Leviticus 21: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD gives Moses rules for the priests, the sons of Aaron: limits on making themselves unclean for the dead, a ban on shaved patches, trimmed beards and cuts, and limits on whom they may marry, because they present the food offerings of their God. Tighter rules are given for the high priest, and a penalty is set for a priest's daughter who acts as a prostitute. The LORD then tells Moses that any descendant of Aaron with a bodily defect may not come near to make the offerings, though he may still eat the holy food. Moses reports all of it to Aaron, to his sons, and to all the Israelites.

Claim by Claim

1. 21:1
   • The LORD spoke to Moses.
   • The LORD told Moses to speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron.
   • The LORD told Moses to say to them that no priest is to make himself unclean for a dead person among his people.
2. 21:2
   • A priest may make himself unclean for a close blood relative.
   • The close relatives named are his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, and his brother.
3. 21:3
   • A priest may also make himself unclean for his virgin sister who is near to him.
   • The sister in question has not belonged to a husband.
   • For such a sister he may make himself unclean.
4. 21:4
   • A priest is not to make himself unclean as a ba'al among his people, so as to profane himself.
   • It is unclear whether this forbids defilement because he is a husband (that is, for relatives by marriage) or because he is a leading man among his people.
5. 21:5
   • Priests are not to make a bald patch on their heads.
   • Priests are not to shave off the edge of their beards.
   • Priests are not to cut gashes in their flesh.
6. 21:6
   • Priests are to be holy to their God.
   • Priests are not to profane the name of their God.
   • Priests are the ones who present the LORD's offerings made by fire, the food of their God.
   • Therefore priests are to be holy.
7. 21:7
   • Priests are not to take as a wife a woman who is a prostitute.
   • Priests are not to take as a wife a woman who has been defiled.
   • Priests are not to take as a wife a woman divorced from her husband.
   • The reason given is that the priest is holy to his God.
8. 21:8
   • The people are to treat the priest as holy.
   • The reason given is that he presents the food of your God.
   • The priest is to be holy to you.
   • The LORD, who sanctifies you, is holy.
9. 21:9
   • If the daughter of a priest profanes herself by prostituting herself, she profanes her father.
   • Such a daughter is to be burned with fire.
10. 21:10
    • There is a priest who is greatest among his brothers.
    • The anointing oil has been poured on his head.
    • He has been ordained to wear the priestly garments.
    • The high priest is not to let the hair of his head hang loose and unkempt.
    • The high priest is not to tear his garments.
11. 21:11
    • The high priest is not to go in where there is any dead body.
    • The high priest is not to make himself unclean even for his father or his mother.
12. 21:12
    • The high priest is not to go out of the sanctuary.
    • The high priest is not to profane the sanctuary of his God.
    • The consecration of the anointing oil of his God is upon him.
    • The speaker declares: I am the LORD.
13. 21:13
    • The high priest is to take a wife who is a virgin.
14. 21:14
    • The high priest is not to take a widow as wife.
    • The high priest is not to take a divorced woman as wife.
    • The high priest is not to take a defiled woman as wife.
    • The high priest is not to take a prostitute as wife.
    • The high priest is to take a virgin from his own people as wife.
15. 21:15
    • The high priest is not to profane his offspring among his people.
    • The LORD is the one who sanctifies him.
16. 21:16
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
17. 21:17
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to Aaron.
    • Any man of Aaron's offspring, throughout their generations, who has a bodily defect is not to approach to offer the food of his God.
18. 21:18
    • No man who has a defect is to approach.
    • A blind man is excluded.
    • A lame man is excluded.
    • A man with a mutilated or disfigured face is excluded.
    • A man with a deformed or overlong limb is excluded.
19. 21:19
    • A man with a broken foot is excluded.
    • A man with a broken hand is excluded.
20. 21:20
    • A hunchback is excluded.
    • A man who is stunted or unusually thin is excluded; the term is ambiguous.
    • A man with a defect in his eye is excluded.
    • A man with a festering skin eruption is excluded.
    • A man with scabs is excluded.
    • A man with crushed testicles is excluded.
21. 21:21
    • No man of the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a defect is to come near to present the LORD's offerings made by fire.
    • Such a man has a defect.
    • Such a man is not to come near to offer the food of his God.
22. 21:22
    • Such a man may eat the food of his God from the most holy offerings.
    • Such a man may eat from the holy offerings.
23. 21:23
    • Such a man is not to go in to the veil.
    • Such a man is not to come near the altar.
    • The reason given is that he has a defect.
    • He is not to profane the LORD's sanctuaries.
    • The LORD is the one who sanctifies them.
24. 21:24
    • Moses spoke this to Aaron.
    • Moses spoke this to Aaron's sons.
    • Moses spoke this to all the children of Israel.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

21:1

Touching or being under the same roof as a corpse made a person ritually unclean, not dirty, but temporarily barred from the sanctuary and from handling holy things until a set purification had passed. Because a priest's work was at the sanctuary, this mattered for him in a way it did not for others. Burying and mourning the dead was normally a family duty, so the rule cuts across an ordinary obligation.

