What happens when you listen but not close enough or you twist the words and meanings or you confuse the common for the holy?
- Lev 10:1 - "The sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it"
- Lev 16:12 - "And he shall take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the Lord, and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and he shall bring it inside the veil"
It would seem the sons of Aaron in Leviticus 10 are doing what would be expected. But all of a sudden "fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord."
Woah what happened? They are seemingly behaving as expected or were they. Let's read critically.
Turns out the sons "offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them".
- Ex. 30:9 - "You shall not offer unauthorized incense on it, or a burnt offering, or a grain offering, and you shall not pour a drink offering on it."
The word unauthorized is also translated from the original Hebrew as strange or foreign in other translations and uses.
A few verses later in Leviticus 10 we hear again from the Lord as he speaks directly to Aaron.
Drink no wine or strong drink, you or your sons with you, when you go into the tent of meeting, lest you die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations. You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses.
Leviticus 10:8-11
Maybe now we have the full picture of the story.
Connecting the dots
My current understanding of the story: The sons were drunk and in their intoxication they do a ritual with fire that is likely from the culture around them. They didn't listen and understand their calling. In their failure they did not distinguish between the common and the holy. And in their juvenile behavior they played with fire and God responded with fire.
God's words are not something to take lightly.
