Original Meaning

AFTER MOSES TEACHES all Israelites how to live holy lives (Lev. 17–20), chapter 21 focuses on the lifestyle of priests. Verses 1–9 concern priests in general, verses 10–15 have to do with the high priest, and verses 16–23 return to priests in general. Moses conveys these laws to Aaron and his sons, but he also makes them known to the rest of the Israelites (v. 24) because they are to respect the holiness of the priests (v. 8).

Priests in general must guard their holiness in several ways. (1) They must not incur corpse contamination, except to bury close relatives (21:1–4). Treatment of dead bodies as impure contrasts with the Egyptian belief that the realm of the dead was divine, holy, and pure.1

(2) Priests may not practice the pagan mourning customs of making themselves bald or shaving the edges of their beards. Nor may they put incisions in their flesh (21:5; see comments on 19:27–28) as the Canaanite god El is said to have done when Baal died (cf. 1 Kings 18:28).2

(3) A priest’s holiness prevents him from marrying three kinds of women: a promiscuous woman (including a prostitute), a defiled woman, or a divorced woman (21:7). Some have interpreted the term ḥalalah (“defiled [woman]”) as combining in a hendiadys (“one through two”) with zonah (“promiscuous [woman]”) to describe the same person, that is, “defiled by prostitution” (NIV). However, 21:14 reverses the order—“defiled [woman]” followed by “promiscuous [woman]”—showing that they are separate individuals.3 Because the kinds of women in 21:7 appear to be listed in descending order of undesirability, some have argued that the “defiled [woman]” is a rape victim.4 Although such a person was innocent (Deut. 22:25–29), perhaps it was not consistent with the holiness of a priest for him to marry someone who had been violated like this.

Leviticus 21:8 touches on the responsibility of all Israelites toward a priest: They must treat him as holy because he offers “the food” (i.e., sacrifices) of their holy God (cf. 21:6), who makes them holy. For the people to maintain the benefit of their relationship with God, they must have priests who live holy lives (cf. 1 Sam. 2–4, Eli’s evil sons).

A priest’s family members participate in his holiness. This is true both because they are related to him and because he shares with them the holy (but not most holy) portions of sacrificial food (cf. Lev. 22:12–13). For a priest’s daughter the good news is that she enjoys an elevated status of holiness. But this privilege carries moral responsibility. The bad news is that if she profanes/desecrates herself by promiscuity (so-called “harlotry,” but not limited to prostitution), she not only shames her father (cf. Deut. 22:20–21);5 she also profanes his priestly holiness. Since this is a particularly grave evil, which affects all Israelites by morally sullying the priesthood, the penalty is harsh even if she is not betrothed or married: She is to be burned (Lev. 21:9; cf. Gen. 38:24; Lev. 20:14).

The high priest is especially consecrated for uniquely intimate access to God on behalf of all Israelites. Correspondingly, he must live by the strictest rules of all (21:10–15). In addition to the regulations for all priests, he may not dishevel his hair or tear his garments (21:10; violated in Mark 14:63), including his nonpriestly clothes, even to mourn for the dead.6 The high priest is forbidden to incur corpse contamination at all, even for his own father or mother or by merely entering a place where there is a dead body (Lev. 21:11; cf. Num. 19:14).7

In Leviticus 21:12, the high priest may not leave the sacred precincts, that is, for the purpose of participating in a funeral and/or mourning (cf. 10:6–7). The fact that in 8:33, 35 confinement of Aaron and his sons to the sacred compound was limited to the seven days of consecration implies that under normal circumstances, they would be free to leave.

To preserve the integrity of his sacred line of descendants (21:15), a high priest’s marriage options are limited to a virgin of his own people/kin (21:13). This rules out a widow, in addition to the three classes of women forbidden to ordinary priests, who are now listed in ascending order of undesirability (21:14; cf. v. 7).

Although priests who are seriously defective in that they are blind, lame, disfigured, and so on, may eat most holy and holy sacrificial food (i.e., priestly portions that supply an important part of their livelihood), they are forbidden to desecrate the sanctuary by engaging in priestly officiation, whether inside the sacred Tent or at the altar in the court (21:16–23). The rationale for excluding defective priests is related to that of the other rules in this chapter: The priesthood constitutes the Lord’s corps of special servants, who must be in harmony with his holy, immortal, perfect sphere to the greatest extent possible. Only in this way can they properly represent the nature and character of God to the people. Because a priest who officiates serves as an ideal Israelite with special access to God, freedom from serious physical defect is even more essential to qualification for the job than above-average height and freedom from lameness are currently prerequisites to consideration for a position on an NBA basketball team.

