1“And this is the thing you shall do for them to consecrate them to be priests to Me: take one bull of the herd and two unblemished rams, 2and flatbread and flatcakes mixed with oil and flatcake wafers brushed with oil, fine wheat flour you shall make them. 3And you shall place them in one basket and bring them forward in the basket, with the bull and with the two rams. 4And Aaron and his sons you shall bring forward at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting, and you shall bathe them in water. 5And you shall take the garments and dress Aaron in the tunic and the robe of the ephod and the ephod and the breastplate, and you shall gird him with the band of the ephod. 6And you shall put the turban on his head and you shall set the holy diadem on the turban. 7And you shall take the anointing oil and pour it over his head and you shall anoint him. 8And his sons you shall bring forward and dress them in tunics. 9And you shall belt them with sashes, Aaron and his sons, and set headgear on them, and the priesthood shall be for them a perpetual statute, and you shall install Aaron and his sons. 10And you shall bring forward the bull before the Tent of Meeting, and Aaron, and his sons, shall lay their hands on the bull’s head. 11And you shall slaughter the bull before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 12And you shall take of the bull’s blood and place it on the horns of the altar with your finger, and all the blood you shall spill upon the base of the altar. 13And you shall take all the fats that cover the entrails and the lobe on the liver and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them and turn them to smoke on the altar. 14And the bull’s flesh and its hide and its dung you shall burn in fire outside the camp, it is an offense. 15And the one ram you shall take, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the ram’s head. 16And you shall slaughter the ram and take its blood and throw it upon the altar all around. 17And the ram you shall cut up by its parts and wash its entrails and its limbs and put them on its cut parts and its head. 18And you shall turn the ram to smoke on the altar, it is a burnt offering to the LORD, a pleasing fragrance, a fire offering to the LORD. 19And you shall take the second ram, and Aaron, and his sons, shall lay their hands on the ram’s head. 20And you shall slaughter the ram and take of its blood and put it on the right earlobe of Aaron and on the right earlobe of his sons and on their right thumb and on their right big toe, and you shall throw the blood on the altar all around. 21And you shall take of the blood that is on the altar and of the anointing oil and sprinkle them on Aaron and on his garments and on his sons’ garments and on his face together with them, and he shall be consecrated, he and his garments and his sons and his sons’ garments together with him. 22And you shall take from the ram the fat, and the broad tail and the fat that covers the entrails and the lobe on the liver and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them, and the right thigh, for it is the installation ram, 23and one loaf of bread and one cake of bread made with oil and one wafer from the basket of flatbread that is before the LORD. 24And you shall put it all on the palms of Aaron and on the palms of his sons and elevate it as an elevation offering before the LORD. 25And you shall take them from their hands and turn them to smoke on the altar, together with the burnt offering, as a pleasing fragrance before the LORD, it is a fire offering to the LORD. 26And you shall take the breast from the installation ram which is Aaron’s and elevate it as an elevation offering before the LORD, and it shall be your portion. 27And you shall consecrate the breast of the elevation offering and the thigh of the donation, which were elevated and which were donated, from the installation ram that is Aaron’s and that is his sons’. 28And it shall be a perpetual statute for Aaron and for his sons from the Israelites, for it is a donation, and a donation shall it be from the Israelites, from their communion sacrifices, their donation to the LORD.
29“And the sacral garments that are Aaron’s shall belong to his sons after him, to be anointed in them and to be installed in them. 30Seven days the priest in his stead among his sons shall wear them, who comes into the Tent of Meeting to serve in the sanctum. 31And the installation ram you shall take and you shall cook its flesh in a sacred place. 32And Aaron, and his sons with him, shall eat the ram’s flesh and the bread that is in the basket at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. 33And they for whom atonement is made shall eat them, to install them, to consecrate them, and no stranger shall eat them, for they are holy. 34And if something is left over from the flesh of installation and from the bread until morning, you shall burn what is left in fire, it shall not be eaten, for it is holy. 35And you shall do thus for Aaron and for his sons, as all that I have charged you, seven days you shall install them. 36And an offense-offering bull you shall prepare for each day, and you shall purge the altar as you atone over it, and you shall anoint it to consecrate it. 37Seven days you shall atone on the altar and consecrate it, and the altar shall be a holy of holies, whoever touches it shall be consecrated. 38And this shall you do on the altar: two yearling lambs each day, perpetually. 39The one lamb you shall do in the morning and the other lamb you shall do at twilight. 40And a tenth of a measure of fine flour mixed with a quarter-hin of beaten oil, and a quarter-hin libation of wine for the one lamb. 41And the other lamb you shall do at twilight, like the morning’s grain offering and its libation you shall do it, as a pleasing fragrance to the LORD, 42a perpetual burnt offering for your generations at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting before the LORD, where I shall meet with you there to speak to you. 43And I shall meet there with the Israelites and it shall be consecrated through My glory. 44And I shall consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and Aaron and his sons I shall consecrate to be priests to Me. 45And I shall abide in the midst of the Israelites and I shall be God to them. 46And they shall know that I am the LORD their God Who brought them out from the land of Egypt for Me to abide in their midst. I am the LORD their God.”
