Here’s Biblical teaching disguised as a real life story that happened to me last week. I was cooking for my family – pasta night. We have a gas stove top, and as my pasta pot was coming to a boil, my three year old, whose head now grazes the top of the counter, reached out her little fingers. “Fire! mommy!” She exclaimed excitedly. Except, when she reached out her fingers, she almost touched the flame itself. Hot! That’s too hot! I yelled. She quickly withdrew her fingers, unscathed; thankfully, she hadn’t actually touched the flame. But my shout had startled her, and she began to cry.
I am sure – this has happened to you. Either as a parent – as a child – someone is about to dart into the street without looking both ways, like my daughter, a little hand is about to get burned. You yell, a protective instinct to guard the people around you.
This moment of potential danger brings to mind one of the most startling passages in the Torahāthe sudden death of Nadav and Avihu, and its parallel in King David’s time with Uzzah and the Ark of the Covenant. Both stories reveal a hard truth: sometimes divine boundaries exist not as arbitrary rules but as protections against forces we cannot fully comprehend.
In Parashat Shemini, we read about the eighth day following the construction of the Mishkan (Tabernacle). The atmosphere was electric with anticipation: “For today the Lord will appear to you”
The glory of God appeared, and fire from heaven consumed the sacrifices. The people fell on their faces in awe.
Then something went terribly wrong:
“And Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aharon, took each of them his censer, and put fire in it, and put incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not. And a fire went out from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.” (Leviticus 10:1-2)
What exactly was their sin? On the surface, they were performing a priestly function, burning incense before God. Isn’t drawing near to God a good thing?
Centuries later, a similar event occurred during King David’s reign. After being crowned king, David decided to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. During transport, the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah reached out to steady the Ark:
David was devastated and afraid. He temporarily placed the Ark in the home of Oved-edom for three months before bringing it to Jerusalem with proper reverence.
But why such harsh consequences for what appear to be well-intentioned actions?
The answer lies not in understanding these events as punishments but as natural consequences of interacting with the divine without proper boundaries. The Ark wasn’t meant to be touched directlyāits carriers used wooden poles inserted through rings, maintaining distance from the holy object itself.
Consider my daughter and the stove. I didn’t yell because I wanted to punish her. I yelled because fire burns, regardless of intentions. My warning wasn’t arbitraryāit was based on the nature of fire itself.
Similarly, God didn’t “strike down” Uzzah and the sons of Aaron as punishment. They encountered the raw, unmediated power of holiness without proper preparation or authority. The Sefat Emet, a Hasidic master, teaches that Nadav and Avihu were “exceedingly righteous men who acted for the sake of heaven, but the command was missing.” Their intentions were pure, but they violated the divinely established order.
Another perspective comes from Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin, who speaks of spiritual readiness: “He must enter gradually, rising from one level to the next. But if he achieves comprehension above his level, his soul may depart.” According to this view, Nadav and Avihu reached for a spiritual experience they weren’t ready to contain.
These stories aren’t about an angry God striking people down. They’re about the inherent nature of divine power, like fire or electricity, that operates according to fixed laws regardless of our intentions. The Bible’s boundaries aren’t arbitrary restrictions but guardrails keeping us safe as we approach the divine.
These biblical stories teach us something essential about approaching God: reverence matters. Order matters. Preparation matters. Not because God is demanding, but because the divine presence, like fire, operates according to its own nature. Our good intentions, while meaningful, don’t override the need for proper reverence when we stand before the sacredāwe approach not something fragile, but something before which we ourselves must acknowledge our limitations.
The Hebrew Bible is a very big book – actually, 24 books, to be exact. Studying it can feel very overwhelming. Where do you start?
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