21:2

The list is the household a man was born into: parents, children, brother. A wife is not named. Readers ancient and modern have noticed the gap; most take her as covered by the opening phrase, which in Hebrew is literally "his flesh, the one nearest to him."

21:3

A married sister passed into her husband's household, and the duty of burying her fell to them. An unmarried sister still belonged to her father's house, so her priestly brother remained responsible for her.

21:4

The Hebrew of this verse is obscure and translators genuinely differ. The key word can mean "husband" (giving: he must not defile himself for relatives acquired by marriage) or "master, leading man" (giving: his rank forbids him what others may do). Also note the vocabulary running through the chapter: "holy" means set apart for God's use, and its opposite is not "wicked" but "common", ordinary, available for everyday use. To profane something is to move it from the first category to the second.

21:5

These were the standard ways of showing grief in the ancient Near East: shaving the head bald, cutting away the trimmed edge of the beard, and gashing the skin. The rule forbids priests these public gestures of mourning, not grief itself.

21:6

"The food of their God" is the regular idiom in these laws for what was burned on the altar or set out before it; sacrifice is spoken of throughout as a meal presented to God. "Offerings made by fire" are those wholly or partly burned rather than eaten.

21:7

"Defiled" translates a Hebrew word meaning a woman who has been made common, most often understood as a woman who has lost her virginity outside marriage, though later Jewish readers took it to mean a woman born from a marriage forbidden to a priest. Divorce was legal in Israel and carried no penalty; what is restricted here is whom a priest may marry.

21:8

The "you" here is singular and turns from the priests to Israel as a whole: the people have an obligation to treat the priest as set apart.

21:9

Burning is an exceptionally rare penalty in Israelite law, named only here and in one or two other cases. Whether the burning was the means of death or something done to the body afterward is disputed. "Makes her father unholy" reflects the assumption that a household's standing was collective: her conduct stripped his.

21:10

Two mourning gestures are named. The first, literally "he shall not unbind his head," may mean letting the hair hang loose or going bareheaded, translators differ. The second, tearing one's own clothing, was the ordinary visible sign of grief. The anointing was the installation ceremony: perfumed olive oil poured over the head, marking the man as set apart for the office.

21:11

Ordinary priests could mourn for close family. The high priest could not, not even for his own father or mother.

21:12

This is generally understood to mean he must not leave his post to follow a funeral or join in mourning, not that he can never go outdoors. The Hebrew word behind the KJV's "crown of the anointing oil" means both a consecration and a diadem.

21:13

A virgin is a woman who has never had sex. The rules for the high priest's marriage were stricter than for other priests.

21:14

The limits are tighter than for ordinary priests, who are barred only from marrying a prostitute, a defiled woman, or a divorced woman (verse 7). A widow is permitted to them and forbidden to the high priest.

21:15

Priestly standing passed by birth. A marriage outside these limits was held to leave the children without the standing to serve at the sanctuary.

21:17

"Defect" translates the same Hebrew word used of animals brought for sacrifice, which likewise had to be without defect. Everything in the list that follows is a physical condition, not a moral one, and verse 22 makes explicit that such a man kept his priestly food and household rights.

21:18

Several terms in this list are technical and their exact sense is uncertain. The word behind "disfigured face" (KJV "flat nose") occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. "A limb that is too long" (KJV "any thing superfluous") seems to mean a limb out of proportion or an extra one. Translations vary widely here.

21:20

The two skin conditions named cannot now be identified with certainty; they are distinct from the condition dealt with at length in chapters 13–14, which the KJV calls leprosy. Crushed testicles likewise disqualified an animal from being offered.

21:21

"Come near" is a technical expression in these laws: stepping up to the altar to perform the offering, not merely approaching the area.

21:22

Sacrificial food came in two grades. "Most holy" portions (from the purification, reparation and grain offerings, and the bread set out before God) could be eaten only by male priests and only inside the sanctuary court. "Holy" food, such as the priests' share of the well-being offerings and contributions from the people, could be eaten by a priest's whole household anywhere ritually clean.

21:23

The curtain screened the innermost room of the sanctuary; the altar stood in the courtyard outside it. Together they name the two locations where the offering service was actually carried out.