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21
Rules for priests
1 Yahweh also said to Moses/me, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them, 2 ‘You priests must not cause yourselves to become unfit to do my work by your touching corpses. Priests are permitted to touch only the corpses of close relatives, such as the priest's mother or father or his son or daughter or his brother. 3 Priests are also permitted to touch the corpse of a sister if she is not married, because she has no husband to bury her body. 4 Priests must not cause themselves to become unfit to do my work [DOU] by their touching corpses of people who were married to one of their close relatives.
5 You priests must not shave your heads or shave the edges of your beards or cut your bodies to show that you are mourning for someone who has died. 6 You must act in ways that I, your God, consider to be holy, and not disgrace my name/reputation. You are the ones who present to me the offerings that are burned. It is as though those offerings are food for me, your God; so you must act in ways that are holy.
7 You priests must not marry women who have been prostitutes or who have been divorced from their husbands, because you priests are ◄set apart for me/holy►. 8 You must consider that you are holy, because you offer food to me, your God. Consider yourselves to be holy because I, Yahweh, the one who caused you to be priests and the one who enables you to be holy, am holy.
9 If a priest's daughter disgraces herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; and she must be killed by being burned in a fire.
10 The Supreme Priest is the one among his relatives who has been appointed for that work by having his head anointed with olive oil. He is also the one who has been appointed to wear the special garments that priests wear. He must not allow the hair on his head to remain uncombed, and he must not tear his clothes when he is mourning for someone. 11 He must not enter some place where there is a corpse. He must not do that and cause himself to become unfit for his work, even if it is his father or his mother who has died. 12 He must not leave the Sacred Tent to join those who are mourning, because he would cause himself to become unfit for his work and would also defile/desecrate the Sacred Tent. He must not leave the Sacred Tent at that time, because by being anointed with olive oil he has been ◄appointed/set apart► to serve his God in the Sacred Tent. I, Yahweh, am the one who am commanding this.
13 Women whom you priests marry must be virgins. 14-15 You priests must not marry widows or prostitutes or divorced women, because if you did that, if you later have sons, they would not be acceptable to be priests among your people. You must marry only virgins from among your own people. I am Yahweh, who sets priests apart to be holy.’ ”
16 Yahweh also said to Moses/me, 17 “Say this to Aaron: For all future time, none of your descendants who has any defects on his body will be allowed to come near the altar to offer sacrifices to me which will be like [MET] my food: 18 No one who is blind or lame or deformed, or whose face is disfigured, 19 no man with a crippled foot or a crippled hand, 20 no man who is a hunchback or a dwarf, no man whose eyes are defective, no man who has a skin disease [DOU] or whose testicles have been damaged. 21 No descendant of Aaron, the first Supreme Priest, who has any defect is allowed to come to the altar to offer to me, his God, sacrifices that will be burned. 22 Priests who have defects are permitted to eat the various kinds of holy food offered to me. 23 But because of their defects, they must not go near the curtain in the Sacred Tent or near the altar, because if they did that, they would desecrate my Sacred Tent. I am Yahweh, the one who sets those places apart as being holy.”
24 So Moses/I told this to Aaron and to his sons and to all the Israeli people.

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© 2008-2016 Ellis W. Deibler, Jr.