Charles Ellicott Commentary Leviticus 21

And the Lord said unto Moses. —The laws about the purity and holiness of the Jewish community, and of every individual lay member, enacted in Leviticus 11:1 to Leviticus 20:27, are now followed by statutes respecting the purity and holiness of the priesthood who minister in holy things on behalf of the people, and who, by virtue of their high office, were to be models of both ceremonial and moral purity.

Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron. —Moses is ordered to communicate these statutes to the priests as the sons of Aaron. The peculiar phrase “the priests the sons of Aaron,” which only occurs here—since in all other six passages in the Pentateuch it is the reverse, “the sons of Aaron the priests” (Leviticus 1:8; Leviticus 1:11; Leviticus 2:2; Leviticus 3:2; Numbers 10:8), is designed to inculcate upon them the fact that they are priests by virtue of being the sons of Aaron, and not because of any merit of their own, and that they are to impress the same sentiments upon their descendants.

This fact, moreover, as the authorities during the second Temple remark, imposes on the priests the duty of bringing up their children in such a manner as to make them morally and intellectually fit to occupy this hereditary office. They also deduce from the emphatic position of the term “priests,” that it only applies to those of them who are fit to perform their sacerdotal duties, and not to the disqualified priests .

There shall none be defiled for the dead. —Better, He shall not defile himself for a dead person; that is, the priest is not to contract defilement by contact with the body of any dead person. What constitutes defilement is not specified, but, as is often the case, was left to the administrators of the Law to define more minutely. Accordingly, they enacted that not only touching a dead body, but also coming within four cubits of it, entering the house where the corpse lay, entering a burial place, following to the grave, or the manifestation of mourning for the departed, pollutes the priest. This consequently renders him unfit for performing the services of the sanctuary and for engaging in the services for the people.

This they deduced from Numbers 19:11-16. The Egyptian priests were likewise bound to avoid “burials and graves, from impure men and women.” The Romans ordered a bough of a cypress-tree to be stuck at the door of the house in which a dead body was lying, lest a chief priest should unwittingly enter and defile himself.

Among his people —That is, among the tribes or people of Israel, the Jewish community (Deuteronomy 33:3, and so on). Hence, the authorities during the second Temple concluded that when the corpse is among the people whose duty it is to ensure its burial, the priest is forbidden to take part in it. However, if a priest, or even the high priest, finds a human body on the road where he cannot call on anyone to bury it, he is obliged to perform this last sacred office for the dead himself. When one bears in mind how much the ancient Hebrews thought of burial, and that nothing exceeded their horror more than the thought of an unburied corpse of anyone belonging to them, this humane legislation will be duly appreciated.

But for his kin, that is near to him. —There are, however, seven exceptions to the general rule. According to the administrators of the Law during the Second Temple, the phrase his kin that is near to him, or rather, his flesh that is near to him (compare Leviticus 18:6 with Genesis 2:24), denotes “wife.” Hence the Chaldee version of Jonathan renders it, “but for a wife who is of kin to his flesh.”

For his mother, and for his father.— This is the second of the three instances in the Bible where the mother is mentioned before the father . The Jewish canonists, who call attention to this unusual phrase, explain it by saying that she is placed first because the son’s qualifications for the priesthood depend more on his having a good mother .

This will be readily understood when it is kept in mind that the regulations about the woman whom a priest was allowed to marry during the Second Temple were of the most stringent nature, and that the slightest infringement of them disqualified the son for performing sacerdotal functions. Thus, the daughter of a foreigner or of a released captive was forbidden to the priest, and when a city was besieged and taken by the enemy, all the wives of the priests had to be divorced for fear that they had suffered violence.

And for his sister a virgin, that is nigh unto him —This refers to his unmarried sister who, having no husband, continues in a primary familial bond with him. The next clause explains this in more detail.

Which hath had no husband —When she marries, she becomes part of her husband's household and is no longer considered as near to her brother in this regard. The responsibility for her funeral rites then falls to her husband.

For her may he be defiled —According to the administrators of the Law during the Second Temple period, the priest was not only permitted to contract defilement by attending to the funeral rites for these seven relatives, but was, in fact, obligated to do so.

But he shall not defile himself, being a chief man ... — Better, A husband shall not defile himself among his people when he had profaned himself. As the seven exceptions to the general rule began with his wife, whose funeral rites the priestly husband is allowed to attend, the verse before us restricts this permission to his legally prescribed wife. If he contracted a marriage which profaned him, he could not attend her funeral ceremonies.

The last clause, which is here translated, “when he had profaned him,” literally denotes “to profane himself,” “with respect to his profanation”— i.e., with respect to a marriage by which he profaned himself. This is the interpretation which the administrators of the Law attached to the verse, and which is transmitted in the Chaldee version of Jonathan. It is not only in perfect harmony with the context, but does least violence to this manifestly disordered text.

The translations exhibited in the Authorized Version, both in the text and in the margin, as well as most of those suggested by modern commentators, leave the clause unexplained, since it manifestly means something else than defiling himself by contracting impurity through contact with the dead, as is evident from the fact that it is not added in the other instances where the priest is forbidden to defile himself by attending to the dead. .

Make baldness upon their head.—The natural expression of grief, however, which the priests were to manifest for their previously mentioned deceased relatives, was not to be expressed through practices that disfigured their bodies and which were common among other ancient nations in connection with funeral ceremonies. Thus, in the graphic description of the idolatrous priests mourning, we are told, the priests sit in their temples, having their clothes rent, and their heads and beards shaven, and nothing upon their heads. .

The three things prohibited here for the priests are also forbidden to the people at large under other circumstances. (Deuteronomy 14:1.) The ordinary Israelites, however, did indulge in these same practices. (Ezekiel 7:18; Amos 8:10.)