2. When you light up the lamps. Rashi provides a vividly imaginative explanation for why this unit of four verses about the lamp stand should immediately follow the dedicatory offering of the twelve tribes: “When Aaron saw the dedicatory offering of the chieftains, he was dismayed that he was not together with them in the dedicatory offering, neither he nor his tribe. The Holy One said to him, ‘By your life, yours is greater than theirs, for you light and tend to the lamps.’”

4. petal. This is a collective noun indicating the floral ornamentation of the seven lamp holders.

6. Take the Levites . . . and purify them. If there is no biblical theology of original sin, there is, at least among the Priestly writers, a technology to deal with original impurity. The dangerous inner zone of the sanctuary can be entered only when a person has undergone an elaborate sequence of acts to rid himself of the impurity that is intrinsic to profane life: thus the Levites must be sprinkled with expiation water, have their body hair shaven, their garments washed, and a special sacrifice intended to remove even inadvertent offense (ḥataʾt) offered up for them.

7. expiation water. Many medieval and modern interpreters understand this as a reference to the water mingled with the ashes of the red cow referred to in Numbers 19:1–9, though Baruch Levine offers grounds for skepticism about this identification. The term ḥataʾt means both offense (political, diplomatic, social, moral, or cultic) and, especially in cultic contexts, any ritual means employed to remove or cancel the effect of the offense committed.

10. the Israelites shall lay their hands. For practical reasons, as many commentators have noted, the laying on of hands would have to be performed by designated representatives of the people.

19. I made the Levites wholly given to Aaron and to his sons. Although “given” (netunim) is not repeated (netunim netunim) as above, an analogous emphasis is conveyed by the cognate verb (in the translation “made” but literally in the Hebrew “gave”). This is the first clear indication of a hierarchical division of cultic labor between the Aaronide priests (kohanim) and the Levites, who serve them and do the heavy lifting in the sanctuary (the “work”), in contrast to officiating in the ritual. Levine conjectures that historically this division between Levites and priests began only at the time of Josiah’s reforms around 621 B.C.E.

that there be no scourge against the Israelites. This characteristically Priestly notion is that profane persons, presuming to enter sacred space, would automatically trigger the devastating manifestation of divine fury (qetsef) in the form of a scourge or epidemic. The presence of the Levites in the sanctuary is thus properly represented as a “watch” or the equivalent of army service, for as properly consecrated and purified cultic servitors, they act as a kind of protective phalanx that wards off danger from the Israelites who might otherwise approach too close to the sacred zone.

24. from twenty-five years old and up. Earlier, the beginning age for levitical service was stated as thirty. Various efforts have been made to harmonize the contradiction, but one suspects that the different passages reflect different traditions.

25. he shall come back from the army work and shall work no more. The provision made here is for a kind of phased retirement. The defining term of difference is “work.” From the age of fifty, the Levite is relieved of heavy labor within the sanctuary, the responsibilities that were undertaken as a kind of equivalent for military service, but he continues to assist his brother Levites, evidently outside the sanctuary, in their guard duty.