Your Humble Blogger appears to be lame. Very lame. Well, there it is. Last week was parshah Vayikra (Exodus 9:1-11:47), which contains two odd stories, which we talked about in synagogue. The first and better-known is the story of Nahab and Abihu, the drunken worthless sons of Aaron, bringing “strange fire” to the Lord, and getting burnt to death for it (10:1-2). Moses tells Aaron and his remaining (presumably sober) sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, to finish the service without stopping to mourn, and they do. Then, after the sacrifice is complete, Moses “diligently inquired” into the sacrifice (10:16), and accuses Aaron’s sons of not having finished it properly (by eating the remaining meat). Aaron defends them (and himself), giving a somewhat cryptic interpretation of the ritual law, and Moses is content, and we move on.
The thing that struck me as odd about this was the timing of it. I mean, after two of Aaron’s sons screw up the ritual and instantly die, why would Moses be such a hard-ass? That seems not only incredibly hardhearted (insensitive to Aaron’s grief, not to mention his own nephew’s gruesome demise) but almost blasphemous. I mean, the Lord has shown himself pretty well capable of taking care of things himself, right? But Moses has to quibble about it with Aaron and the remaining cohenim. And here’s the weird part—he’s wrong. He’s invented an infraction out of his own head. Aaron actually corrects the lawgiver on a technical point. And then, in another strange moment, Moses is ‘pleased’ or ‘content’ or ‘satisfied’; the word is yatab which is often translated as something like ‘it is well with him’ or ‘do thee good’.
Anyway, my counterfactual is ‘what if Aaron and the two surviving sons had made an error?’ Or, rather, what if Moses hadn’t allowed himself to be persuaded that Aaron’s interpretation was correct? Would Moses have killed the three of them? Or somehow defrock them? If so, could he have picked new cohenim? Or would he just have given them a stern talking-to? I mean, the Lord didn’t wait for Moses to decide with Nahab and Abihu; had the Lord said anything to Moses about this (alleged) infraction, or was Moses on his own, and if he was on his own, how far does his authority go?
In conversation on some of these issues (and other things people brought up, much of which was really interesting), I found myself saying “after Moses gets the Law, he’s never happy again’. I wonder if that’s true; I’ll be keeping an eye out for it. Anyway, it’s long past time I started reading for this week (parshah Tazria, Lev 12:1-13:59)
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.