In today's passage we'll find the Lord telling priests what to look for, and what to avoid, when choosing a wife. Instructions will be provided for how a priest is to handle immorality and cult activity practiced by a member of his household.
"They must not marry women defiled by prostitution or divorced from their husbands, because priests are holy to their God. Regard them as holy, because they offer up the food of your God. Regard them as holy, because I the Lord am holy---I who make you holy." (Leviticus 21:7-8) The word rendered as "prostitution" is the Hebrew "zanah". According to Strong's Bible Concordance, this word covers the entire gamut of sexual activity other than that which occurs between a wife and her husband. So the Lord is telling the priests not to court or marry any woman who has been sexually promiscuous. He's not saying just to avoid women who've prostituted themselves on the street corners, which is the type of thing the word "prostitution" typically brings to our minds. He's telling the priests of Israel that it is unseemly for them to bind themselves in marriage to women who have had sex before marriage (fornication) or who have had sex with a married person (adultery) or who have engaged in any pagan ritual in which idolaters believe sexual activity is not a sin or a betrayal of one's partner. The heathen tribes of Canaan and of many other ancient cultures believed it did not count as a sin or as infidelity if a woman served as a priestess at a pagan temple or at a pagan festival in which she would be representing a fertility goddess and engaging in sexual activity with men who attended the temple or festival. In fact, these priestesses were highly revered in their cultures and it was considered an honor to be one of them.
Speaking of this type of behavior, a harsh punishment is to be meted out if a priest's daughter allows herself to be seduced into these pagan rituals or if she decides to take up an immoral lifestyle. "If a priest's daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire." (Leviticus 21:9) Scholars disagree somewhat on the meaning of the phrase "burned in the fire". Some think she is burned alive, others believe she is executed and then her body is burned in the way carcasses of dead animals were burned outside the camp, and others think she is not executed but branded as an immoral woman with a hot iron. I tend to think her actual death is indicated by verse 9 but rather than getting caught up in our shock over her punishment or discussing the various theories regarding what her punishment actually is and whether such a punishment was carried out in Israel (remember, two or more witnesses had to catch a person in the very act of a capital sin before the death penalty could be enforced according to Deuteronomy 17:6), I think the main thing that is in view here is that a priest is supposed to set a godly example for the nation. If he isn't a godly enough man at home to inspire his children to obey the Lord, and if he doesn't raise his children with the proper amount of godly instruction and discipline, and if he doesn't nip sin in the bud when it begins breaking out in his home, he is not providing an example the congregation can follow.
We find a related passage in the New Testament when the Apostle Paul instructs his preacher friend Timothy about how churches are to be organized and run. Paul informs him that any man seeking to hold an office in the church must be a man who sets a godly example for his children and whose children respect him and consider him an inspiration in the faith. If a man's children are disrespectful and rebellious, Paul says the man is disqualified for a position of authority in the church: "If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?" (1 Timothy 3:5) Paul is asking, "If a man can't inspire godliness in his own home, and if he can't instruct his children in the right way to live, how can he inspire the church members and instruct them how to live?" I think this is what the Lord is saying in Leviticus 21:9, regardless of what the penalty actually was and whether or not conditions were ever met to impose the punishment. The Lord wants to impress upon the priests the importance of maintaining a home life that honors Him.
The behavior of all the priests is important, but the behavior of the high priest is especially important. He is under extra strict guidelines. "The high priest, the one among his brothers who has had the anointing oil poured on his head and who has been ordained to wear the priestly garments, must not let his hair become unkempt or tear his clothes. He must not enter a place where there is a dead body. He must not make himself unclean, even for his father or mother, nor leave the sanctuary of God or desecrate it, because he has been dedicated by the anointing oil of his God. I am the Lord." (Leviticus 21:10-12) In Leviticus 21:1-4 we learned that priests weren't to allow themselves to become ceremonially unclean by dealing with funeral preparations and burials unless the deceased person was a very close relative. We took a look at Chapter 19 of the book of Numbers where we are told that anyone who has contact with a dead body was ceremonially unclean for seven days. A ceremonially unclean priest would not be able to fulfill his duties at the tabernacle for seven days. Any of the priests other than the high priest could be involved in the funeral and burial of a very close relative. But the high priest is to never allow himself to become ceremonially unclean by having contact with a dead body. I suppose there are ways in which he could inadvertently have contact with a dead body. For example, suppose his wife passes away in her sleep during the night beside him. Or suppose he is tending his sick wife or a sick child and they pass away under his care. But he is not to deliberately take part in preparing a dead body for burial and he is not to help dig a grave or help to carry a body into a tomb.
