"STRANGE FIRE"

“Strange Fire.”  How is this to be understood?  We certainly do not want to find ourselves fighting against God.  Acts 5:34-39.  We should read the Bible as we do a newspaper to learn facts.  And we should read with a sense of the mystery which God is performing in this world. 

 

Nadab & Abihu were disobedient to God in an arrogant way.  They showed a contempt for holy and sacred things.  [Compare Acts 5:1-11 and what happened to Ananias & Sapphira.]  It is implied that they were drunk when they offered this strange­ fire.  It is also implied that they were in competition with Moses & Aaron and the Jehovah system.  Perhaps they were tainted with the idol worship of the Canaanites?  This must all be understood in view of the dedication of the Tabernacle.  God Himself had given the priesthood to Aaron, and it was not a family thing just because Aaron was Moses' brother.  This dedication was a very solemn thing and this had to be impressed on the people that it was Divine Authority in action.  God was speaking to these former slaves in ways that they could relate to and understand.

 

Note that Aaron and his other two sons were not punished.  They had done what they were told to do (Lev. 8:4-36; 9:1-24).  "But the offense was of a far more aggravated nature than such a mere informality would imply. It consisted not only in their venturing unauthorized to perform the incense service -- the highest and most solemn of the priestly offices -- not only in their engaging together in a work which was the duty only of one, but in their presuming to intrude (unauthorised entry) into the Holy of Holies, to which access was denied to all but the high priest alone. In this respect, "they offered strange fire before the Lord"; they were guilty of a presumptuous and unwarranted intrusion into a sacred office which did not belong to them. But their offense was more aggravated still; for instead of taking the fire which was put into their censers from the brazen altar, they seem to have been content with common fire and thus perpetrated an act which, considering the descent of the miraculous fire they had so recently witnessed and the solemn obligation under which they were laid to make use of that which was specially appropriated to the service of the altars, they betrayed a carelessness, an irreverence, a want (lack)of faith, most surprising and lamentable. A precedent of such evil tendency was dangerous, and it was imperatively necessary, therefore, as well for the priests themselves as for the sacred things, that a marked expression of the divine displeasure should be given for doing that which "God commanded them not."—Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

 

"And Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the Lord spoke, saying: 'By those who come near Me I must be regarded as holy; And before all the people I must be glorified.'  So Aaron held his peace."  Lev 10:3 (NKJV)   "Then Moses made careful inquiry about the goat of the sin offering, and there it was--burned up. And he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron who were left, saying, 17 "Why have you not eaten the sin offering in a holy place, since it is most holy, and God has given it to you to bear the guilt of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord? 18 See! Its blood was not brought inside the holy place; indeed you should have eaten it in a holy place, as I commanded."  Lev 10:16-18 (NKJV)  But Aaron explained: "And Aaron said to Moses, 'Look, this day they have offered their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord, and such things have befallen me! If I had eaten the sin offering today, would it have been accepted in the sight of the Lord?' 20 So when Moses heard that, he was content."  Lev 10:19-20 (NKJV) 

 

"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."—Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary.  NOTE THAT GOD ACCEPTED THIS.  They had acted in faith and not arrogance.  They were not arrogantly defying God as did Nadab & Abihu.  They had respected God even though they had omitted some of what they were told to do.  Note: "For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." Romans 4:3 (NKJV)  Aaron and his remaining sons believed God.

 

"Moses rested satisfied with this answer. Aaron acknowledged that the flesh of the sin-offering ought to have been eaten by the priest in this instance (according to Lev. 6:19), and simply adduced (believed), as the reason why this had not been done, the calamity which had befallen his two eldest sons. And this might really be a sufficient reason, as regarded both himself and his remaining sons, why the eating of the sin-offering should be omitted. For the judgment in question was so solemn a warning, as to the sin which still adhered to them even after the presentation of their sin-offering, that they might properly feel 'that they had not so strong and overpowering a holiness as was required for eating the general sin-offering'" (M. Baumgarten).