Thursday, October 15, 2020

Leviticus 21:16-24 comments: restrictions on priests

 

Leviticus 21:16 ¶  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 17  Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. 18  For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, 19  Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, 20  Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; 21  No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God. 22  He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy, and of the holy. 23  Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries: for I the LORD do sanctify them. 24  And Moses told it unto Aaron, and to his sons, and unto all the children of Israel.

 

So, let’s suppose that one of Aaron’s descendants is born with a handicap. That man is not to offer sacrifices past the vail or at the altar. This is a very important statement about reality in my estimation. Human beings were made in the image of God, His appearance. Then, with each generation we developed deleterious mutations that impacted our bodies. People were born in the image of Adam, fallen man.

Genesis 1:27  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

 

Genesis 5:3  And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:

 

The unfortunate person of Aaron’s priestly line that had a handicap represented the consequences of that fall which included not only death but decay and degeneration and even injury and temporary disease in a visible sense. Superfluous is defined as unnecessary as you can see by reading 2Corinthians 9:1 so think of an extra finger or toe. Although Hippocrates identified scurvy as a disease in the 4th century BC, scurvy was first demonstrated scientifically, although it was understood anecdotally before by sailors, to be the result of a lack of citrus fruit in 1747 by experiments conducted by James Lind, a Scottish doctor who was a pioneer for hygiene in the Royal Navy. Scurvy meant at the time of the translation simply covered with scabs or diseased as an adjective, so it was not necessarily a reference to the Vitamin C deficiency we think of today.

Mankind’s first employment under God’s authority was as a caretaker of God’s garden and man’s diet included fruit so scurvy is definitely representative of man’s fallen condition. It’s symptoms would include bleeding from gums and skin.

 

Genesis 1:29 ¶  And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

 

We all have deleterious mutations and every person, even with a fully functioning body but the handicapped have been chosen to reveal our reality. In one way they are blessed as signs for all of us to see the evidence of the truth of the Bible sort of like how we can’t get away from fossil fuels because we will always run the bulk of our machines on the remains of the pre-Flood world.

So far, that which is forbidden is representative of the sinful heathen world or a picture of the Fall of man. God’s Law is most certainly a teaching law.

Galatians 3:24  Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.

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