Bridging Contexts

WHAT IS A DEAD “SOUL”? Leviticus 21:11 is significant for the biblical understanding of death. Since the Hebrew word nepeš was translated “soul” by KJV in many other contexts (Gen. 2:7; 12:13; 17:14, etc.), and since many assume that a “soul” has intelligent existence after the death of the body, it is fascinating to find the plural of nepeš described in 21:11 as “dead” (napšot met; cf. Num. 6:6, nepeš met). What is a dead nepeš as opposed to a live nepeš (e.g., Gen. 2:7, “living being”)? It is simply a corpse—an unthinking, unfeeling, dead body of a person (cf. Num. 9:6, 7, 10, nepěs [ʾadam]), which conveys physical ritual impurity by contact or proximity within an enclosed space. While the word nepeš has various meanings, including “throat” (the seat of emotions), “life,” “person,” and so on, it never refers to an entity that has intelligence after death (cf. Ps. 115:17; Eccl. 9:5).

. . . the n. is never given the meaning of an indestructible core of being, in contradistinction to the physical life, and even capable of living when cut off from that life. When there is a mention of the “departing” (Gen. 35:18) of the n. from a man, or of its “return” (Lam. 1:11), the basic idea . . . is the concrete notion of the ceasing and restoration of the breathing.8

Priesthood and gender. Don’t worry, I am not going to commit myself on the ecclesiastical policy question of whether females should be ordained, which goes far beyond Leviticus. However, since Christian opponents to female ordination frequently cite the exclusive maleness of the Israelite priesthood as support for their position, we should briefly consider some possible reasons for the male priesthood and ask whether they apply to Christian ministry.

A Christian tradition that has a form of ministry regarded as priesthood will naturally want it to be male, like the Old Testament priesthood. However, for those who wish to follow the New Testament model, the question of whether there is a Christian mediatorial priesthood on earth precedes the question of whether ministers should be male on this basis. The New Testament has a direct connection between an egalitarian priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9) and Christ’s priestly ministry in heaven (Heb. 7–10), with no intervening earthly elite functioning in a mediatorial capacity. Thus, we must look for less direct relationships between Israelite priesthood and Christian ministry.

There are a number of possible reasons why the Israelite priesthood had to be male, some of which are viable and some of which are not. (1) E. Gerstenberger observes that in spite of the fact that sons could bring discredit to their families (1 Sam. 2:12–17, 22–36; 8:1–3; cf. Lev. 10:1–7), the rules for priests in Leviticus 21 deal only with sexual misbehavior of a daughter, who can dishonor her father in such a way as to jeopardize fulfillment of his office (21:9). He asserts that this “attests the priestly prejudice against women. The male cult is threatened above all precisely by females and their behavior.”9 However, the example of Eli’s sons (1 Sam. 2:12–17, 22–36) “proves that dishonorable sons not only dishonor their father, but can cause the disqualification of his line.”10 Additional evidence that Scripture is not prejudiced against daughters is found in Leviticus 10, which Gerstenberger also cites. Here Aaron’s sons die by (divine) fire (10:2), just as a promiscuous priest’s daughter is condemned to be burned (21:9). Moreover, the priesthood was not only all-male; it was all-Aaronic, limited to a small portion of the population.11 Does the fact that males not descended from Aaron were excluded from the priesthood mean that they were discriminated against because the Aaronic cult was threatened by non-Aaronides and their behavior?

(2) Milgrom supplies an alternative reason for the all-male priesthood:

Second, the woman’s ineligibility for the priesthood is based on purely practical grounds: the impurity of her menses disqualifies her from serving for one week out of every four (and as much as three months during parturition). Extreme caution should be exercised in attributing prejudice, especially where it can be shown that none exists.12

Why would it not be possible to schedule around menstrual periods, just as male priests would occasionally be disqualified from officiation when they were ritually impure (22:3–7; cf. 15:18)? The answer is physiological: Unlike male impurities (including nocturnal emission, 15:16), menstruation can begin during a woman’s waking hours without her knowing it. This is why intercourse during menstruation can happen accidentally (see comments on 15:24). Because menstruation is not 100 percent predictable, it would be impossible to rule out the chance that an officiating female priest could become impure without her knowledge, thereby inadvertently but disastrously defiling the most holy sancta. This alone is reason enough to rule out female participation in priestly officiation.

