Exodus 28:1-43

THE HOLY GARMENTS OF THE PRIESTS, Exodus 28:1-43.

The institution of the Aaronic priesthood and the ceremonials of their induction into office, their dress, and the duties of their office, are explicitly referred in this and following chapters to the time of Moses. The theory which maintains the post-exilian origin of this “priest code” is obliged to treat this entire narrative as unhistorical, and has gone to the extreme of teaching that the structure and cultus of the Mosaic tabernacle must all be relegated to the realm of fiction. How this reverses and revolutionizes all history and tradition, and introduces difficulties greater than those it seeks to explain, must be apparent to the un-biassed student of these sacred books. That the Levitical priesthood was instituted by Moses, and that Aaron and his sons were consecrated first for the holy services of the tabernacle, are facts most reasonable and supposable in themselves. No other period in all the history of Israel was so appropriate for the establishment of such a sacerdotal cultus, and no man, under God, could have been better qualified to set in order the offices and work of this ministry than Moses, whose Egyptian training must have made him familiar with the cultus and mysteries of the great temples of the Nile.