1And the LORD said to Aaron, “You and your sons and your father’s house with you, you shall bear the guilt of the sanctuary, and you and your sons with you, you shall bear the guilt of your priesthood. 2And your brothers, too, the tribe of Levi, your father’s tribe, bring forward with you, and they will be levied with you and serve you, and you and your sons with you are to be before the Ark of the Covenant. 3And they will keep your watch, the watch of all the Tent. Only they must not come near the sacred vessels and the altar, so that they do not die, both they and you. 4And they will be levied with you and keep the watch of the Tent of Meeting for all the work of the Tent, and no stranger shall come near them. 5And you shall keep the watch of the sacred zone and the watch of the altar, that there be no more fury against the Israelites. 6And as for Me, look, I have taken your brothers the Levites from the midst of the Israelites, as a gift for you they are given to the LORD, to do the work of the Tent of Meeting. 7And you and your sons with you, you shall keep your priesthood for every matter of the altar and for inside the curtain, and you shall do the work. As gift work I shall give your priesthood, and the stranger who comes near will be put to death.”
8And the LORD spoke to Aaron, “And as for Me, look, I have given you the watch of My donations for all the holy things of the Israelites, to you I have given them as a share and to your sons as a perpetual statute. 9This will be yours from the most holy things from the fire, all their offerings, including all their grain offerings and all their offense offerings and all their guilt offerings that they give back to Me, most holy things they are for you and for your sons. 10In the most holy precincts you shall eat it, every male shall eat it. It will be holy for you. 11And this is yours: their gift of donations including all the donation offerings of the Israelites, to you I have given them, and to your sons and to your daughters with you as a perpetual statute, every clean person in your household will eat it. 12All the richest of the oil and all the richest of the wine and the grain, their prime yield that they give to the LORD, to you I have given them. 13The first fruits of all that is in their land, which they bring to the LORD, for you it will be, every clean person in your household will eat it. 14Everything that has been proscribed in Israel, yours it will be. 15Every womb-breach for all flesh that they offer to the LORD whether human or beast, yours it will be. But you shall surely redeem every human firstborn, and the firstborn of unclean beasts you shall redeem. 16And its redemption price from a month old you shall redeem at the value in silver of five shekels by the sanctuary shekel, which is twenty gerahs. 17But the firstborn of an ox or the firstborn of a sheep or the firstborn of a goat you shall not redeem; they are holy. Their blood you shall throw upon the altar and their fat you shall turn to smoke, a fire offering with pleasing fragrance to the LORD. 18And their flesh will be yours, like the best of the elevation offering and like the right thigh, yours it will be. 19All the donations of the holy things that the Israelites donate to the LORD I have given to you and to your sons and to your daughters with you as a perpetual statute, a perpetual covenant of salt it is before the LORD, for you and for your seed with you.”
20And the LORD said to Aaron, “In their land you shall have no estate, and no portion shall you have in their midst. I am your estate and your portion in the midst of the Israelites. 21And to the Levites, look, I have given every tithe in Israel as an estate in exchange for their work that they perform, the work of the Tent of Meeting. 22And the Israelites will no longer draw near to the Tent of Meeting to bear offense to die. 23And the Levite, he shall perform the work of the Tent of Meeting, and they will bear their guilt. It is a perpetual statute for your generations, and in the midst of the Israelites they will have no estate. 24For the tithe of the Israelites which they donate to the LORD, I have given as a donation to the Levites for an estate. Therefore did I say to them, ‘In the midst of the Israelites they will have no estate.’”
25And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 26“And to the Levites you shall speak, and you shall say to them, ‘When you take from the Israelites the tithe that I have given you from them as your estate, you shall donate from it the LORD’s donation, a tithe of the tithe. 27And it will be accounted for you as your donation, like the yield from the threshing floor and like the matured wine from the vat. 28So shall you, too, donate the LORD’s donation from all your tithes that you take from the Israelites, and you shall give from them the LORD’s donation to Aaron the priest. 29From all your gifts you shall donate the LORD’s donation, from all the richest of it, the consecrated part of it. 30And you shall say to them, When you donate the richest of it, it will be accounted for the Levites like the yield from the threshing floor and like the yield from the vat. 31And you shall eat it in every place, you and your households, for it is wages for you in exchange for your work in the Tent of Meeting. 32And you shall not bear offense for it when you donate the richest of it, and you shall not profane the holy things of the Israelites and you shall not die.’”
