Leviticus 8:14-17
Consecration Offerings
14 Then he brought near the sin offering bull ▼▼ See Lev 4:3–12 above for the sin offering of the priests. In this case, however, the blood manipulation is different because Moses, not Aaron (and his sons), is functioning as the priest. On the one hand, Aaron and his sons are, in a sense, treated as if they were commoners so that the blood manipulation took place at the burnt offering altar in the court of the tabernacle (see v. 15 below), not at the incense altar inside the tabernacle tent itself (contrast Lev 4:5–7 and compare 4:30). On the other hand, since it was a sin offering for the priests, therefore, the priests themselves could not eat its flesh (Lev 4:11–12; 6:30 [23 HT]), which was the normal priestly practice for sin offerings of commoners (Lev 6:26[19], 29[22]).
and Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the sin offering bull, 15and he slaughtered it. ▼▼ Contrary to some English versions (e.g., NAB, NASB, NIV, NLT), Aaron (not Moses) most likely slaughtered the bull, possibly with the help of his sons, although the verb is singular, not plural. Moses then performed the ritual procedures that involved direct contact with the altar. Compare the pattern in Lev 1:5–9, where the offerer does the slaughtering and the priests perform the procedures that involve direct contact with the altar. In Lev 8 Moses is functioning as the priest in order to consecrate the priesthood. The explicit reintroduction of the name of Moses as the subject of the next verb seems to reinforce this understanding of the passage (cf. also vv. 19 and 23 below).
Moses then took the blood and put it all around on the horns of the altar with his finger and decontaminated the altar, ▼ and he poured out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar and so consecrated it to make atonement on it. ▼ 16Then he ▼ took all the fat on the entrails, the protruding lobe of the liver, and the two kidneys and their fat, ▼ and Moses offered it all up in smoke on the altar, ▼ 17but the rest of the bull – its hide, its flesh, and its dung – he completely burned up ▼▼ Heb “he burned with fire,” an expression which is sometimes redundant in English, but here means “burned up,” “burned up entirely.”
outside the camp just as the Lord had commanded Moses. ▼
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