Numbers 3:4

4. Nadab and Abihu The tragic end of these sacrilegious priests is detailed in full in Leviticus 10:1-7, where see an extended annotation. They had but just been inducted into office. As men of note, they had been taken up the mount and had seen God. Exodus 24:9. A glorious manifestation of the power and mercy of God had just been given: “And the glory of Jehovah appeared unto all the people, and there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering.” The effect upon the people was to awaken the commingling emotions of joy and awe: “They shouted and fell on their faces.” Amid this scene Nadab and Abihu committed a rash act of sacrilege, “and there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them.” One vengeful flash from the Shekinah “struck them dead, with their censers in their hands, with not a moment’s warning. What a fearful exhibition of the truth that God’s jealousy burns fiercest about his altar!”

Strange fire Up to this event, which occurred just after the tabernacle was set up, and hence not more than four weeks before the census of the Levites, there is no record of any regulation respecting the character of the fire to be used for burning incense. But immediately after this sad catastrophe, in Leviticus 16:12, the command is given to take the coals of fire from the altar of burnt offerings on which it was perpetually burning. Leviticus 6:9; Leviticus 6:13. We infer that such a command had been given before to these newly-robed priests. The fire on the altar had been enkindled by God, and it was the duty of the priests to see that it never should go out. It is probable that this fire, and this only, had been prescribed for this service, and that these sons of Aaron wilfully transgressed this requirement. Some are of the opinion that the fire was called “strange” because the incense was not prepared in accordance with the prescription, “Ye shall offer no strange incense.” Exodus 30:9. It has also been suggested that the incense was burned in uncanonical hours, and that this was the offence.

Before the Lord These words do not necessarily imply that they had usurped the office of their father Aaron, and had rushed into the awful sanctity of the most holy place, where Jehovah, in the cloud of the Shekinah, was enthroned between the cherubim, for the entire tabernacle was filled with the special presence of the Lord. See on Leviticus 1:3. But from the prohibition of wine and strong drink to Aaron and his sons immediately following the account of the awful death of these two, we have good grounds for the inference that these priests were drunken when this impious act was committed. See Leviticus 10:8-11, and note the preceding context. Drunkenness impairs the faculty of moral discernment to discriminate “between the holy and the unholy,” and incapacitates to “teach all the statutes of the Lord.” “I will be sanctified in them that come nigh unto me.” Inebriation involves all vices and sacrileges.

Eleazar and Ithamar Aaron’s sole surviving sons. Half the Aaronic priesthood had been cut off at a stroke, as before noticed. God can carry on his work better with a pure ministry few in number, than with a multitude of unholy men in priestly robes serving their own lusts.