1And it happened, on the eighth day, that Moses called to Aaron and to his sons and to the elders of Israel. 2And he said to Aaron, “Take you a calf from the herd as an offense offering and a ram as a burnt offering, both unblemished, and bring them forward before the LORD. 3And to the Israelites you shall speak, saying, ‘Take a he-goat as an offense offering and a yearling unblemished calf and lamb as a burnt offering, 4and a bull and a ram as communion offerings to sacrifice before the LORD, and a grain offering mixed with oil, for today the LORD will appear before you.’” 5And they took that which Moses had charged in front of the Tent of Meeting, and all the community came forward and stood before the LORD. 6And Moses said, “This is the thing that the LORD charged, you shall do, that the glory of the LORD may appear to you.” 7And Moses said to Aaron, “Come forward to the altar and do your offense offering and your burnt offering and atone for yourself and for the people, and do the offering of the people and atone for them, as the LORD has charged.” 8And Aaron came forward to the altar and slaughtered the offense-offering calf which was his. 9And the sons of Aaron brought forward the blood to him, and he dipped his finger in the blood and put it on the horns of the altar, and the blood he poured out at the base of the altar. 10And the fat and the kidneys and the lobe from the liver from the offense offering he turned to smoke on the altar as the LORD had charged Moses. 11And the flesh and the hide he burned in fire outside the camp. 12And he slaughtered the burnt offering, and the sons of Aaron provided him with the blood, and he cast it on the altar all around. 13And they provided him with the burnt offering in its cut pieces and the head, and he turned it to smoke on the altar. 14And he washed the innards and the legs and he turned them to smoke together with the burnt offering on the altar. 15And he brought forward the offering of the people and took the offense-offering he-goat which was the people’s and slaughtered it and performed the offense offering with it as with the previous one. 16And he brought forward the burnt offering and did it according to the regulation. 17And he brought forward the grain offering and filled his palm with it and turned it to smoke on the altar, in addition to the morning’s burnt offering. 18And he slaughtered the bull and the ram of the communion sacrifice which was the people’s, and the sons of Aaron provided him with the blood, and he cast it on the altar all around, 19and the fat from the bull and from the ram, the broad tail and the covering fat and the kidneys and the lobe on the liver. 20And they placed the fat on the breasts, and he turned the fat to smoke on the altar. 21The breasts and the right thigh Aaron elevated in an elevation offering before the LORD, as He had charged Moses. 22And Aaron raised his hands toward the people and blessed them and came down from having done the offense offering and the burnt offering and the communion sacrifice. 23And Moses, and Aaron with him, came into the Tent of Meeting, and they came out and blessed the people, and the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people. 24And a fire came out from before the LORD and consumed on the altar the burnt offering and the fat, and all the people saw and shouted with joy and fell on their faces.
CHAPTER 9 NOTES
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1. And it happened. This formula (wayehi) is characteristically used to mark the beginning of a unit of narrative. The present chapter completes the cultic narration inaugurated in chapter 7: after the rite of consecration of the altar and of Aaron and his sons and the prescribed seven days of the installation period, the priests are ritually fit to perform the sacrifices, which are reported here.
2. both unblemished. “Both” is added in the translation to indicate what is clear in the Hebrew from the plural form of “unblemished,” temimim, that the adjective refers equally to the calf and the ram.
4. for today the LORD will appear before you. As Jacob Milgrom observes, the revelation of God before all the people “renders the Tabernacle the equivalent of Mount Sinai.” Mary Douglas goes further, seeing a precise structural correspondence in the system of analogical thinking between Sinai and the Tabernacle: each is divided into three gradated zones of holiness—the Sinai summit, where only Moses may ascend; partway up the mountain, where the seventy elders come and are vouchsafed an epiphany; and the bottom of the mountain where the people remain; corresponding to these vertically deployed zones are the horizontal zones of the Tabernacle, from the Holy of Holies to inner court to outer court. What is striking is that in Exodus God’s manifestation of His fiery presence to the people comes from a divine initiative associated with the revelation of the Decalogue, whereas in this Priestly document it is ritual—the scrupulous performance of the sacrifices by Aaron and his sons—that brings about the grand epiphany.
6. the LORD charged, you shall do. Some commentators assume that ʾasher, “that,” between “charged” and “you shall do” has been inadvertently omitted.
9. brought forward the blood to him. This was obviously done by draining the blood of the slaughtered animal into some sort of bowl.
12. provided him. The verb in the hipʿil conjugation, himtsiʾ, is unique to this chapter. The sense is: to make something available (literally, “to cause it to be found”).
19. the covering fat. The received text has only the participle (“the covering”). This is probably a simple ellipsis, though the word for “fat” may have been accidentally dropped in scribal transmission.
20. the fat. Here and at a couple of other points in the chapter, “the fat” is in the plural (haḥalavim), indicating the fat stripped from the sundry inner organs. Milgrom consequently represents this in English as “pieces of fat.”
22. Aaron raised his hands toward the people and blessed them. A common view, from Late Antiquity (Sifra) onward, is that he pronounces the tripartite priestly blessing recorded in Numbers 6:24–26.
24. a fire came out from before the LORD. The cloud of the divine glory is luminescent, enveloping the fire into which it turns at night. Here, the emergence of the fire is a dramatic sign of God’s self-revelation and of divine favor in accepting the sacrifice. In the next episode, when cultic procedure is violated, this same fire from the LORD will be lethal.