(3) “A coterie of female professionals, diverted from pressing family needs, would not have been in the best interest of the community as a whole.”13 Nevertheless, if at least some women could arrange to serve in other capacities at the sanctuary (1 Sam. 2:22), why could they not also arrange for time to participate in priestly officiation there? With extended families living in close proximity, there were plenty of babysitters available.

(4) Some priestly tasks, such as lifting pieces of bulls onto the altar (e.g., 1:8) and guarding the sanctuary (e.g., Num. 3:38) required male upper body strength. However, females could have participated in less strenuous aspects of officiation.

(5) The society was patriarchal, with men normally functioning as leaders in public (including legal) matters. It is true that prophetesses, such as Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah, did have public functions. Deborah’s civil clout as a court judge and military advisor derived from her prophetic gift (Judg. 4). However, the prophetic role was not one of institutional leadership in the sense that priesthood was.

(6) Women were excluded from priesthood to ensure that the ritual system would not carry sexual connotations associated with participation of men and women together in fertility cults of the Canaanites and other peoples.14

(7) Priests had to be male because they typified Christ, the antitypical Priest (Heb. 7–10), who is male. This argument is severely compromised by the fact that some sacrificial animals that typified Christ as victims were female. In fact, a female flock animal was required for the crucial purification offering on behalf of commoners (e.g., Lev. 4:27–35; 5:6; Num. 15:27). So when it came to victims, there is what we can call “equal opportunity representation of Christ.”

Of the above reasons, the ones that appear the most solid are (2), (5), and (6). Of these, the ritual impurity of menstruation has no relevance to Christian ministry because the earthly sanctuary/temple, with its sphere of Shekinah holiness, is gone. Furthermore, possible association of our ministry with pagan fertility cults is not likely in most of the world today.

Is modern society still patriarchal in the sense that it is unusual for women to serve in official public capacities, and therefore female ministers would weaken the image that the church wishes to portray? Not so much anymore in modern Western culture. Does the Bible advocate or even require patriarchal society for God’s ongoing people as a timeless, universal ideal, or did he simply use existing society to accomplish his purposes? While these questions are fascinating and important, pursuing them would take us far from Leviticus.

Contemporary Significance

PROTECTING LEADERS. Privilege and influence carried responsibility not only for Israelite priests but also for members of their families. Any PK (i.e., priest’s kid) was supposed to be exemplary, much like a preacher’s or politician’s kid today. Failure of a child would harm the influence of his or her father (e.g., 21:9). Thus, the spirit of the exhortation in 21:8—for the Israelites to respect the holiness of priests—would undoubtedly mean that laypeople should help all members of priestly families bear the burden of exemplary living. They were not to undermine their distinctiveness out of jealousy in order to lower them to their own level, whether by unjust criticism, competition, ridicule, deception, or obstruction. Attempting to destroy or compromise those who interceded for them was self-defeating. Unfortunately the Israelites had to learn this the hard way (Num. 16–17).

Although the New Testament has no earthly mediatorial priesthood, as spiritual leaders in the community of faith, Christian ministers and their families carry some of the same burdens that were laid on the ancient priests and their close relatives. The reason is essentially the same: to rightly present the Lord’s character to the people. We know that ministers and their families are human and therefore imperfect, but it is devastating to congregations (including radio or TV audiences) when they fall in a serious way. The press, lawyers, anti-religionists, and the devil have a field day, but the people who matter suffer damage to their faith in God.

Ministers must take responsibility for their actions like everyone else, but trying to trip them up is unconscionable and self-defeating. A ministry is a terrible thing to waste. But it is also a wonderful thing to nurture. Rather than exhausting valuable creative energies in contention and criticism, congregations benefit themselves, their communities, and the cause of God by focusing their energies on upholding dedicated leaders and walking with them on the path of holiness.

John the Baptist said of Christ, “He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30). Emulating John, a minister’s goal is to have his influence decrease in the lives of his people while that of Christ increases. The more this happens, the safer they are from instability as a result of the imperfections of the human minister. Nevertheless, as ministers train people to look to Christ, their only infallible example, and to God, who sanctifies them, their attitudes and perceptions are shaped to a large extent by the way the ministers conduct their own lives. Leaders are role models to their people as parents are to their children. This power, which influences destinies not just in this life but also in the life to come, is a sacred trust. It is up to the community, not just to the minister and his/her family, to protect it.