Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
The Consecration of the Priests
Exodus 29:1-21
1 “This is the thing that you shall do to them to make them holy, to minister to me in the priest’s office: take one young bull and two rams without defect, · WEB
Priests are washed, dressed, and marked with blood on the ear, the thumb and the toe before they may serve.
This is the thing that you shall do to them to make them holy, to minister to me in the priest's office Exodus 29:1.
The garments have been specified; now the men are prepared to wear them, and the order of the ceremony is the order of the whole book's logic.
You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the door of the Tent of Meeting, and shall wash them with water Exodus 29:4. Washing first, and it is done to them. A man cannot install himself in this office, and the first act performed on the candidates is a cleaning they receive passively.
Then the clothing Exodus 29:5–6, then the anointing: take the anointing oil, and pour it on his head Exodus 29:7. Poured, not dabbed. The verb elsewhere describes a quantity running down onto the beard and the collar Psalms 133:2.
Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the bull. You shall kill the bull before Yahweh at the door of the Tent of Meeting Exodus 29:10–11.
The gesture is the heart of the sacrificial system and it appears here for the first time in the book. Hands are pressed on the animal's head, and then the animal dies. Nothing is said about transfer, and nothing needs to be; the sequence says it. What follows makes it plainer still — the carcass is burned outside of the camp. It is a sin offering Exodus 29:14, which is where the letter to the Hebrews locates a crucifixion outside a city gate Hebrews 13:11–12.
Three animals, three offerings, and each says something different. The bull is for sin and is disposed of outside. The first ram is a burnt offering, the whole ram on the altar Exodus 29:18, entirely consumed — nothing kept back. The second is the ram of consecration, and it is the strangest of the three.
Take some of its blood, and put it on the tip of the right ear of Aaron, and on the tip of the right ear of his sons, and on the thumb of their right hand, and on the big toe of their right foot Exodus 29:20.
Ear, thumb, toe. What a man hears, what he does, where he goes. The three points are chosen as a summary of a working life, and each is touched with blood before he is permitted to serve. The consecration is not of the office but of the faculties, and it is applied to the parts of a person most likely to be spent on something else.
He shall be made holy, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons' garments with him Exodus 29:21.
Blood and oil together, on the men and on the clothing. Nothing in the arrangement is left ordinary, down to the fabric, and the sanctification runs outward from the person to what he wears rather than the reverse.
settled What this mark means