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Moses and Aaron and the Dual "Natures" of ManMoses and Aaron - Introduction Aaron was the elder brother of Moses, who led the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery. Aaron was three years old when Moses was born (see Exodus 7:7), but we don’t know how old their sister, Miriam, was at the time. There may have been a significant age gap between Miriam and Moses, because Miriam was entrusted with the care of her infant brother when Pharaoh’s edict resulted in the killing of the male Hebrew babies (Exodus 1:22; 2:1–4). God intervened to protect Moses, and the infant was discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter and taken to live in the palace as her son (Exodus 2:5–10). The Bible seems to imply that Moses was allowed to continue a relationship with his birth family. Although raised as an Egyptian prince, Moses still identified with his Jewish roots and considered the Hebrews his brothers. When he saw a Hebrew being mistreated by an Egyptian, anger rose up inside him, and he killed the abuser (Exodus 2:11–12). Fearing for his life, Moses fled into the desert where he spent the next 40 years as a shepherd (Exodus 2:15; 3:1). The Bible is silent on those years, so we can only speculate whether or not Aaron knew where Moses was and if he came to visit. It seems likely that Aaron and Moses kept in touch on occasion. When God called Moses from the burning bush and Moses protested that he could not speak well, God said, “Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well, and he is now on his way to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. . . . I will help both of you to speak. . . . He will speak to the people for you. He will be your spokesman, and it will be as if you were God to him” (Exodus 4:14–16). We know little of Aaron in those early years, but he must have maintained a relationship with the Lord because, when God told him to go meet Moses, Aaron was not at all surprised and obeyed at once (Exodus 4:27–28). Because of Aaron’s reputation in the Hebrew community, he had the connections necessary to assemble the Jewish leaders to hear what God had told Moses (Exodus 4:29–31). In a day when elder brothers were respected and held a place of honor in the family, Through the years, Aaron was indispensable to Moses. Together they faced Pharaoh, brought the ten plagues on Egypt, and led the Israelites out of captivity (Exodus 7:1–2). God spoke to Moses, Moses spoke to Aaron, and Aaron presented the messages to the people. Together Moses and Aaron were the vessels the Lord used to bring His people out of Egypt and toward the Promised Land. Aaron, along with a man named Hur, held up Moses’ hands in a battle with the Amalekites, so that the Israelite forces miraculously prevailed (Exodus 17:10–13). When Moses went up Mt. Sinai to meet with God, he left Aaron in charge of the Israelites. Within a few days, the people became restless, and Aaron demonstrated that he was not the effective leader that his brother was. Aaron quickly caved to the people’s demands for a golden idol (Exodus 32). When Moses came down the mountain, he was horrified to see the people engaging in pagan worship around a golden calf. Aaron tried to pretend he had nothing to do with it, but God brought a plague on the Israelites for their terrible sin. Moses and Aaron worked in tandem as the leaders of God’s people. Moses was God’s chosen prophet, and Aaron was God’s chosen high priest (Exodus 28:1–2). In fact, Aaron was the first high priest, and it was from his descendants that future high priests were chosen. Both Moses and Aaron were guilty of unbelief and disobedience at Meribah (Numbers 20:8–11), and both were prohibited from entering Canaan (verse 12). We learn from the relationship between Moses and Aaron that God knows our hearts and our capabilities, and He places us in positions suited for us. Aaron had to humble himself to accept God’s choice, and Moses had to accept the help. By working together, the brothers accomplished much more than either of them could do alone. By serving faithfully as the spokesman for Moses, Aaron compensated for his brother’s weakness and feelings of inadequacy. Aaron, in turn, was given “dignity and honor” (Exodus 28:2). Because of their cooperation with each other and with the Lord, the nation of Israel survived a difficult and challenging time. Aaron's Revolt (Source) - An Internal Struggle In Numbers 12, Moses’ brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, try to launch a revolt against his authority. They appear to have a reasonable complaint. Moses teaches that Israelites are not to marry foreigners (Deut. 7:3), yet he himself has a foreign wife (Num. 12:1). If this complaint had been their true concern, they could have brought it to Moses or to the council of elders he had recently formed (Num. 11:16-17) for resolution. Instead, they agitate to put themselves in Moses’ place as leaders of the nation. In reality, their complaint was merely a pretext to launch a general rebellion with the aim of elevating themselves to positions of ultimate power. God punishes them severely on Moses’ behalf. He reminds them he has chosen Moses as his representative to Israel, speaking “face to face” with Moses, and entrusts him with “all my house” (Num. 12:7-8). “Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” he demands (Num. 12:8). When he hears no answer, Numbers tells us that “the anger of the Lord was kindled against them” (Num. 12:9). His punishment falls first on Miriam who becomes leprous to the point of death, and Aaron begs Moses to forgive them (Num. 12:10-12). The authority of God’s chosen leader must be respected, for to rebel against such a leader is to rebel against God himself. The Staff of Aaron (and why Aaron let Moses Use it) (Source), (Wikipedia Article) Aaron’s rod, or staff, played an important part in God’s plan to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. In ancient Israelite culture, a rod was a symbol of authority. Shepherds used rods to guide and correct their flocks (Psalm 23:4). When God called the shepherd Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, He demonstrated His power by performing miracles using Moses’ rod (Exodus 4:1–5; Numbers 20:11). God also chose Moses’ brother, Aaron, to perform miracles with his own rod (Exodus 7:19; 8:5, 16). Aaron’s rod was the one that turned into a snake in Pharaoh’s court; when the Egyptian magi also turned their staffs into snakes, the snake that had been Aaron’s rod swallowed theirs up (Exodus 7:8–10). It was Aaron’s rod that God used to turn the water of Egypt into blood (Exodus 7:19–21). And it was Aaron’s rod that summoned the plagues of the frogs (Exodus 8:5–6) and gnats (verses 16–17). After Moses and Aaron had led the Israelites out of captivity, God set apart Aaron and his sons as priests (Exodus 28:1; Numbers 18:1). The rest of the Levites were to minister to the Lord in the tabernacle, offer sacrifices, and hear from God for the good of the whole nation. The most famous story of Aaron’s rod begins with a few of the Levites becoming disgruntled about the extra authority given to Moses and Aaron. In Numbers 16, Korah, who was also a Levite, joined with two others, Dathan and Abiram, to incite a rebellion against Moses and Aaron. In verse 3 Korah says to Moses, “You have gone too far! The whole community of Israel has been set apart by the Lord, and he is with all of us. What right do you have to act as though you are greater than the rest of the Lord’s people?” Because of this defiance of the Lord’s authority, God caused the earth to open up and swallow these three men and their families (verses 28–33). However, rather than submit to the Lord, the other tribal leaders jointed the revolt. Numbers 16:41 says, “But the very next morning the whole community of Israel began muttering again against Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘You have killed the Lord’s people!’” The Lord desired to wipe out the whole company, but Moses and Aaron fell on their faces and pleaded with Him not to destroy them. God relented and, instead, sent a plague throughout the company of rebellious Israel; the plague killed 14,700 of them (verse 49). To put an end to the unrest, God once again used Aaron’s rod for a miracle. God commanded Moses to have the leader of each tribe of Israel bring his rod or staff to the tent of meeting, with Aaron’s rod representing the tribe of Levi. Each of the twelve leaders was to have his name inscribed on his rod. The Lord told Moses, “Buds will sprout on the staff belonging to the man I choose. Then I will finally put an end to the people’s murmuring and complaining against you” (Numbers 17:5). They left their rods before the Lord, and in the morning “Aaron’s staff, representing the tribe of Levi, had sprouted, budded, blossomed, and produced ripe almonds” (verse 8). Aaron’s rod didn’t just sprout buds; it brought forth flowers and fruit, a clear demonstration of the power of the One who gives life. Verse 10 says, “And the Lord said to Moses: ‘Place Aaron’s staff permanently before the Ark of the Covenant to serve as a warning to rebels. This should put an end to their complaints against me and prevent any further deaths.’” Hebrews 9:4 tells us that Aaron’s rod remained in the Ark of the Covenant as a testimony of God’s choice of Aaron and Moses to lead His people. Aaron’s rod was also a reminder that God does not put up with rebellion against Himself or His chosen representatives on earth (1 Corinthians 10:10). Those who murmur, complain, and cause division within the Body of Christ are to be rebuked (James 5:9; 1 Timothy 5:20; 2 Timothy 2:23). God’s plans on this earth are far beyond any single human being. He desires that we work together, in one accord, to obey Him and reflect His glory. Forty Years in the Desert Aaron's Sons and the "Strange Fire" Incident - A Celestial Anomaly (Source) n order to understand the phrase “strange fire,” we must review the story in Leviticus in which it appears. The first tabernacle had been erected, and Aaron was doing a lot of sacrificing per God’s instructions (Leviticus 8—9). One day, two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, came along and offered incense with “strange fire.” The Hebrew word translated “strange” means “unauthorized, foreign, or profane.” God not only rejected their sacrifice; He found it so offensive that He consumed the two men with fire. After Nadab and Abihu were killed, Moses explained to Aaron why God had done such a harsh thing: “This is what the LORD spoke of when he said: ‘Among those who approach me I will show myself holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honored’” (Leviticus 10:3). The exact nature of the profane fire isn’t known, but, since it was the fire that was unauthorized, it could be that Nadab and Abihu were burning the incense with fire of their own making rather than taking fire from the altar, as specified in Leviticus 16:12. Or it could have been that the two men came into the tabernacle drunk and therefore could not remember what was a violation and what was not (Leviticus 10:8–9). Whatever it was the men did to render the offering profane, it was a sign of their disregard for the utter holiness of God and the need to honor and obey Him in solemn and holy fear. Their carelessness and irreverence were their downfall. In judging Nadab and Abihu for their strange fire, God was making a point to all the other priests who would serve in His tabernacle—and later, in His temple—and to us, as well. Since this was the first time sacrifices were being offered on the altar and Israel was getting to know the living God better, when Aaron’s sons were disobedient and profane, God displayed His displeasure in no uncertain terms. God was not going to allow the disobedience of Aaron’s sons to set a precedent for future disregard of His Law. A similar story occurs in Acts 5:1–11, during the time of the early church. A husband and wife lie to Peter about some land given to the church, and they are judged with physical death because of their lie. As Peter puts it, “You have not lied just to human beings but to God” (Acts 5:4). God knows our hearts. He knows what we truly believe and our attitude toward Him. We cannot offer to Him proud “sacrifices” that are unworthy of Him. He seeks those who come to Him in humility, ready to sacrifice their pride and lay before Him humble and contrite hearts grieving for sin (Psalm 51:17). Certainly, there is grace and forgiveness and plenty of “second chances” for those who belong to Him. But God wants us to know that He is serious when it comes to His honor and glory. If there is willful disobedience in the life of a believer, then God disciplines us out of His great love for us (Hebrews 12:7–11). If such disobedience continues, God will take harsher measures until we understand how we are disappointing Him. If we continue in our disobedience even after that, then God has every right to remove us from this earth (see 1 Corinthians 11:29–30). The Flawed Christian-Judaic Propagandist's View (Source) by Michael S Heiser - and My Response: The Old Testament is filled with odd stories that take us by surprise. One of those stories is found in a book that is, to say the least, pretty foreign to our modern worldview. I’m talking about Leviticus and, for this topic, Leviticus 10 specifically: the story of Nadav and Avihu, or as we like to say, Nadab and Abihu. It’s is a short episode, and I am going to read the whole thing: Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord has said: ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” And Aaron held his peace. In a literal sense, this was not the work of a wonderful, compassionate Lord, but rather an evil, vulgar Lord. The passage shocks most readers. The punishment seems overly harsh for what appears to us to be a small offense, whatever the offense was, which, of course, is the real difficulty here. What did they actually do? The people who extracted the bodies later in the passage and Aaron, the father of the deceased men, are forbidden to mourn. So we know that in God’s eyes this was pretty serious. But what exactly did these two men do? If indeed there was a literal offense committed, no man can truly state what it was: all that any man could do is assume the trespass. That is not the work of God. Strange fire in Leviticus 10 and the Meaning of zar The key to understanding the offense of Nadab and Abihu is the phrase “unauthorized fire.” Other translations might have something like “strange fire.” This is what they offered to the Lord that got them in trouble. The Hebrew here is ʾesh zarah; zarah (and the root there is zar) generally speaks to something that is not normative. But it actually has a range of usages. It is a fact that much if not all of the Hebrew religion and written tradition is borrowed from Egypt, Sumeria and Canaan. In Egyptian - where much of the Old testament is sourced from- the Z and the S interchange freely. As such, the term zarah is synonymous with the name of Abraham's wife Sarai/Sarah: apparently she was an abomination as well? Zarah is likewise the root of the term Sahara, so apparently the same desert where Moses found the burning bush, is linked to strange fire? Did Moses' God dwell in a land of abomination? Further, the author neglects the full term zarah to make his case, instead convuluting it with the term zar which is not the term used in the Old Testament. Abhorrent, loathsome It could mean “strange,” as in something abhorrent or loathsome. For instance, in Job 19:[17] we read, “My breath is strange (zar) to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.” Normally he doesn’t stink like that or as bad, and so Job is saying, “Because of my condition, there is something strange.” There is something not normative about him. So that’s one possibility. Job 19 uses the term zar - Leviticus 10 uses the term zarah: the author is comparing apples to oranges in order to manipulate the reader. By changing the word at the onset, the author maliciously attempts to create a completely different context to what is really meant. The root of the term S/Zarah is likewise S/Zar: was S/Zarah abhorrent and/or loathsome? Actually, if taken in a literal sense, yes she was. Foreign, pagan The word could also mean “foreign,” as in something associated with pagans or Gentiles. Psalm 44:20 says this: “If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god.” “Foreign” there [is] Hebrew zar. So here’s a clear instance where Unauthorized, inappropriate Third, it could also mean something like what the ESV has here, “unauthorized”—in other words, something not appropriate or something that’s disqualified or off-limits. Numbers 1:51 is a good example of this. That passage reads, “When the tabernacle is set out, the Levites shall take it down, and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up. And if any outsider”—there’s our word zar—“comes near, he shall be put to death.” What’s normative for taking down and setting up the tabernacle is that the Levites do it. So if somebody else decides they