Leviticus 10:18

Behold, the blood of it was not brought in within the holy place: ye should indeed have eaten it in the holy place, as I commanded.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(18) Behold, the blood of it.—According to the sacrificial law, the flesh of the sin offerings (the blood of which was not carried into the sanctuary) had to be eaten by the priests alone, in a holy place, as a part of the expiatory rites. (See Leviticus 6:25-26; Leviticus 10:17.) It was the flesh of those sin offerings, the blood of which was carried into the sanctuary, which had to be burnt. (See Leviticus 4:5; Leviticus 4:16; Leviticus 6:23; Leviticus 6:30.) Now the blood of the people’s sin-offering which was offered on this occasion was not carried into the sanctuary. (See Leviticus 9:9.)

Ye should indeed have eaten it.—Hence its flesh should have been eaten by Aaron and his two sons in the court-yard of the sanctuary, as Moses commanded in Leviticus 6:26.

Benson Commentary

Leviticus 10:18. Behold the blood was not brought within the holy place — And consequently it was not one of those sacrifices ordered to be burned, (Leviticus 6:30,) but should have been eaten in the court of the tabernacle, Leviticus 6:26.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

10:12-20 Afflictions should rather quicken us to our duty, than take us from it. But our unfitness for duty, when it is natural and not sinful, will have great allowances made for it; God will have mercy, and not sacrifice. Let us profit by the solemn warning this history conveys. When professing worshippers come with zeal without knowledge, carnal affections, earthly, light, vain, trifling thoughts, the devices of will-worship, instead of the offering of soul and spirit; then the incense is kindled by a flame which never came down from heaven, which the Spirit of a holy God never sent within their hearts.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

"The holy place," as it is called in our version, within the tabernacle (see Exodus 26:33; Exodus 28:29, etc.) into which the blood was carried, is regularly called in Hebrew, simply, "the holy" (as the innermost chamber is called "the holy of holies"), the adjective being used substantively; while the precinct in which the flesh of the sin-offering was eaten is generally called in full the holy place, the substantive being expressed Leviticus 10:13.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

16-20. Moses diligently sought the goat of the sin offering, and, behold, it was burnt—In a sacrifice presented, as that had been, on behalf of the people, it was the duty of the priests, as typically representing them and bearing their sins, to have eaten the flesh after the blood had been sprinkled upon the altar. Instead of using it, however, for a sacred feast, they had burnt it without the camp; and Moses, who discovered this departure from the prescribed ritual, probably from a dread of some further chastisements, challenged, not Aaron, whose heart was too much lacerated to bear a new cause of distress but his two surviving sons in the priesthood for the great irregularity. Their father, however, who heard the charge and by whose directions the error had been committed, hastened to give the explanation. The import of his apology is, that all the duty pertaining to the presentation of the offering had been duly and sacredly performed, except the festive part of the observance, which privately devolved upon the priest and his family. And that this had been omitted, either because his heart was too dejected to join in the celebration of a cheerful feast, or that he supposed, from the appalling judgments that had been inflicted, that all the services of that occasion were so vitiated that he did not complete them. Aaron was decidedly in the wrong. By the express command of God, the sin offering was to be eaten in the holy place; and no fanciful view of expediency or propriety ought to have led him to dispense at discretion with a positive statute. The law of God was clear and, where that is the case, it is sin to deviate a hair's breadth from the path of duty. But Moses sympathized with his deeply afflicted brother and, having pointed out the error, said no more.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The blood of it was not brought in within the holy place; the reason whereof was, because Aaron was not yet admitted into the holy place, whither that blood should have been brought, till he had prepared the way by the sacrifices which were to be offered in the court.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Behold, the blood of it was not brought in within the holy place,.... When that was the case, indeed, the flesh of the sin offering was not to be eaten, but burnt, see Leviticus 6:30 but this was not the case now, and therefore its flesh should have been eaten, and not burnt:

ye should indeed have eaten it in the holy place, as I commanded, Leviticus 6:26.

Geneva Study Bible

Behold, the blood of it was not brought in within the holy place: ye should indeed have eaten it in the holy place, as I commanded.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Leviticus 10:18

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

After the directions occasioned by this judgment of God, Moses reminded Aaron and his sons of the general laws concerning the consumption of the priests' portions of the sacrifices, and their relation to the existing circumstances: first of all (Leviticus 10:12, Leviticus 10:13), of the law relating to the eating of the meat-offering, which belonged to the priests after the azcarah had been lifted off (Leviticus 2:3; Leviticus 6:9-11), and then (Leviticus 10:14, Leviticus 10:15) of that relating to the wave-breast and heave-leg (Leviticus 7:32-34). By the minchah in Leviticus 10:12 we are to understand the meal and oil, which were offered with the burnt-offering of the nation (Leviticus 9:4 and Leviticus 9:7); and by the אשּׁים in Leviticus 10:12 and Leviticus 10:15, those portions of the burnt-offering, meat-offering, and peace-offering of the nation which were burned upon the altar (Leviticus 9:13, Leviticus 9:17, and Leviticus 9:20). He then looked for "the he-goat of the sin-offering," - i.e., the flesh of the goat which had been brought for a sin-offering (Leviticus 9:15), and which was to have been eaten by the priests in the holy place along with the sin-offerings, whose blood was not taken into the sanctuary (Leviticus 6:19, Leviticus 6:22); - "and, behold, it was burned" (שׂרף, 3 perf. Pual). Moses was angry at this, and reproved Eleazar and Ithamar, who had attended to the burning: "Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin-offering in a holy place?" he said; "for it is most holy, and He (Jehovah) hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for it before Jehovah," as its blood had not been brought into the holy place (הוּבא construed as a passive with an accusative, as in Genesis 4:18, etc.). "To bear the iniquity" does not signify here, as in Leviticus 5:1, to bear and atone for the sin in its consequences, but, as in Exodus 28:38, to take the sin of another upon one's self, for the purpose of cancelling it, to make expiation for it. As, according to Exodus 28:38, the high priest was to appear before the Lord with the diadem upon his forehead, as the symbol of the holiness of his office, to cancel, as the mediator of the nation and by virtue of his official holiness, the sin which adhered to the holy gifts of the nation (see the note on this passage), so here it is stated with regard to the official eating of the most holy flesh of the sin-offering, which had been enjoined upon the priests, that they were thereby to bear the sin of the congregation, to make atonement for it. This effect or signification could only be ascribed to the eating, by its being regarded as an incorporation of the victim laden with sin, whereby the priests actually took away the sin by virtue of the holiness and sanctifying power belonging to their office, and not merely declared it removed, as Oehler explains the words (Herzog's Cycl. x. p. 649). Exodus 28:38 is decisive in opposition to the declaratory view, which does not embrace the meaning of the words, and is not applicable to the passage at all. "Incorporabant quasi peccatum populique reatum in se recipiebant" (Deyling observv. ss. i. 45, 2).

(Note: C. a Lapide has given this correct interpretation of the passage: "ut scilicet cum hostiis populi pro peccato simul etiam populi peccata in vos quasi recipiatis, ut illa expietis." There is no foundation for the objection offered by Oehler, that the actual removal of guilt and the atonement itself were effected by the offering of the blood. For it by no means follows from Leviticus 17:11, that the blood, as the soul of the sacrificial animal, covered or expiated the soul of the sinner, and that the removal and extinction of the sin had already taken place with the covering of the soul before the holy God, which involved the forgiveness of the sin and the reception of the sinner to mercy.)