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Chapter 28
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Exodus, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
God’s Identity and Power
Redemption and Deliverance
The Covenant
Mediators and the Priesthood
Summary
Analysis
To consecrate the priests, the Israelites should take a young bull, two rams, unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers spread with oil. At the entrance to the tent of meeting, Aaron and his sons should be washed with water. Then Aaron should be dressed in the sacred vestments, and anointing oil should be poured on his head. His sons should be ordained likewise.
This section describes the actions that must be taken in order to ordain Aaron and his sons—set them apart for priestly service. This consecration won’t take place until after the tabernacle has been built. Parts of the ordination ritual, like sacrificial offerings, anticipate the kinds of rituals they will later conduct on the people’s behalf.
Themes
The bull should then be brought in front of the tent of meeting. Aaron and his sons should lay their hands on its head, and it should be slaughtered. Some of the bull’s blood should be placed on the horns of the altar by Moses, and the rest of the blood poured out at the altar’s base. The fat, the liver, and the kidneys should be burned on the altar, while its flesh, skin, and dung are burned outside the camp as a sin offering.
The bull is offered as a sin offering (or purification offering)—laying hands on its head symbolizes the transfer of the people guilt or impurity onto the animal. The offering’s blood purifies the new altar (the “horns” are projections on the altar’s four corners; their symbolism isn’t otherwise explained).
Themes
One of the rams should be sacrificed in similar fashion. After it’s killed, its parts should be burned on the altar, a pleasing odor offered by fire to the LORD. After the other ram is sacrificed, Moses should smear a bit of its blood on Aaron’s and his sons’ right ears, right thumbs, and right big toes. The rest of the blood should be dashed on the altar. Some of this blood and some anointing oil should be sprinkled on Aaron and his sons and their vestments.
One of the rams is sacrificed as a burnt offering. (Later, Leviticus explains that such offerings atone for the sin of the person who offers them.) The smearing and sprinkling of blood purifies Aaron, the other priests, the altar, and the vestments, cleansing everything for service before the Lord. The whole ritual is marked by vivid sensory details—pleasing smells, bright colors, blood everywhere—that conveys the sacredness of the tabernacle and the idea that people’s impurities are costly, requiring the shedding of blood.
Themes
Then the fat of the ram of ordination, as well as a loaf of bread, a cake, and a wafer should be placed in the hands of Aaron and his sons, and they should raise these items as an elevation offering before God before they are burned on the altar. Likewise, the ram’s breast and thigh should be raised before the LORD. Aaron and his sons should eat the ram’s boiled flesh, along with the bread, at the entrance to the tent of meeting. This ordination process will take seven days, and a bull should be offered on each of the seven days as a sin offering. The altar will also be consecrated and made holy.
In this part of the ordination ritual, the priests actually eat parts of the sacrificial offerings. This looks ahead to a later practice called the peace offering, described in Leviticus, where people would eat part of a sacrifice as a sign of thanksgiving or fellowship with God, reserving part of the food for the priests. Again, the intricacy of this week-long ordination process shows that the tabernacle and priesthood are central to Israel’s life. The tabernacle is the place where God dwells in the people’s midst, and the priesthood stands between the people and God, allowing the people to access God’s blessing.
Themes
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Each day, two-year-old lambs should be offered on the altar, one in the morning and one in the evening. This will be a regular burnt offering, an ongoing ceremony. God will meet with the Israelites in the tent of meeting, and his glory will sanctify the place. God will dwell among the Israelites and be their God, and they will know that he is their God who brought them out of Egypt.
The tabernacle will have twice-daily sacrifices, a reminder of the continual need for purity in the presence of such a holy God. Yet all these preparations and sacrifices allow the people to live close to God—the whole reason that God brought them from Egypt in the first place.
Themes
