Commentaria in Leviticum
Chapter Twenty-one. Synopsis of the Chapter
God ordains that the priests abstain from funerals and mourning, indeed that the High Priest mourn neither father nor mother; secondly, that the High Priest take no wife but a virgin and of noble birth, verse 13; thirdly, that priests be free from blemishes, that is, defects of body, verse 17.
1. And the Lord said to Moses: Speak to the priests the sons of Aaron, and thou shalt say to them: Let not a priest be defiled at the death of his citizens, 2. but only for his kindred and near relations, that is, for his father and mother, and son and daughter, and brother, 3. and sister a virgin, who hath had no husband. 4. But not even for the prince of his people shall he be defiled. 5. They shall not shave their head, nor their beard, nor make incisions in their flesh. 6. They shall be holy to their God, and shall not profane his name: for they offer the burnt offering of the Lord, and the bread of their God, and therefore they shall be holy. 7. They shall not take to wife a harlot, or a vile prostitute, nor one that has been put away from her husband, because they are consecrated to their God, 8. and offer the loaves of proposition. Let them therefore be holy, because I also am holy, the Lord, who sanctify them. 9. If the daughter of a priest be taken in whoredom, and dishonour the name of her father, she shall be burnt with fire. 10. The high priest, that is to say, the greatest among his brethren, upon whose head the oil of unction hath been poured, and whose hands have been consecrated for the priesthood, and who hath been vested with the holy vestments, shall not uncover his head, he shall not rend his garments, 11. neither shall he go in at all to any dead person, and he shall not be defiled even for his father or mother. 12. Neither shall he go out of the holy places, lest he profane the sanctuary of the Lord, because the oil of the holy unction of his God is upon him. I am the Lord. 13. He shall take a virgin to wife: 14. but a widow, or one that is put away, or defiled, or a harlot, he shall not take, but a maiden of his own people, 15. lest he mingle the stock of his kindred with the common people of his nation: for I am the Lord who sanctify him. 16. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 17. Speak to Aaron: Whosoever of thy seed throughout their families, hath a blemish, he shall not offer bread to his God, 18. neither shall he approach to minister to him: if he be blind, if lame, if he have a little, or a great, or a crooked nose, 19. if his foot, or if his hand be broken, 20. if he be crookbacked, or blear-eyed, or have a pearl in his eye, or a continual scab, or a dry scurf in his body, or a rupture. 21. Whosoever of the seed of Aaron the priest hath a blemish, he shall not approach to offer sacrifices to the Lord, nor bread to his God; 22. he shall eat nevertheless of the loaves that are offered in the sanctuary, 23. yet so, that he enter not within the veil, nor approach to the altar, because he hath a blemish, and he must not defile my sanctuary. I am the Lord who sanctify them. 24. Moses therefore spoke to Aaron, and to his sons, and to all Israel, all that had been commanded him.
[Not for] a corpse; the Chaldee, for a dead man: for “soul” is here called by antiphrasis an inanimate corpse. Another reason for this name St. Augustine gives, question 78: “Seek the name,” he says, “in the lesser priests: for the High Priest could mourn no one at all, not even his father, as is said in verse 10, which however is here permitted to the lesser priests.
LET NOT A PRIEST BE DEFILED AT THE DEATH OF HIS CITIZENS—as if to say: Let the priest beware lest he contract legal uncleanness by touching a corpse, or attending a funeral, or following it, or making mourning, or entering the house of the dead.
AT THE DEATH.—The Hebrew is, over the soul, that is, over the corpse; the Chaldee, over the dead man: for “soul” is here by antiphrasis and metonymy called a lifeless body. [As St. Augustine says: the body is called a soul] because it is to be restored to it in the resurrection; as the building which is called the church, even when the church, who are men, has gone out of it, is nevertheless called the church,” by metonymy.
HIS CITIZENS.—The priest is here forbidden to mourn his citizens; much more, then, was it not lawful for him to mourn aliens and strangers.
A corpse is called a soul by antiphrasis and metonymy. Funerals were forbidden to the priests of old. The reason of this law is, first, because it belonged to the priests to handle divine things and to perform the ministries of the sanctuary, and therefore it behoved them to be as far as possible removed from all funerals and from communication with the dead, from impurity and irregularity: for their holiness and purity of old was bodily; now among the most impure bodies are corpses, since they pass into putrefaction, and become food for worms, toads and serpents: from these, then, the priests of old had to be furthest removed. Secondly, because the priest had to be to the people an example of heavenly life, and to show in fact the faith and hope of resurrection by not mourning the dead. Thirdly, because the priest was a type of Christ, who dissolved death by his own immolation: the priest, therefore, had by his sacrifices to foreshadow the one immolation of Christ. So Cyril, book 12 On Adoration, p. 248.