The high priest is not to take part in mourning rituals either. A person in mourning might not attend to their appearance, but the high priest is specially anointed to stand before the Lord and carry out particular duties in the tabernacle that no one else is allowed to perform. He is not to appear before the Lord with his hair uncombed or his face unwashed or his priestly garments crumpled and dirtied and torn. It was customary in a number of ancient cultures to tear small holes in one's garments to indicate that one is in mourning, but the high priest is not to tear his garments in grief, although in the New Testament we find the high priest breaking the law of Leviticus 21:10 by dramatically tearing his robes in front of those assembled at his house during the illegal nighttime trial of Jesus of Nazareth. ( See Matthew 26:65 and Mark 14:63.) When the high priest asked Jesus if He were the Messiah or not, and Jesus affirmed that He was by quoting Messianic verses in reference to Himself (Psalm 110:1, Daniel 7:13), the high priest declared it blasphemy and tore his robes to display how angry and grieved Jesus' reply made him feel. It's ironic that in declaring Jesus guilty of blasphemy, the high priest made himself guilty of breaking one of the Lord's most solemn laws regarding the behavior of a high priest. He declared Jesus a sinner while in the very act of committing a sin himself.
The high priest must be even more careful in his choice of a wife than the other priests. "The woman he marries must be a virgin. He must not marry a widow, a divorced woman, or a woman defiled by prostitution, but only a virgin from his own people, so that he will not defile his offspring among his people. I am the Lord, who makes him holy." (Leviticus 21:13-15) The other priests were instructed not to marry a woman who was promiscuous or who had been divorced. Marrying a widow was not prohibited, just as it is not prohibited for preachers and deacons in most of our churches today, for a widowed person has been released from the bonds of matrimony by the death of their spouse. They are not being unfaithful to their spouse by remarrying. But the high priest of Israel could not marry a widow. He could only marry a woman who had never been married and who had never had sexual relations with anyone.
He also could not marry a woman from any other culture. It goes without saying that the Lord would not want any priest of Israel, or any citizen of Israel, marrying a person from a pagan culture unless they had forsaken idolatry and turned in faith to the God of Israel. But what we see here is a prohibition against the high priest marrying a person who has converted to Judaism from some other religion. Other citizens could do this but he could not.
The rules for the high priest are stricter than those for the other priests and stricter than for the average citizens of Israel. If the high priest relaxes any of his standards, the people will begin to relax theirs. If a high priest marries a convert from a pagan culture, the people might begin marrying women from other cultures who have and who have not converted. If a high priest marries a woman who has been divorced, the people may begin taking a casual attitude toward divorce in general. If a high priest marries a widow, there's technically no sin or infidelity involved in such a thing, but he might be taking on the children of another man who didn't do a very good job of raising them in the faith. Then the high priest might end up with rebellion in the household, and as we've already learned in today's passage, that won't create a good image for the high priest. And anything that doesn't create a good image for the high priest doesn't create a good image for the God he serves. The people are to revere the Lord because He is holy. The lifestyle of the high priest is to reflect the holiness of the God he serves.
In closing let's think about the pastors of our churches today. They are representing the Lord. Yes, they are mortal human beings like the rest of us. Yes, they fail to live up to God's perfect standards just like the rest of us. But they are held to a higher standard---as they should be. There must never be even a whisper of a scandal surrounding them. They must never do or say anything that could be construed as sexually inappropriate. They are to set an example for the congregation to follow, and if they do not, some people will not only turn against them but against the gospel they preach. A person who is a new believer or who is not a believer yet may be so offended and so put off by a sin committed by a preacher that they want nothing more to do with the church. A new or weak believer might stop reading the Bible or listening to sermons or praying. An unbeliever may walk away and decide they never want anything more to do with the Lord and that they never want to hear another word about Him. It's important for all Christians to be careful how they live, but it's even more important for a preacher of the gospel to be careful how he lives.
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