Here's a nice Bible story for Father's Day.
And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD. Leviticus 10:1-2
Aaron's sons offered some sort of strange fire to God, and it pissed God off so much that he burned them to death.
I guess the moral of the story is this: Don't play with fire or God will burn you to death. God fights fire with fire.
But I like Moses' explanation even better. Here's what he said to Aaron right after God burned Aaron's sons to death.
Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the LORD spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. Leviticus 10:3a
God burned Aaron's sons alive so that God would "be sanctified in them" and so that he would "be glorified."
That helps.
Moses warned Aaron not to mourn the death of his sons (by uncovering his head or tearing his clothes) or God would kill him too, along with all the people.
And Moses said unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar and unto Ithamar, his sons, Uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes; lest ye die, and lest wrath come upon all the people. Leviticus 10:6
So Aaron did as he was told, and watched in silence as his sons were burned to death by God.
And Aaron held his peace. Leviticus 10:3b
In this story, who the biggest asshole: Moses, Aaron, or God?
Note: I revised this post to include the bit about Moses forbidding Aaron to mourn the death of his sons. Somehow I missed that, and I thank Wise Fool for pointing it out in the comments. (If I'd paid more attention to the Brick Testament story, I would have caught that!)
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18 comments:
Freaking hilarious. The Bible continues to surprise me!
Moses.
The Lord do not exist, and well, it was "strange fire".
Aron couldn't do anything, and most probably didn't want an argue with his brother who was so arogant and powerful in the stories.
But Moses' reasoning is disturbingly unsympathetic towards Aron.
Well clearly God has got to take the asshole cake on this one. Moses and Aaron are simply going insane trying to figure out how this maniac works, so I don't completely blame them.
Why god of course!
He is the asshole thy god, let no other assholes come before him.
Score another point for god's "love"!
Asswipe.
I'm surprised that you didn't include this little tidbit: In Leviticus 10:6 Moses tells Aaron and his sons that if they mourned for Nadab and Abihu, God would kill them.
I think that provides the answer to your final question right there; and the winner is God.
Mmmm-mmmm! Nothing like smoked brothers with a side of latkes cooked up by your favorite schizo tribal diety in time for Father's Day!
Jeepers, God was an angry bastard...
Wise fool,
Yeah, I completely missed that! I'll add something about it later today. Thanks for catching that!
Does anyone out there know what the apologists use for an explaination of just what was so strange about this fire?
busterggi:
I think the Chabad site has a good explanation of it. I haven't really trusted them since the Manis Friedman incident (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091469.html), but they do a great job of explaining some things. If you search "Nadav and Avihu" on their site, you might find something.
GotQuestions.org also has one, but it's downright awful and doesn't do much for me.
Brendan,
So I clicked on your link and found the top story for today is about an Israeli rabbi who is calling for OT war against the Palestinians including killing their livestock.
I'll pass on the opinion of these loonies thank you.
Well, according to the NETBible, there are at least four possibilities as to why God went all Young-Frankenstein's-monster when he saw Aaron's sons' fire.
1) Using coals that weren't from the altar
2) Using the wrong incense
3) Doing an incense offering at the wrong time
4) Entering the Tabernacle at the wrong time
These are obviously perfectly reasonable excuses for God to kill someone! But seriously, you would think if what they did was really bad enough to be killed over, God or Moses would be more explicit as to what Aaron's sons did wrong to prevent it from angering God again in the future.
Maybe you're on to something, Brian_E. Maybe Moses and Aaron have no clue what's going to tick Yahweh off next. Reminds me a little of "It's a Good Life" from the Twilight Zone. Yahweh is like an omnipotent 6-year-old Billy Mumy who will destroy anything when he doesn't get his way or when everyone isn't praising him enough. Since Steve Wells has suggested that the Bible hints that God is (also) a redhead, I think it works well here!
busterggi:
#1: Happened awhile ago.
#2: I know. I was pointing out that I don't trust Chabad because of that. That's a bit hypocritical on my part, as it's guilt by association, which I do not believe in, although the response by the rest of the rabbis there was lackluster.
