Leviticus 21:15

Leviticus 21 sets out the holiness God requires of his priests. Its opening verses speak to all the sons of Aaron (Leviticus 21:1–9), and verse 10 then turns to “the high priest among his brethren”. The word for priest, kôhên, is the same word used for every priest, and this man is the chief among them. The chapter rises by steps, so that the closer a man comes to God’s presence, the more is asked of him.

The high priest came closest of all. He alone entered the Most Holy Place (Exodus 26:34), once a year on the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for the sins of the whole nation (Leviticus 16). He carried the names of the tribes on his ephod and breastplate when he went in. His purity was therefore a matter for all Israel, because any defilement in him touched the people he represented and the sacrifices he offered for them.

Verse 10 describes him by the two things that made him high priest. The first is the oil: he is the one “upon whose head the anointing oil was poured”. The word mishchâh means anointing, and the pouring of this oil was the visible sign that God had chosen him and set him apart. The second is the clothing: he is “consecrated to put on the garments”. Both belong to the service of consecration described in Exodus 29. The garments were made “for glory and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2), and on the front of his turban he wore a plate engraved “HOLINESS TO THE LORD” (Exodus 28:36). A man marked in these ways belonged wholly to his office, and each law that follows grows out of that.

In Israel a person in grief let his hair hang loose and tore his clothes. Verse 10 forbids the high priest both. The verb behind “uncover”, pâraʻ, means to loosen and so to expose, and here it covers letting the hair go loose and unkempt or taking off the priestly turban. To “rend his clothes” was the common way of showing deep sorrow or horror.

The law deals with these outward signs. The head that had received the oil and the garments he had been consecrated to wear were the marks of his office, and he was to keep them whole and in order even when death came to his own house. His office stood for God’s enduring presence with Israel, and the people needed to see their representative still fit to stand before God on their behalf, whatever sorrow he carried.

Aaron had already been given this very command. When his sons Nadab and Abihu died, he and his remaining sons were told to keep their heads covered and their clothes whole (Leviticus 10:6). What was said to Aaron on that day becomes here a standing law for every high priest after him.

Verse 11 goes further. The high priest shall not “go in to any dead body”. The phrase “go in” is lo yavo, from the verb bôwʼ, to go or come, and it pictures entering a tent or house where a dead person lies, which was enough to make a man unclean. “Dead body” joins two words. Nephesh means a breathing creature, a life or a person, and with mûwth, to die, it means a dead person, a corpse. The verb “defile”, ṭâmêʼ, means to be or become unclean.

The law then names the hardest case: “nor defile himself for his father, or for his mother”. Ordinary priests were allowed to become unclean for their nearest family (Leviticus 21:2–3). The high priest is given this allowance for none of them. A man under a Nazirite vow was held to the same rule for as long as his vow lasted, and he too was kept from his father and mother when they died (Numbers 6:6–7). Both were men whose consecration to God came before even the closest ties of family.

Verse 12 follows straight on from the death of a parent: “Neither shall he go out of the sanctuary”. The sanctuary was the place where the LORD lived among his people, as he had said: “let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8). When a death in the family would have drawn any other man away, the high priest remained at his duty. He could leave his post for nothing that would make him unclean and so “profane the sanctuary of his God”. The verb châlal means to profane, to treat as common what has been set apart for God.

Verses 13 and 14 turn to the high priest’s home. “And he shall take a wife in her virginity.” The verb lâqach, to take, is the usual word for taking a wife, and ʼishshâh is the word for a woman or wife. Bᵉthûwlîym means virginity, the state of a woman who has never been with a man. Verse 14 uses the related word bᵉthûwlâh, a virgin, a young unmarried woman.

Four kinds of women are closed to him in verse 14. Ordinary priests were already forbidden to marry a harlot, a profaned woman or a divorced woman (Leviticus 21:7), and that verse leaves them free to marry a widow. The high priest’s rule adds the widow to the list.

• A widow or a divorced woman. Neither is unclean or at fault in herself. Each has belonged to an earlier marriage, and the high priest’s house was to be free of every earlier tie and of anything that could raise a question about his line.
• A profane woman. The word is châlâl, used of a person who has been dishonored or profaned. It describes a woman who has lost her standing, whether through unlawful relations or by being born of a marriage forbidden to a priest.
• A harlot. The word is zânâh, a woman given to prostitution. Among the nations around Israel prostitution was sometimes joined to worship itself, and Israel’s priesthood was to be visibly different.

The positive command comes last: “he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife”. “Of his own people” means a woman of Israel, so that the high priest’s household stood wholly inside the covenant people, apart from the worship and ways of other nations. Israel as a whole was called “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) and was told, “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). The high priest’s home was to show that holiness in its fullest form.

These laws belonged to the priesthood of Aaron, which has been fulfilled and replaced by the priesthood of Christ, so the marriage rule of verses 13 and 14 binds no pastor or elder today. The New Testament gives its own standard for those who lead. An overseer is to be blameless, faithful in marriage and able to rule his own house well (1 Timothy 3:2–5, Titus 1:6–9), and it speaks of the character of their wives as well (1 Timothy 3:11). Its concern is the character and good name of the leader and his household, and a widow is free to marry any believer. The principle carries over where the rule has ended: those who represent God before others are to live in a way that honors his name, at home as well as in public.

Every high priest of Aaron’s line was a sinful man who would one day die, and he had to offer sacrifice for his own sins before he could offer for the people (Hebrews 7:27). The purity these verses required of him pointed forward to a priest who would have it in himself. Jesus is that “great high priest” (Hebrews 4:14): “For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26). He was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of a virgin (Luke 1:35), and he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

Each law of the passage finds its answer in him. The high priest kept his head anointed and his garments whole, and Jesus was anointed with the Spirit himself, “for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him” (John 3:34). The high priest stayed at his post, and Jesus came down from heaven to do the will of the Father who sent him (John 6:38) and finished it. He did carry sorrow, for “he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4), and the griefs he bore were ours.

The high priest had to keep away from the dead, while Jesus went to them and gave them life. He raised the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:41–42), the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:14–15) and Lazarus (John 11:43–44). Death made the old priest unclean, and it gave way before this one. Then he overcame death itself by rising, and through his own blood he entered the true sanctuary once for all and obtained eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:11–14). Because of that we have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19).

His priesthood also rests on a different footing from Aaron’s. Aaron’s sons held office by descent, which is why their line had to be guarded. Jesus is made a priest “not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life” (Hebrews 7:16), as it was said of him, “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec” (Hebrews 7:17). He lives for ever to make intercession for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25).

The pure bride of the high priest has its counterpart too. Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, to sanctify and cleanse it, “that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25–27). The high priest had to find a bride who was already pure. Christ makes his bride pure by his own sacrifice, and Scripture looks ahead to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7–9).

What these verses asked of one man shows who God is. He is holy and he is the God of life, and whoever comes near him comes on his terms. The care he took over the high priest’s hair, clothes, family and marriage shows how seriously he takes the meeting between himself and his people.

It also shows what he has given us in Christ. Peter calls believers “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9), and Paul says that the body of a believer is the temple of the Holy Ghost, bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). The call that rested on the high priest now rests, in its inward form, on all who belong to Jesus: “as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation” (1 Peter 1:15–16). The order of the last verse still holds. The LORD sanctifies first, and a holy life is the answer of people he has already made his own.