NOTES for Lev 9:1-24

The dedication of priests to service consists of two main elements. The first is a special cleansing sacrifice; the second is a "peace offering." This is not surprising if we recall the meaning of priestly ministry and of the very existence of the priesthood. The meaning of its existence was that among the Jewish people, who according to God's design were to be a people-community, there would always be a certain community within the community that remained sanctified constantly, rather than being sanctified periodically as the larger part of the people was.

This is why priests during their service were not to leave the courtyard of the Tabernacle or the Temple. After completing their service they naturally left the sacred courtyard and went home, but others immediately came to take their place, and then they, in turn, became the sanctified community within the community. Coming to the Tabernacle or the Temple, the priests crossed, as it were, an invisible line, a line separating sacred space, the space whose center was God's presence directly defining it, from the rest of the world, where God's presence was hidden and which therefore existed differently, not as sacred space exists.

To cross this boundary, a priest had to be cleansed and sanctified separately and in a special way. In essence, precisely what, according to God's design, every person who came to the altar was supposed to experience there had to happen to him: the will of the one coming had to be turned toward God, and God's power had to cleanse his nature from sin and sanctify it through the corresponding sacrifices.

Ideally, the entire later life of a person cleansed and sanctified in this way should have become different; it should have flowed according to other laws. The person should have received a new spiritual quality of life and should no longer lose it, wherever he was and whatever he was doing, apart, of course, from sin, which in such a life was completely excluded.

In practice, however, a person, even after being cleansed and sanctified, could not thereafter preserve this new spiritual quality of life, quickly rolling back to his former state. The priests had an advantage here: they did not withdraw from the altar; they did not leave the sacred space throughout the whole time of their service. There, at the altar, they could, if they made the effort, locally and for a time realize what ideally was intended for everyone as the norm of life. In practice, of course, things happened in different ways, but the important point is that the opportunity for a full spiritual life was given to the priests who remained at the altar; the rest already depended on them.