Wednesday Bible Study: A is for Aaron...

After giving it some thought and prayer, I believe- at least for now- I'm going to go through an alphabet of Bible characters, using as a study basis something the Lord laid on me a few nights back.  "What don't I know, what CAN'T I understand?"  And I believe that Aaron is a good place to start that.

Not for the good that was in him- but for what he did WRONG.  Not so much what he did, but how he was still named, by God, High Priest in spite of it.  So let's start at the beginning.  In Exodus 19, we learn that Aaron is not the first priest of the Hebrews:

Exo 19:21  And the LORD said to Moses, "Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to the LORD to look and many of them perish. 
Exo 19:22  Also let the priests who come near to the LORD consecrate themselves, lest the LORD break out against them." 

Now Aaron was not made High Priest yet, and the commentators speculate that these priests were the patriarchs of families or clans, which makes sense since Job was both father and priest to HIS family.  But after this, the Priesthood falls to Aaron and his sons only-

Exo 29:8  Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them, 

Exo 29:9  and you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons. 

And from there on, you don't hear the others called "priests", but only "chiefs" or "elders".  But here's the thing:  Aaron had at least three strikes against him, and if I may lean hard onto Spring Training, why wasn't he out?  The first was the biggest- he made the Golden Calf- and this I've never understood from him.  I saw there is a Jewish tradition that says that Hur ( the man who helped Aaron hold Moses' arms up during the victory over Amalek), had stood against the rebelling people demanding a "god they could see", and had been killed in front of Aaron.  I also saw a commentator say that, since he asked the people to take off their gold jewelry and give it to him to make this idol, he thought they would be too greedy to comply and the whole thing would dry up.  And, I myself noticed this:

Exo 32:4  And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" 

Exo 32:5  When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD." 

Which makes me think that he was hoping perhaps to satisfy the worst elements of the crowd with the calf, and satisfy God with a feast with a "visual aid".  Which of course didn't work- compromise never does- and Aaron's "feast to the LORD" became just another sacrifice to Apis as they'd seen the Egyptians do.  And some of this may be true, but I don't think that Hur getting martyred was.  First off, while it is true that Hur HIMSELF never gets mentioned- and a commentator suggests that Hur's grandson Bezalel got the job to build the Tabernacle (Exodus 31) as an honor to Hur's death, the Bible itself doesn't say that- and it would certainly have been a better excuse than the lame one Aaron gave Moses:

Exo 32:21  And Moses said to Aaron, "What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?" 

Exo 32:22  And Aaron said, "Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. 

Exo 32:23  For they said to me, 'Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.' 

Exo 32:24  So I said to them, 'Let any who have gold take it off.' So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf." 

"..and out came this calf..." Probably, were it not so sad, the funniest line in the Bible.

Now God, when Aaron did all this, told Moses, (paraphrasing here), "Step back, I'm going to zap this whole sorry bunch and start over with you!"  Which Moses would have been justified in saying, "Let 'er rip", but instead he thought first of God and the dishonor among the pagans His name would receive if He could not redeem His own people.  And he prayed for Aaron, too.  Apparently effectively, because God went through with naming his family the new priestly caste in spite of it.

But right after they were consecrated, his top two sons, Nadab and Abihu, got fried by God for "offering profane incense".  There was an exacting secret formula for the incense to offered to God to be made, and a strict procedure on how to do it, so they might have screwed this up in any of many ways- though I recall a tradition that they were BUI (burning under the influence) from somewhere.  And this struck me that Aaron lost two sons as a priest... generations later, Eli lost two wicked sons as priests... and Samuel himself had two sons go bad.  Is this an injunction against priests having two sons? (Of course not- actually, Aaron himself had two other, more righteous sons, that stepped into their place.)  This can be a lesson on how, no matter what you do, your kids are responsible for what they do with what you teach.  You cannot question Samuel's character, and he had two bad seeds.  Eli barely qualified as HAVING a character, and his sons were lemons.  And Aaron's character?

Well, here's where the story turns.

More than one place I went in researching said that, while Aaron can't be faulted for righteousness (as far as God's grace to him), his strength of character is a bit suspect.  As Moses walked with God, his strength of character grew and grew.  Aaron seemed to hit a level and stopped.

And that made me think:  where else have I seen a story with one man whose character grew and grew as he walked with God- and a follower who leveled out?  How about Abraham and Lot?

Wait, Lot?  This is the guy who pulled the "strangers" inside- and minutes later was willing to sacrifice his daughters to the mob?  Concerned enough to plead with his pagan sons-in-law to come with him, yet got drunk and got his daughters pregnant?  Let's see what an expert like Peter has to say...

2Pe 2:6  and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah having turned to ashes, with an overthrow did condemn, an example to those about to be impious having set them ;

2Pe 2:7  and righteous Lot, worn down by the conduct in lasciviousness of the impious, He did rescue, 

2Pe 2:8  for in seeing and hearing, the righteous man, dwelling among them, day by day the righteous soul with unlawful works was harassing. 

So we see that righteous, in God's context, doesn't equal "never made a mistake".

So just what was it in Aaron that made God give him a post apparently beyond him?  I don't know, any more than I know why He allows me to try to share what I learn in these posts.  But it might have something to do with what God said to Moses when he TOLD God he wasn't worthy...

Exo 3:11  But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" 

Exo 3:12  He said, "But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain."