Aaron replied to Moses, today they sacrificed their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord, but such things as this have happened to me. Would the Lord have been pleased if I had eaten the sin offering today? The response of Aaron — the father who has just lost two sons on the first day of his official ministry — is the response of a man who understands the theological implications of his grief. His question is not defiant but theological: given what has happened (the death of his sons), would eating the sin offering today have been appropriate? Aaron is raising the question of whether grief and the priestly eating of the sin offering can coexist — whether the priest who has just experienced the Lord's judgment on his house can act as if everything is ordinary.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

Publish a note on this verse