And Moses said to Aaron, Take the censer, and put fire thereon from off the altar, and lay on incense, and carry it quickly to the assembly, and make atonement for them; for there is wrath gone out from Jehovah the plague is begun.
Numbers 16 has just seen the ground swallow the leaders of a rebellion against Moses and Aaron. Now the whole camp blames the two men for those deaths, a plague breaks out, and Moses names a strange remedy: a censer carried at a run into a dying crowd.
The people had accused Aaron of destroying them. Moses' order puts that accusation to the test.
The whole congregation is again threatened with immediate destruction. All seems hopeless. God's patience seems at an end, and the sword of judgment is about to fall on the whole assembly. But now it turns out that the only hope for the people lies in the very priesthood the rebels had despised. The very men they had accused of killing the Lord's people were God's instruments in saving their lives.
The earlier judgment showed God defending His own order; here mercy makes the same point.
Moses had said that the Lord would show who were holy and whom He had appointed to come near. Terrible judgment had already shown it. Now His mercy and compassion would declare the same thing... The difference is that the first lies outside priesthood. There God maintains His own order against rebellious man. The priest stands still, and God takes vengeance. But when the plague came, the priest had permission — indeed a command — to step in with mercy and stop the ravages of judicial death.
Two things go into the censer, and each carries its own meaning.
Fire is taken from the altar — this tells of divine judgment, for where there is sin, there must also be judgment... The incense is the sweet fragrance of Christ Himself, going up to God. It is the preciousness of the One who bore the judgment, so that God might righteously stop the power of death. When Aaron puts incense on the fire, the priest is interceding. He pleads the merits of the one sacrifice, as if to remind God of it.
The word "atonement" raises a problem here: no animal dies, and no blood is shed. One writer answers by pointing to a priesthood that begins after death has been passed through.
Death, then, has already been passed through, and that means atonement in this sense has been made. Once made, it cannot be repeated, and never needs to be. Put in Christian terms, Christ is in heaven. He has completely finished the work for sin, but He has not finished the work of intercession for His people. The offering of incense pictures that very intercession, so everything here is in place.
The word itself allows this:
The word "to make atonement" is the intensified form of the verb "to cover"... So in this sense we may say that the risen Priest's intercession makes atonement for the sin of His redeemed, since it effectively covers it. Its power to do this does not set aside the value of His precious death, but affirms it.
The word "quickly" is not decoration. The running shows the urgency, and also the limit of what the act could do.
In a moment, without any warning, the plague began. Only one thing could stem the tide of judgment and shield the survivors from the death that threatened them: the high priest stepping in with a censer full of burning incense, lit from the fire of the altar. At Moses' suggestion Aaron ran, for the matter was urgent... Those who had died were beyond recovery; for them no atonement was possible. Only for the living could Aaron step in.
Aaron's service had a limit, and that limit points to what has replaced it.
The offering of incense was only occasional, and it might be interrupted. Its fragrance was not always before God. The plague had begun among the people. Destructive judgment had come out. Then Moses told Aaron to take a censer, put fire in it from the altar, and lay incense on it. Aaron had to do all this before he could run into the congregation and stand between the dead and the living... But now the ministry of incense is unbroken: "He always lives to make intercession for us." So He is able to save right through, from beginning to end.
The scene also points ahead:
Aaron stood between the dead and the living and stopped the plague from passing over to the living. This is a beautiful prophetic picture of the last days, when Christ will step in for the ancient people of God. As High Priest He will hold back the arm of the Avenger. The living remnant will become a great nation, restored to favour and blessing through One greater than Aaron.
- Rebellion. The people rejected the priesthood, then blamed it for their deaths. The plague showed where that road ends.
- Rescue. Rescue came through the very office they despised. Priesthood, not punishment, was their only hope.
- Censer. Fire from the altar speaks of judgment already borne. The incense is the fragrance of the One who bore it, pleaded before God.
- Covering. No animal died here. "Make atonement" carries the sense of covering — the finished work applied by a living Priest.
- Continuing. Aaron's service could stop. The intercession it pictures never does, and it reaches on to a future rescue of Israel.
And Aaron took as Moses had said, and ran into the midst of the congregation; and behold, the plague had begun among the people; and he put on incense, and made atonement for the people.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.