are going to pitch in, that is not normative. That is unauthorized. The basic idea of a departure from what’s normative sort of underlies all of these possible usages for the Hebrew term zar. The only uniqueness regarding the Semitic Hebrew religion is that its very foundation is wholly unauthorized: it is the result of the act of simultaneously borrowing and vilifying the hosts whom they ''spoiled''. Sacred space Unauthorized incense There is a similar phrase and a very similar idea, context in Exodus 30:9 that describes what is and is not to be burned on the altar of incense. That passage reads as follows: “You shall not offer unauthorized incense on it, or a burnt offering, or a grain offering, and you shall not pour a drink offering on it.” The altar of incense is the referent point for this. You are not supposed to offer burnt grain or drink offerings on it. It’s the altar of incense. It’s for incense—and not just any incense. There is such a thing as unauthorized incense. There are rules for what kind of incense could be offered on the altar of incense. Specifically, you could read that in Exodus 30:34–36. Profane coals We can coherently infer, then, that the ʾesh zarah—the unauthorized fire brought into the holy place at the altar of incense, which was “before the Lord,” right there before the veil in the holy place, behind which was the ark of the covenant—that that was a disallowed fire. [There is] something going on there with what they brought into that most holy location right before where the presence of God was. That’s what’s going on here. There is something there that they did wrong. It was unauthorized. Coherently infer? That's an oxymoron! Fire in the verse that we’re talking about refers to coals that were carried in the censers. Remember, they’re carrying censers in Leviticus 10. That’s the way the passage opens. You would drop incense on hot coals and then create the incense smoke. So what sort of coals would be unauthorized or authorized? How does this work? In other words, what makes what they did not normative? The priests ministering in the holy place were supposed to get their coals from a particular location, not just any place. The author's explanation regarding what was carried is an assumption, not a fact. Milgrom, in his commentary on Leviticus, writes this: “This can only mean that instead of deriving from the outer altar (e.g., [Lev.] 16:12; Num. 17:11), the coals came from a source that was ‘profane.’” It was not normative. Profane there doesn’t mean something like swearing. It means ritually disqualified, ritually impure. In English we see a word like profane and we think it’s some sort of morally off-putting thing, but it actually means it comes from a common location. There is sacred space in Israelite thought, and then there is common space. There is turf associated with God and where God’s presence is and where His priests are supposed to be, and then there is turf that everybody else can walk on. So the difference between profane and sacred is really important here. Apparently, what Milgrom is saying is that the coals that Nadab and Abihu used came from a place not designated as a holy or a sacred spot, a proper location. It came from a common, nonsanctified source. Polluting sacred space Nadab and Abihu’s crime, then, was polluting sacred space with their non-sacred coals. It places them right in front of Yahweh, so to speak, right at the veil where the altar of incense was. They carry something unauthorized to that point where He is right behind the veil, and they offer incense using profane coals. And if you remember the passage, the fire that consumes them comes out from behind the veil. It comes directly from God, and it consumes both Nadab and Abihu. Note how one moment the author is assuming to know something, and the next he is stating as fact what he earlier admitted he was assuming. This is unfortunately so typical of so many "religious scholars": they make up their minds, for whatever motives, and then "fill in the blanks" without taking any further evidence into account. As Moses says just a few verses later to their father Aaron, “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common,” the sacred and the profane. The object lesson was that God’s presence is not to be polluted. He gave rules to teach you about sacred space, so learn the lesson. From making errant assumptions, to stating flawed, assumptive ''facts'', to claiming to know the answers, to telling the reader what to do as if the author was THE authority on the matter - all in a few paragraphs: this is why religions and their subjects suffer so greatly. The passage about strange fire in Leviticus 10 is actually quite understandable on its own terms. It’s just that we have little concept anymore of sacred space, judging certain areas to be for the Lord’s presence and no other use. My Response to the above Nadab and Abihu committed no crime. They were children of God no less than Moses or Aaron. Their gift was no less clean than any rich man's "perfect sacrifice", and they gave what they felt was best. Their was no malice in their hearts towards God in their offering. This passage in a literal sense holds neither meaning nor moral lesson. Instead, when used as such, it is a false guardian exploited by the mundane powers to create a separation of the masses from God. For one man to say his self-imposed ritual is the only means of attaining God's approval is blasphemy against one's own soul. This passage has no true purpose when assigned a literal, human sense. It instead is an allegorical parable referencing a cosmic anomaly that occurred long ago. Moses as Aaron - Aaron as Orion
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