CHAPTER 18 NOTES
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1. And the LORD said to Aaron. After the account of the rebellion against Aaronite priestly privileges, concluding with the trial in which only Aaron’s staff blossoms, God directs this address not to Moses or to Moses and Aaron, as is everywhere else the case, but to Aaron alone. The subject, appropriately, is the grave responsibility of entering into the sanctuary and performing the sacred work there.
bear the guilt of the sanctuary. This compressed Hebrew idiom refers to bearing guilt, which is to say, the consequences of guilt, for any violation of the sacred zone of the sanctuary. This whole series of instructions highlights the intrinsic danger of the sacred zone, where any misstep can trigger divine “fury” (verse 5), and hence the need to protect the sanctuary from the intrusion of any unfit person (zar). The logic of placing these laws immediately after the story of Korah’s rebellion is manifest.
2. the tribe of Levi, your father’s tribe. The Hebrew uses two synonyms for tribe, first mateh (the characteristic Priestly term) and then shevet. Both words have the primary meaning of “staff” and then become metonyms for tribe because each tribe carries its distinctive staff.
3. keep your watch. As elsewhere, the Hebrew mishmeret has a military sense, to keep watch or guard, but may also refer to something like “maintenance.”
4. they will be levied with you. The Hebrew verb nilwu means “to be joined” or “associated,” but it is an obvious pun on Levi (lewi), and “levied,” in the sense of “mustered,” seems a close enough approximation that preserves the pun.
8. as a share. The Hebrew lemoshḥah is a homonym for a more common term that has the sense of “for anointing.” Baruch Levine has argued with especial cogency that context requires the sense of “share” or “measure,” which this root has in several other Semitic languages.
11. perpetual statute. The Hebrew noun ḥoq can mean either “statute” or “allotment,” and it appears to straddle both meanings here. In verse 23, where no gifts to the priesthood are being doled out, the same phrase can mean only “perpetual statute.”
every clean person. That is, everyone untainted by ritual impurity (such as having had contact with a corpse).
14. Everything . . . proscribed. Everything that has been declared ḥerem, “under ban,” “set aside,” and hence dedicated solely to the cult and not allowed for profane enjoyment.
15. redeem every human firstborn, and the firstborn of unclean beasts. Neither of these categories is acceptable for sacrifice, but for opposite reasons—human beings because their life is sacred, unclean beasts (pigs, scavengers) because it would be degrading to use them in the cult.
18. their flesh will be yours. For the landless Levites, the parts of the sacrificial animal not burned on the altar (only one class of sacrifices, the ʿolah, was wholly burned) become a special perquisite, and an important source of sustenance.
19. a perpetual covenant of salt. Although some commentators have argued for a reference to the actual consumption of salt as part of a covenantal feast, it is more likely that salt as a preservative is a figurative idiom that reinforces the idea of permanence equally invoked in “perpetual.”
20. no estate, and no portion. The two Hebrew terms naḥalah and ḥeleq often occur (in reverse order) as a hendiadys meaning “permanent estate.” Breaking out a hendiadys into two separate words for purposes of emphasis is a common stylistic maneuver both in Hebrew poetry and prose.
29. from all the richest of it. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “from all the fat of it,” fat, ḥelev, being a common biblical idiom for the best part of anything (as in “the fat of the land”).
32. you shall not bear offense for it . . . and you shall not profane the holy things . . . and you shall not die. This whole unit of instructions to the Aaronides closes in an envelope structure: the danger of suffering the consequences of violating the sanctuary, invoked at the beginning, recurs now on a note of reassurance: because these tithes of agricultural offerings are the priests’ just wages for their service in the cult, they run no risk of perishing for having eaten consecrated foodstuffs.