What is the meaning of the strange fire in Leviticus 10:1?

Hence, therefore, we are, in a measure, prepared for the words with which our chapter opens. "And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord which he commanded them not." What a contrast to the scene with which our last section closed! There all was done "as the Lord commanded," and the result was, manifested glory. Here something is done "which the Lord commanded them not," and the result is judgement, hardly had the echo of the shout of victory died away ere the elements of a spurious worship were prepared. Hardly had the divine position been assured ere it was deliberately abandoned, through neglect of the divine commandment. No sooner were those priests inaugurated, than they grievously failed in the discharge of their priestly functions.

And in what did their failure consist? Were they spurious priests? Were they mere pretenders? By no means. They were genuine sons of Aaron — true members of the priestly family — duly appointed priests. Their vessels of ministry and their priestly garments, too, would seem to have been alright. What, then, was their sin? Did they stain the curtains of the tabernacle with human blood, or pollute the sacred precincts with some crime which shocks the moral sense? We have no proof of their having done so. Their sin was this: "They offered strange fire before the Lord which he commanded them not." Here was their sin. They departed in their worship from the plain word of Jehovah, who had fully and plainly instructed them as to the mode of their worship. We have already alluded to the divine fullness and sufficiency of the word of the Lord, in reference to every branch of priestly service. There was no room left for man to introduce what he might deem desirable or expedient. "This is the thing which the Lord has commanded" was quite sufficient. It made all very plain and very simple. Nothing was needed, on man's part, save a spirit of implicit obedience to the divine command. But, herein, they failed. Man has always proved himself ill-disposed to walk in the narrow path of strict adherence to the plain word of God. The by-path has ever seemed to present resistless charms to the poor human heart. "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant." (Prov. 9:17) Such is the enemy's language; but the lowly, obedient heart knows full well that the path of subjection to the word of God is the only one that leads to "waters" that are really "sweet," or to "bread" that can rightly be called "pleasant." Nadab and Abihu might have deemed one kind of "fire" as good as another; but it was not their province to decide as to that. They should have acted according to the word of the Lord; but, instead of this, they took their own way, and reaped the awful fruits thereof "He knows not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell."

"And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them; and they died before the Lord." How deeply Solemn! Jehovah was dwelling in the midst of His people, to govern, to judge, and to act, according to the claims of His nature. At the close of Lev. 9 we read, "And there came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat." This was Jehovah's acceptance of a true sacrifice. But, in Lev. 10 it is His judgement upon erring priests. It is a double action of the same fire. The burnt offering went up as a sweet odour; the "strange fire" was rejected as an abomination. The Lord was glorified in the former; but it would have been a dishonour to accept the latter. Divine grace accepted and delighted in that which was a type of Christ's most precious sacrifice; divine holiness rejected that which was the fruit of man's corrupt will — a will never more hideous and abominable than when active in the things of God.

"Then Moses said to Aaron, This is it that the Lord spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified." The dignity and glory of the entire economy depended upon the strict maintenance of Jehovah's righteous claims. If these were to be trifled with, all was forfeited. If man were permitted to defile the sanctuary of the divine presence by "strange fire," there was an end to everything. Nothing could be permitted to ascend from the priestly censer but the pure fire, kindled from off the altar of God, and fed by the "pure incense beaten small." Beauteous type of true saintly worship, of which the Father is the object, Christ the material, and the Holy Ghost the power. Man must not be allowed to introduce his devices into the worship of God. All his efforts can only issue in the presentation of "strange fire" — unhallowed incense — false worship. His very best attempts are an absolute abomination in the sight of God.