2. BUT ONLY FOR HIS KINDRED.—Excepted here from the law already laid down are father, mother, son, daughter, brother, and sister if she be a virgin: these dead, then, the priest could mourn, but not his wife, grandson and granddaughter, because they are not excepted here.
You will say: In chapter 10, verse 6, the priests Ithamar and Eleazar are forbidden to mourn Nadab and Abiu, their brothers already dead.
I answer: That prohibition made to them was peculiar, because they had then been recently consecrated priests; hence God would not have them mourn their brothers, justly and deservedly slain by himself; otherwise according to this law they could have mourned.
4. BUT NOT EVEN FOR THE PRINCE OF HIS PEOPLE SHALL HE BE DEFILED.—Vatablus and others from the Hebrew render: Let not the prince among his people be defiled, to profane himself. But the question here is not of the defilement of a prince, but of priests. Better, therefore, our Interpreter renders, “for the prince”: for rightly in the Hebrew is understood the preposition beth, that is, “in,” as is often wont, especially because here another beth follows next. Tropologically, corpses are sins; the touch of corpses is communication in sins: the priest, therefore, ought to beware lest he become partaker in the crimes of his citizens, and lead a life of the people; nay he cannot even consent to a prince sinning: but is defiled only in father and mother, that is, the offence of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in son and daughter, brother and sister, because after the sin of origin we all offend in many things: and in these it is necessary that even the just receive excuse, without which they cannot live, neither they themselves, nor those who succeed them in religion, as sons, nor those who walk with them as brothers the way of holiness. On the contrary, of the High Priest, that is, Christ, it is said that he shall be defiled in nothing at all, not even in father and mother, because Christ felt no contagion of vitiated origin or any other stain. So Rudolph.
5. THEY SHALL NOT SHAVE THEIR HEAD, NOR THEIR BEARD, NOR MAKE INCISIONS IN THEIR FLESH.—These things the Gentiles did in mourning, and therefore they are forbidden to the Jews, even the laity, as I said in chapter 19, verse 27; here, however, the same things are forbidden especially to priests, because they are more unbecoming in them.
Tropologically, priests ought not to shave the head, but only trim it, because they ought neither utterly to cut off from themselves the thoughts of the flesh concerning the life of subjects and kindred (which are signified by the hair), nor again let them grow too much, so as to close the eyes of the mind, so that they may bear the beard, that is, the appearance of virtue, on the countenance; in like manner they shall not make incisions in the flesh, lest they seem to void the faith of the resurrection, if they do not study to temper mourning for their dead, says Rudolph.
What now will the faithful do at the funerals of their own? Women and heroines will teach thee how to bear death with moderation. Hear St. Ambrose: “Shall I speak of the mother of the Maccabees? who looking on the death of all her sons, as many funerals so many trophies, was delighted by the voices of the dying as by the songs of those who sing psalms, seeing in her sons the most beautiful harp of her womb, and the harmony of piety sweeter than every number of the lyre.” The same may be said of St. Felicitas, spectator of the martyrdom of seven sons; of Symphorosa likewise, mother of seven martyr sons, of whom in the Life of St. Getulius the Martyr, her husband; likewise of St. Melania the younger, of whom St. Jerome, in his epistle to Paula on the death of Blesilla:
“Follow present examples,” he says. “St. Melania, in our times true nobility among Christians, with whom may the Lord grant you and me to have a part in his day, while her husband’s body was still warm and not yet buried, lost two sons at once. I am about to tell an incredible thing, but, Christ witnessing, not a false one. Who would not then have thought she would, in the frantic way, with scattered hair and torn garment, assail her lacerated breast? Not a drop of tears flowed; she stood motionless, and, wrapped at the feet of Christ, as if she held him, she smiled. ‘More freely,’ she said, ‘shall I serve thee, O Lord, because thou hast freed me from so great a burden.’ But perhaps she is surpassed in the rest? Nay, with what mind she despised them she afterwards proved in the one son, to whom, all the property she had having been yielded, as winter was already coming on, she sailed to Jerusalem.”