew) is a form of the verb whose root letters are zayin-vav-resh.[2] Forms of that verb can mean e.g. to be strange, to be a stranger, to become estranged or to be loathsome. The common translation in the context of fire or incense is ‘alien’, which is a bit more emphatic or possibly more dangerous sounding than the simple descriptor: ‘strange’. However, if we use an automated search engine – I used the one at www.sefaria.org – to search for instances of zayin-resh-heh, an interesting association appears. Zarah is also an expression of the verb whose root is actually zayin-resh-heh, which has a primary meaning ‘to scatter’.[3]
A form of that verb is found, for example, in the account of the golden calf. Moses burns the idol, grinds it up into powder and scatters (vayizer) it upon the water.(Ex 32:20) Another form is found in the story of the rebellion of Korach at Numbers 17:2, when, after Korach and his band are destroyed by fire, Eleazar is told to remove the fire pans and ‘scatter (zereh) the coals abroad’.
These are clearly two different verbal roots, but they ‘intersect’ in the sense that each can be expressed by the same consonantal text i.e. zayin-resh-heh. Having arrived at that intersection we have to take the additional step of searching for both esh, fire, and zarah, strange or alien. Allowing the search maximum freedom – that is, without constraining order or form – returns references to only three episodes: not just in the Torah, but in the entire Tanakh.
The three episodes that meet those search criteria are:
1. The episode of the Golden Calf (Ex 32:20)
2. The account of Nadab and Abihu (Lev 10:1, Num 3:4 and 26:61), and
3. The rebellion of Korach (Num 17:2)
The entire enterprise of the construction of the mishkan was to foster unity, to gather together what had become scattered in Egypt. The essential threat represented by these three episodes was to the project of unification. And not only unification of the people but unification of the people and their God. The consequences in each case were drastic, dramatic, painful, public, and immediate.
At the intersection of strangeness and scatteredness was the fate of the entire project of peoplehood. And that project could not be allowed to die in the desert.
© Charles R Lightner
[1] Sacks, J. Leviticus: The Book of Holiness. Covenant & Conversation series. Maggid Press and The Orthodox Union. New Milford, CT. 2015 p144 [2] Brown Driver Briggs #2114. [3] Brown Driver Briggs #2219