From God’s charge to Moses from the burning bush (when he instructs Moses to speak to Pharaoh on his behalf) to the establishment of the Israelite priesthood many chapters later, Exodus is filled with the idea of mediators, or people who stand between God and humans. This idea is necessary because, according to the Hebrew Bible, God’s immediate presence is too holy for human beings to bear. Through the flawed and frail examples of priests Moses and Aaron, Exodus shows that although God sets people apart in priestly roles, that doesn’t mean that human priests are perfect. Put another way, God’s choice to set apart such people is always gracious, both in the sense that he permits imperfect humans to approach his holiness indirectly and that he accommodates those imperfections. Specific instances of flawed priests (like Moses’s fear and Aaron’s complicity in the people’s idolatry) suggest that when the formal Israelite priesthood is established, it, too, will be subject to human weaknesses, but it should still be trusted as God’s gracious way of dealing with his people. According to the biblical author’s perspective, the necessity of priestly mediation demonstrates human beings’ weakness and corruption, but it also suggests that, by generously approaching humans, God is as gracious as he is holy.
God appoints human beings to serve priestly roles, even though people fill such roles imperfectly. God appoints Moses as the mediator between himself and the Israelites (and Pharaoh), though Moses shrinks from the task, protesting, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now[.]” God replies that “I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.” In other words, Moses’s lack of eloquence is irrelevant; God will tell him what to say. Similarly, God works through Moses and Aaron to bring down plagues on Egypt, even saying that Moses will be “like God” to Pharaoh—that God’s power will flow through Moses in such a way that Moses will represent God before Pharaoh.
Though weak, sinful human beings inherently struggle and often fail in these priestly roles, God graciously accommodates their failures. When “God directs a battle through Moses, he anticipates Moses’s weakness, ordering other men to support him: “Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed […] But Moses’ hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands […] so his hands were steady until the sun set.” God doesn’t let Israel lose the battle just because Moses is weak, but ensures they’ll prevail by giving Moses backup.
Even priests like Aaron aren’t necessarily morally exemplary people. When Aaron makes an idol during Moses’s absence, he blames the Israelites and gives irrational excuses: “Do not let the anger of my lord burn hot; you know the people, that they are bent on evil […] So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!” Aaron’s rather pathetic “excuse” demonstrates that Israel’s leaders can fail spectacularly (Aaron couldn’t even stop the people from betraying their covenant with God for a few weeks), but again, God doesn’t crush the people in his anger, but generously grants them another chance.
Because all human beings are weak, God generously institutes the priesthood system as a way of dwelling among his people. The role of the priesthood is particularly seen in the description of Aaron’s vestments, or priestly garments. God instructs Moses, “So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breastpiece of judgment on his heart when he goes into the holy place, for a continual remembrance before the Lord.” The names of Israel’s 12 tribes are engraved on Aaron’s garment, so when Aaron wears it in God’s presence, it’s as if all of Israel stands before God.
God further explains the priesthood’s ultimate goal—because of priests who represent God to the people and the people to God (even flawed priests like Aaron), the people can enjoy the blessing of God’s presence throughout their journey. God tells Moses, “Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate, to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the Israelites, and I will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them[.]” The whole point of the priesthood is so that Israel can know God. Though God is too overwhelmingly holy to be directly approached, he makes himself accessible to the people in a mediated form—a generous gift.
In the end, the priesthood isn’t just about Moses, Aaron, or other ordained men, but the Israelites themselves serving in a priestly role of sorts. Like priests, they are specially set apart from other people in order to demonstrate to surrounding nations how to live as God’s people. In that way, the priesthood system itself acts as a kind of training of the Israelites for their future life in the promised land.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Mediators and the Priesthood ThemeTracker
Mediators and the Priesthood Quotes in Exodus
When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.
The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.”
Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and of his officials he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the river, and all the water in the river was turned into blood, and the fish in the river died. The river stank so that the Egyptians could not drink its water, and there was blood throughout the whole land of Egypt. But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts; so Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. […] And all the Egyptians had to dig along the Nile for water to drink, for they could not drink the water of the river.
On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai. […] Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.”
I will send my terror in front of you, and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send the pestilence in front of you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. […] I will set your borders from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates; for I will hand over to you the inhabitants of the land, and you shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not live in your land, or they will make you sin against me; for if you worship their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.
The Lord said to Moses: Tell the Israelites to take for me an offering; from all whose hearts prompt them to give you shall receive the offering for me. This is the offering that you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze, blue, purple, and crimson yarns and fine linen, goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins, fine leather, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones and gems to be set in the ephod and for the breastpiece. And have them make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them. In accordance with all that I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.
Then you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold […] You shall make two cherubim of gold; you shall make them of hammered work, at the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub at the one end, and one cherub at the other; of one piece with the mercy seat you shall make the cherubim at its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings. They shall face one to another; the faces of the cherubim shall be turned toward the mercy seat. You shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark; and in the ark you shall put the covenant that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the covenant, I will deliver to you all my commands for the Israelites.
“You shall keep my sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, given in order that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the sabbath, because it is holy for you; everyone who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does any work on it shall be cut off from among the people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall be put to death. […] It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.”
But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
The Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. […] Whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on each stage of their journey; but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.