Beyond that, Chaim ibn Attar, a rabbi from the 16&1700s, wrote this explanation of the story:
"[Nadav and Avihu's was] a death by Divine 'kiss' like that experienced by the perfectly righteous--it is only that the righteous die when the Divine 'kiss' approaches them, while they died by their approaching it.... Although they sensed their own demise, this did not prevent them from drawing near [to G-d] in attachment, delight, delectability, fellowship, love, kiss and sweetness, to the point that their souls ceased from them."
That's disturbing. They were being seduced to death?
"Yahweh, you're trying to seduce me, aren't you?"
Also, I Am: You may be onto something there, as Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden sounds an awful lot like Billy Mumy sending someone "to the cornfield"... :-S
Well, Matt, while I admit that's funny and, well, a pretty good response that I was stupid to not think of before I copy/pasted 300 year old Torah commentary... I feel obligated to continue (I can never walk away from something unfinished... sorry).
What it refers to is that Nadav and Avihu's souls were drawn to get closer to God. I'm not entirely clear on the details, but I believe they were unable to resist the desire because they were drunk. when they got too close to the fire, the sheer power of God was too much, and their souls left their body, killing them.
As for God being a redhead... Did it really take you this long to figure it out? Of course he is.
I will now amaze you all! I used to be a member of the Plymouth Brethren, and I can tell you that all evangelical Christians really get their knickers in a twist over "Paul`s" exhortation in I Thess. 4, "concerning them which are asleep" (ie dead, deceased, `gone to join the bleedin` choir invisible`, etc!),"that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope..." Now, this is clearly a command from "Paul" forbidding Christians from mourning for their deceased fellow-believers; but they (obviously) find this very human emotion quite impossible to ignore. (What it says about the writer of the original words I can`t imagine!!). Their usual way around it is to quote the verse this way: "That ye sorrow not... as others which have no hope", ie, we don`t mourn as unbelievers do, who have no hope of an afterlife. Sadly, this is not what is being said here at all! The words "sorrow not" represent one word in the original Greek, and well they know it, so the injunction is correct as it stands : "SORROW NOT"!!!
As I was perusing the above comments it occurred to me that America has become more bankrupt morally and spiritually than financially. Here's a verse from the Old Testament...
2Ch 7:1 ¶ Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the LORD filled the house.
The fire that was to be used was to be lit by God himself and no other or God is not going to share his glory with another -- especially one of his priests that was to give him glory alone. But this is the problem with people today they don't understand holiness. These sons of Aaron wanted to worship God their way and not God's way.
We see this all the time today so we don't see anything particularly wrong with what they did but they were warned ahead of time and considering all the things that they had seen God to up until that point you would think that they would have just a little bit more sense than to do what they did here.
Le 10:10 And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;
And this is another reason why these two were devoured by the fire from the Lord. The Lord said that those strange fire or incense shall be offered before the Lord and when he said that he meant it, so when strange fire came in God had no choice but to make that strange fire part of his fire.
As far as not mourning while in the presence of the Lord that is a long-standing commandment that even before Kings one could not appear as a mourner or of sorrow or a heavy heart and yes, the penalty was death. The Bible has plenty of examples and it where family members mourn for one another when they pass away and it's amazing how ignorant people are of something that they are quick to judge when it appears that they have never read that which they judged.
Pr 18:13 ¶ He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.
Are you Jewish then, meesphht? The reason I ask is that you seem to be following Old Testament teaching here, and completely ignoring the commands of "The Apostle Paul" in the New Testament! Whoever it was who wrote those words in 1 Thess.4 was specifically instructing New Testament believers NOT to mourn those who "sleep in Jesus". The reason he gives is that the Lord was shortly to return, bringing those souls with Him, and so they would all be reunited - living and dead - for eternity. Hence, any believer who mourned the loss of a fellow-believer was demonstrating his lack of belief in the certainty of the Lord's imminent return. This is all quite clear from the passage in question (it can't possibly be interpreted any other way) and I have preached on it many times myself in the past! Where you get the idea that this does not apply to present-day believers I have no idea!!
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