“That Is What YHWH Said,” Moses Interprets Nadav and Avihu’s Death

[1] For a discussion of this, Ed Greenstein, “The Incident of Nadav and Avihu: A Mysterious Transgression or a Mysterious Deity?” TheTorah.com (2014); James Diamond, “How God Was Sanctified through Nadav and Avihu’s Death,” TheTorah.com (2016).

The same phrase appears in the manna story in Exodus (16:23) and carries the same difficulty. I hope to show in a future piece that it can be solved in the same way as is suggested below for Lev 10:3. Other cases where we find similar phrases include 2 Kings 9:36 (דבר ה’ הוא אשר דבר ביד עבדו אליהו התשבי לאמר…) and 2 Kings 15:12 (הוא אשר דבר ה’ אל יהוא לאמר…). In contrast to the two Torah texts, these carry no difficulty. The first passage refers back to 1 Kings 21:23-24 and the second to 2 Kings 10:30. This evidence strengthens the expectation that our text as well should refer back to an explicit divine decree. See the discussion in Gershon Brin, “Regarding the Phrase ‘This is What the Lord Commanded/Said’” in Haim M. I. Gevaryahu Memorial Volume, vol. 2. (ed., B.-Z. Lurya and J. J. Adler; Jerusalem: World Jewish Bible Center, 1991), 35-42 [Hebrew]. Brin himself suggests with regard to our case that the text refers back to a passage that failed to enter the biblical canon.

Some manuscripts seem to indicate that the Rabbinic interpretation revocalizes the word from kevody (כְבֹדִי), my glory, to kevuday (כְבֻדַי), my honored ones and does not add the consonant mem. This would make the alteration less radical.

For more on this principle, see Isaac Gottlieb, “Highlighting Juxtaposition in the Torah,” TheTorah.com (2015).

 Furthermore, if Moses’ words to Aaron “this is what YHWH said” are a shorthand reference to Lev 21, why does Moses then explicitly teach these laws to Aaron and his sons in verses 6-7 as if they didn’t already know them:

^{ויקרא י:ו} וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶל אַהֲרֹן וּלְאֶלְעָזָר וּלְאִיתָמָר בָּנָיו רָאשֵׁיכֶם אַל תִּפְרָעוּ וּבִגְדֵיכֶם לֹא תִפְרֹמוּ וְלֹא תָמֻתוּ וְעַל כָּל הָעֵדָה יִקְצֹף וַאֲחֵיכֶם כָּל בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל יִבְכּוּ אֶת הַשְּׂרֵפָה אֲשֶׁר שָׂרַף יְ-הוָה. ^י:ז וּמִפֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֹא תֵצְאוּ פֶּן תָּמֻתוּ כִּי שֶׁמֶן מִשְׁחַת יְ-הוָה עֲלֵיכֶם וַיַּעֲשׂוּ כִּדְבַר מֹשֶׁה.

^{Lev 10:6} And Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not bare your heads and do not rend your clothes, lest you die and anger strike the whole community. But your kinsmen, all the house of Israel, shall bewail the burning that YHWH has wrought. ^10:7 And so do not go outside the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, lest you die, for YHWH’s anointing oil is upon you.” And they did as Moses had bidden.

Why the need for the repetition if this was already stated in different words in verse 3?

[6] This position is actually found already in b. Zevachim, 115b and attributed to רבי in contradistinction to the position of ר’ יהושע בן קרחה. Strangely, Abarbanel does not cite this Talmudic source.

Wessely may have been inspired to suggest this by Ramban’s summary of ibn Ezra’s position:

ואם כן הוא דבור לא נכתב כי השם הודיעו דרכיו שכך המדה הזאת לפניו

If so, this statement was not recorded but rather God informed him that this type of action (middah) was his way (derachav).

[8] Ramban’s best prooftext for this usage is the statement of Laban (Gen 24:51) that Abraham’s servant’s taking of Rebekah is “as YHWH has said” (כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְ-הוָה) when referring to how Rebekah’s offering to draw water for the man and his camels fit with the sign he requested from God.

[9] The Hebrew here has מקרא, likely just a typo.

[10] For more on this point, see Baruch Schwartz, “Does God Speak?” TheTorah.com (2014); Sam Fleischacker, “Making Sense of the Revelation at Sinai,” TheTorah.com (2014). See also Moshe Greenberg, “Jewish Conceptions of the Human Factor in Biblical Prophecy,” Studies in the Bible and in Jewish Thought (Philadelphia: JPS, 1995), 405—420.

The Sages are quite bothered by this, and thus debate whether Nadav and Avihu really died in the Tabernacle or not. See Sifra, “Mekhilta deMiluim” 35.

I am following the general scheme proposed by Israel Knohl, who sees H as a late priestly redaction of earlier P material. Knohl, however, considers Lev 10:6-7 to be part of a larger H appendix that includes verses 6-11, based upon Lev 21. He writes, “It appears that the editors of this school wished to anchor the prohibitions applying to the priests in the narrative of the sin and death of the two sons of Aaron, and thus introduced vv. 6-11.” Regarding the apparent contradiction between Lev 10:6-7 and 21:10-11, Knohl adopts the same harmonization suggested by Milgrom (cf. previous note). See, Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence (Fortress 1995), 68-69 and notes 25, 26. However, in contrast with the clear H language that informs verses 8-11, no such language is found in verses 6-7. I see no reason to distinguish between verses 4-5, which are considered to be P, and verses 6-7. Furthermore, it makes little sense for a late H tradent to secondarily seek to anchor important prohibitions in an originally independent narrative setting if this procedure entails contradicting the prohibition! 

For another example of this shift in the Deuteronomic material, see my, “Moses’ Commandments: The Secret of Nissim of Marseilles,” TheTorah.com (2015). 

An analogous, though not identical process appears with the bronze plating that covered the sacrificial altar outside the tabernacle. According to the Priestly passage of Numbers 17:1-5, God tells Elazar to plate the altar only after the two hundred and fifty rebels in the Korah insurrection were incinerated by the divine fire and their bronze fire pans, with which they approached the sanctuary, became holy and could not be disposed of. Thus, at the divine instruction of Moses, Elazar has them hammered onto the altar, where they would serve as a reminder to the Israelites of the consequences of rebellion. But according to Exodus 27:2 and 38:2 the altar was plated with bronze at divine behest from the outset! Thus, we again see two divergent ways of presenting a law: one is as a pre-determined principle that “had to be” and the other is a sort of “accident.” The law in the former conception is predetermined and reflects an essential, noncontingent principle: the altar must be bronze plated. In the latter conception, the law developed in response to an unforeseen incident that just as easily could never have happened: the altar did not have to be bronze plated until after incident with bronze fire pans. The main difference between the bronze plated altar and the Nadav and Avihu stories is that in the former it is God that reacts to the problem and tells Elazar the solution, while in the latter Moses intuits the solution from God’s actions without any divine verbal communication.

See the discussion in Martin I. Lockshin, Rashbam’s Commentary on Leviticus and Numbers: An Annotated Translation (Brown University Press, 2001), p. 55 n. 36.

See Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 (Anchor Bible; Doubleday, 1991), 607.