(1) And the Lord said unto Moses.—The laws about the purity and holiness of the Jewish community, and of every individual lay member, enacted in Leviticus 11:1 to Leviticus 20:27, are now followed by statutes respecting the purity and holiness of the priesthood who minister in holy things in behalf of the people, and who, by virtue of their high office, were to be models of both ceremonial and moral purity.

Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron.—Moses is ordered to communicate these statutes to the priests as the sons of Aaron. The peculiar phrase “the priests the sons of Aaron,” which only occurs here—since in all other six passages in the Pentateuch it is the reverse, “the sons of Aaron the priests” (see Leviticus 1:5; Leviticus 1:8; Leviticus 1:11; Leviticus 2:2; Leviticus 3:2; Numbers 10:8; Note on Leviticus 1:5), is designed to inculcate upon them the fact that they are priests by virtue of being the sons of Aaron, and not because of any merit of their own, and that they are to impress the same sentiments upon their issue. This fact, moreover, as the authorities during the second Temple remark, imposes upon the priests the duty of bringing up their children in such a manner as to make them morally and intellectually fit to occupy this hereditary office. They also deduce from the emphatic position of the term “priests,” that it only applies to those of them who are fit to perform their sacerdotal duties, and not to the disqualified priests (see Leviticus 21:15).

There shall none be defiled for the dead.—

Better, He shall not defile himself for a dead person; that is, the priest is not to contract defilement by contact with the body of any dead person. What constitutes defilement is not specified, but, as is often the case, was left to the administrators of the Law to define more minutely. Accordingly, they enacted that not only touching a dead body, but coming within four cubits of it, entering the house where the corpse lay, entering a burial place, following to the grave, or the manifestation of mourning for the departed, pollutes the priest, and consequently renders him unfit for performing the services of the sanctuary, and for engaging in the services for the people. This they deduced from Numbers 19:11-16. The Egyptian priests were likewise bound to keep aloof from “burials and graves, from impure men and women.” The Romans ordered a bough of a cypress-tree to be stuck at the door of the house in which a dead body was lying, lest a chief priest should unwittingly enter and defile himself.

Among his people—That is, among the tribes or people of Israel, the Jewish community (see Deuteronomy 32:8; Deuteronomy 33:3, &c.). Hence the authorities during the second Temple concluded that when the corpse is among the people whose duty it is to see to its burial, the priest is forbidden to take part in it; but when a priest, or even the high priest, finds a human body in the road where he cannot call on any one to bury it, he is obliged to perform this last sacred office to the dead himself. When it is borne in mind how much the ancient Hebrews thought of burial, and that nothing exceeded their horror than to think of an unburied corpse of any one belonging to them, this humane legislation will be duly appreciated.

Leviticus 20:25

Any manner of living thing that creepeth - Rather, any creeping thing; that is, any vermin. See Leviticus 11:20-23. The reference in this verse is to dead animals, not to the creatures when alive.

Le 21:1-24. Of the Priests' Mourning.

1. There shall none be defiled for the dead among his people—The obvious design of the regulations contained in this chapter was to keep inviolate the purity and dignity of the sacred office. Contact with a corpse, or even contiguity to the place where it lay, entailing ceremonial defilement (Nu 19:14), all mourners were debarred from the tabernacle for a week; and as the exclusion of a priest during that period would have been attended with great inconvenience, the whole order were enjoined to abstain from all approaches to the dead, except at the funerals of relatives, to whom affection or necessity might call them to perform the last offices. Those exceptional cases, which are specified, were strictly confined to the members of their own family, within the nearest degrees of kindred.Priests must not defile themselves, in mourning over the dead: cases excepted, Leviticus 21:1-6. Nor marry with a whore, profane, or divorced woman, Leviticus 21:7,8. His daughter, if a whore, to be burnt with fire, Leviticus 21:9. The high priest must in no case defile himself with the dead, Leviticus 21:10-12: must marry a virgin of his people, Leviticus 21:13-15. Persons having bodily defects allowed to eat of the holy things, but not to serve in the tabernacle, or offer to God, Leviticus 21:16-24.

To wit, by touching of the dead body, or abiding in the same house with it, or assisting at his funerals, or eating of the funeral feast. The reason of this law is evident, because by such pollution they were excluded from converse with men, to whom by their function they were to be serviceable upon all occasions, and from the handling of holy things, Numbers 6:6 19:11,14,16 Deu 26:14 Hosea 9:4. And God would hereby teach them, and in them all successive ministers of holy things, that they ought so entirely to give themselves to the service of God, that they ought to renounce all expressions of natural affections, and all worldly employments, so far as they are impediments to the discharge of their holy services. See Leviticus 10:3,7 Deu 33:9 Matthew 8:22. Hereby also God would beget in the people a greater reverence to the priestly function, and oblige the priests to a greater degree of strictness and purity than other men.

speak unto the priests, the sons of Aaron; the priests, whether elder or younger, whether fit for service, and whether having blemishes, or not; for there are some things which concern them, and these are sons, male children of Aaron, as the Targum of Jonathan, and not daughters, as Jarchi and others observe; for they were not obliged to regard the laws and rules here given:

and say unto them, there shall none be defiled for the dead among his people; by entering into a tent or house where a dead body lay, by touching it, or by hearing it, or attending it to the grave, or by any expressions of mourning for it, see Numbers 19:11; that is, for any person in common that were of his people, that were not nearly related to him, as in the cases after excepted; so it was a custom with the Romans, as we are told (n), that such as were polluted by funerals might not sacrifice, which shows that priests were not allowed to attend funerals, which perhaps might be taken from hence; and so Porphyry says (o), that sacred persons and inspectors of holy things should abstain from funerals or graves, and from every filthy and mournful sight.

(n) Servius in Virgil. Aeneid. l. xi. ver. 3.((o) De Abstinentia, l. 2. c. 50.

(a) By touching the dead, lamenting, or being at their burial.