Hardly had the echo of the shout of victory died away (Leviticus 9) ere the elements of a spurious worship were prepared. Hardly had the divine position been assumed ere it was deliberately abandoned through neglect of the divine commandment. No sooner were those priests inaugurated than they grievously failed in the discharge of their priestly functions. And in what did their failures consist? Were they spurious priests? Were they mere pretenders? By no means. They were genuine sons of Aaron, true members of the priestly family, duly-appointed priests. Their vessels of ministry and their priestly garments too would seem to have been all right. What then was their sin? Did they stain the curtains of the tabernacle with human blood? or pollute the sacred precincts with some crime which shocks the moral sense? We have no proof of their having done so. Their sin was this: They "offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not." Here was their sin. They departed in their worship from the plain word of Jehovah, who had fully and plainly instructed them as to the mode of their worship. We have already alluded to the divine fulness and sufficiency of the word of the Lord in reference to every branch of priestly service. There was no room left for man to introduce what he might deem desirable or expedient. "This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded" was quite sufficient. It made all very plain and very simple. Nothing was needed on man's part save a spirit of implicit obedience to the divine command; but herein they failed. Man has always proved himself ill‑disposed to walk in the narrow path of strict adherence to the plain word of God. The by-path has ever seemed to present resistless charms to the poor human heart. "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant." (Proverbs 9: 17.) Such is the enemy's language; but the lowly, obedient heart knows full well that the path of subjection to the word of God is the only one that leads to "waters" that are really "sweet" or to "bread" that can rightly be called "pleasant." Nadab and Abihu might have deemed one kind of "fire" as good as another, but it was not their province to decide as to that. They should have acted according to the word of the Lord, but instead of this they took their own way, and reaped the awful fruits thereof. "He knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell."

(1) The sin is will-worship — "strange fire which He commanded them not" — the will of man dictating in spiritual things, a sin which is now thought little of. Nay, with some the exact prescriptions of the Levitical service would be considered only as a contrast with the liberty of Christianity. Liberty, however, is never found in following our own wills, but in obedience to that which as given us by God is in thorough conformity to a new nature which, having been begotten in us by the word of truth, cannot find submission to that word servitude. True, the Spirit of God is come: and that glorious fact alters the whole character of worship from what it was in Judaism. We have a living Guide, but this does not affect the need of complete surrender to the control of that which He has written for us, and which is able to furnish us thoroughly to every good work. To take from that Word under whatever pretext is disobedience, and to add to it (as if it were not enough) is, in fact, to take from it. Alas! nowadays who can bear this? Yet in Nadab and Abihu the sin is not said to have been in doing what God had forbidden, but simply in doing what He had not commanded.

Priestly ministry had barely begun when those entrusted with it failed seriously. Two of Aaron's four sons put in their censers incense other than that which the Lord had commanded, and offered this in fire before the Lord (v. 1). Notice that it is not said the Lord commanded that they should not do what they did, but He had not commanded them to do it. This is most serious where worship of the Lord is concerned. Only what He has indicated is acceptable to Him. If we add any humanly conceived notions to this, God will consider it “strange fire.” In some areas of life we may have no explicit directions from the Lord, and where this is true we must not dare to lay down our own regulations, but it is wise always to seek the Lord's guidance in the scriptures, for this is the one safe preservative for us.

God's displeasure with Nadab and Abihu was immediately and strongly expressed in His sending out fire to consume them. He had before (Lev. 9:24) sent fire to consume the burnt offering, in token of His acceptance of it; but this fire did not consume the offering, but the offerers, indicating God's refusal of their offering. Though He may not bring the same swift judgment today, yet any man-devised pretensions of worship are just as abominable to Him as this strange fire of Nadab and Abihu.

Priestly ministry had barely begun when those entrusted with it failed seriously. Two of Aaron's four sons put in their censers incense other than that which the Lord had commanded, and offered this in fire before the Lord (v. 1). Notice that it is not said the Lord commanded that they should not do what they did, but He had not commanded them to do it. This is most serious where worship of the Lord is concerned. Only what He has indicated is acceptable to Him. If we add any humanly conceived notions to this, God will consider it "strange fire." In some areas of life we may have no explicit directions from the Lord, and where this is true we must not dare to lay down our own regulations, but it is wise always to seek the Lord's guidance in the scriptures, for this is the one safe preservative for us.

God's displeasure with Nadab and Abihu was immediately and strongly expressed in His sending out fire to consume them. He had before (Lev. 9:24) sent fire to consume the burnt offering, in token of His acceptance of it; but this fire did not consume the offering, but the offerers, indicating God's refusal of their offering. Though He may not bring the same swift judgment today, yet any man-devised pretensions of worship are just as abominable to Him as this strange fire of Nadab and Abihu.

"And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord." We note here that as Aaron's sons they had the right of approach. We see too that the censers and the incense are not found fault with; but that which came with them - "the fire." That which, so to speak, called forth the savour was the defect, and this led to the rejection of it all. There was fire with which all who were engaged with priestly service should have been familiar. It was that which burnt continually upon the brazen altar. (Lev. 6:12-13.) It met the eye of everyone approaching from without. The brazen altar was the first thing within the court. There could be no approach to God apart from the death of the victim upon this brazen altar. And the fire needed to produce the savour of the incense had to be taken from off this altar. (Lev. 16:12-13.) This was not "strange fire:" The burnt-offering in Leviticus 1 presents the death of Christ, and His personal ability to bear the judgment. It is not strange but familiar to us, that it was the judgment of God testing Him fully there that only brought out the sweet savour more distinctly.