CHAPTER 29 NOTES
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1. to consecrate them to be priests to Me. This whole series of cultic regulations is arranged in concentric circles: first the donation of the sumptuous materials of the Tabernacle and the instructions for assembling the elaborate portable structure; then the directions for constructing the inner sanctum and the altar; then the vestments and sacred ornaments of the priests; now the priests themselves—their installation rite and the precise instructions for the animal sacrifices, the sundry meal offerings, and the libations. For the Priestly writer, the representation of Aaron and his sons actually performing the sacred service on the altar, installed in their sacerdotal function, butchering the animals and splashing gore on the altar and on themselves, would have surely been the climax of this entire sequence.
4. you shall bring forward. The Hebrew verb hiqriv generally means “to bring near” or “to cause to approach.” Presumably what is implied is coming close to the sacred place of God’s presence. It is also the common verb that means “to sacrifice.”
7. anointing oil. Oil poured over the head—presumably pure olive oil—was the confirming act of consecration for both priests and kings. Hence in biblical idiom the monarch is not the crowned king (though they did sometimes wear crowns) but the anointed king (mashiaḥ).
9. a perpetual statute. The Hebrew ḥoq, which has the general meaning of “statute,” also sometimes suggests an allowance, a benefice that is regularly paid to someone. Since the tribe of Levi from which the priests came would have no lands, the priesthood was not only their spiritual inheritance but also their allowance or dole.
10. lay their hands on the bull’s head. The laying on of hands may simply have betokened an affirmation of possession of the animal, but some commentators suggest a kind of magical transfusion of properties from the person touching to the beast touched—perhaps, the sins for which the sacrificed animal is to atone.
12. And you shall take of the bull’s blood. Blood, which has been so prominent and so multivalent in the Exodus story, here serves a dedicatory and purgative function, making the altar holy. Similarly, in verse 20 Aaron and his sons are enjoined to daub the sacrificial blood symbolically on the organs of hearing and holding and locomotion in order to dedicate themselves wholly to their sacred task. (Presumably, the eye is omitted to avoid the danger of getting blood in the eye, and the mouth is omitted because of the taboo against tasting blood.)
all the blood. This obviously means all the rest of the blood.
14. burn in fire. As elsewhere, this seeming redundance indicates total burning, burning to ashes.
18. a pleasing fragrance. This recurrent idiom clearly derives from pagan usage, in which the fragrance of the sacrifices was imagined to ascend to the nostrils of the deity and cause the deity bodily pleasure. What residue of the pagan concreteness of the idiom may have been retained in its biblical usage is impossible to know.
21. blood . . . anointing oil. The spectacle of the priests splattered all over with blood and oil may be a repugnant one to the modern imagination, but for the ancients both the clear olive oil and the sacrificial blood were thought of as purifying agents.
29. to his sons after him. Here the priestly succession, from Aaron in the wilderness all the way to the Priestly writer in the sixth century B.C.E., is envisaged. The preposition “in his stead” (taḥtaw) in the next verse is another indication of a chain of succession to the office of high priest.
33. no stranger. The reference here is clearly not to an ethnic alien but, as in other ritual contexts, to anyone not belonging to the priestly caste and not consecrated to approach the sanctum.
36. purge. The Hebrew verb is cognate with the noun for “offense” (ḥataʾt) and is used in the piʿel conjugation, which sometimes can mean to expunge or remove the substance or quality indicated by the verbal root.
37. whoever touches it shall be consecrated. This is commonly explained to mean that whoever touches the altar becomes consecrated, in a kind of contagion of holiness. It could equally mean, however, that whoever touches the altar must first be consecrated, the verb being construed as an imperative. Although contagious impurity is a common biblical idea, there is less basis for a notion of contagious sanctity.
42. for your generations at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. The straddle of the Tabernacle laws between the Wilderness setting and the later cultic center in Jerusalem is especially evident here. The Tabernacle service, after all, was in effect just forty years, but the model it provides for the temple service would be for the generations.
43. it shall be consecrated through My glory. One detects a certain tension between a conception of the sacred inherited from pagan cult and a new, monotheistic conception. According to the former, there exists an intricate technology of the sacred that confers holiness on a place and on the human officiants—the elaborate regimen of construction and dress and sacrifice and sprinkling with blood that has just been detailed. But now God reminds Israel that it is only through His glory, His free decision as deity to make His presence “abide”—a nomad’s term of temporary residence—in this place, that the altar becomes consecrated. Without this divine initiative, all the choreography of the cult is unavailing. The manifestation of the “glory” of the deity has polytheistic antecedents, though the strong emphasis on God’s choice to abide in the midst of Israel is new.
46. I am the LORD their God. Just as the royal proclamation of the Decalogue began with this affirmation, the grand set of regulations for the creation of the Tabernacle and the dedication of the priests concludes with the royal declaration of God’s special relationship with Israel.