Abihu and Nadab, sons of Aaron, with seventy of the elders of Israel, were invited to ascend with Moses, where they saw God and did eat and drink, Ex. 24:1, 9-11. They were consecrated to minister to the Lord as priests, yet on the first occasion of their exercising the priesthood for Israel they offered strange fire, which the Lord had not commanded, and were smitten by fire from God. Lev. 10:1-2. Immediately before this we read that "there came a fire out from before the Lord and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat." That fire was never to go out, and doubtless the fire Abihu should have used was the fire that was upon the brazen altar, as is ordained in Lev. 16:12. We read elsewhere that everything was to be done 'as the Lord commanded Moses;' but of this which Nadab and Abihu did, it expressly says it was not commanded; therefore it was sin, and God was dishonoured. Their death followed, and Aaron and his other sons were not to leave the tabernacle nor mourn for the dead. Num. 26:60-61; 1 Chr. 24:1-2. The case of Nadab and Abihu should teach us that not every kind of worship is acceptable to God: "they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth," John 4:24: mere outward worship will not do and it must be according to what God has revealed. If separated from the sacrifice of Christ it is but the energy of nature, and is offensive to God.

The instructions as to how the various sacrifices were to be offered have already been before us, but not till the consecration of Aaron do we read of them actually being made, so we may say that at the start it was the hand of God that lit on the altar the fire to consume the burnt offering, which was never to go out, as we have already seen. It was God's fire and not man's fire which consumed the sacrifice, and the typical force of this is easily seen.

Thus far the hand of the faithful Moses had been on all the events of the day, but before it closed the two elder sons of Aaron broke away from under his direction and offered incense on "strange fire" before the Lord. The incense was right but the fire was wrong. As far as we know, the only instruction that had been given in this matter is found in Exodus 30:7-8, where the fire is connected with the lighting of the lamps in the holy place. They may have thought that if the incense was right any fire would do to bring out its fragrance. But no, the fire must be God's fire and not man's. Let us learn from this that though in our worship the words we use are altogether right, if the energy behind their utterance is of the flesh, all is wrong. Worship must be by the Spirit of God, and we have indeed to say,

When God instructed Moses in regard to the golden altar, He said, “Ye shall offer no strange incense thereon” (Ex. 30:9), but “Nadab and Abihu…offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not” (Lev. 10:1). What they offered is not called incense, but fire. Aaron, on the day of atonement, did have fire from off the altar, on which he put the holy incense beaten small, for the fire spoke of the sacrifice of Christ upon the altar, and the incense of the deep perfections of Christ’s Person. Much of what passes for worship in the great Christian profession today is neither connected with the death of Christ for the glory of God, nor with the divine perfections that God sees in Him.

As a consequence of their rebellion against God, the fire from the Lord devoured the two sons of Aaron. The fire that consumed the burnt offering to manifest God’s delight in the work of His Son (Lev. 9:24), falls upon the sons of Aaron to mark His displeasure in their presumption and disobedience. the divine principle of which the Apostle Peter wrote, “judgment must begin at the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17), is demonstrated in Nadab and Abihu. It is also seen when the corrupt sons of Eli are slain (1 Sam. 4:11), when the idolaters at God’s sanctuary are destroyed (Ezek. 9:6), when Ananias and Sapphira lie to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:1–10), and when those who ate and drank unworthily at the Supper of the Lord at Corinth came under the government of a righteous and holy God (1 Cor. 11:27–30).

This is gathered from the fact that fire was always burning upon the brazen altar (Lev. 6:12-13). There was special warning as to "strange fire." The one fire was that upon this brazen altar, type of that divine holiness and righteousness which on the cross consumed the perfect Sacrifice, Christ. All else is "strange fire" (Lev. 10:1). This fire upon the brazen altar came out from before the Lord and consumed the sacrifice (Lev. 9:24). This manifests the blasphemy of Nadab and Abihu who, in closest connection with that manifestation, despised the holy fire and took that of their own kindling to offer incense. Therefore the despised fire came forth again, not to consume the sacrifice, which had already been done, but to cut off in judgment those who refused to bow to God's manifest will, expressed in perfect grace.