Leviticus 10:8 - Meaning and Application

Aaron had carefully followed what God had told him through Moses, and now God gave Aaron the honor of speaking to him directly (Leviticus 10:8). The Lord spoke to Aaron this way partly because Aaron might have felt wounded if Moses had said it, as if Moses were accusing him of being a drunkard. We are often quick to take warnings as insults. So God said it to Aaron himself: do not drink wine or strong drink when you go into the tabernacle, on pain of death (Leviticus 10:9).

This command was likely given after Aaron had seen the terrible result of Nadab and Abihu’s sin, so he and the other priests were to learn from it. The rule itself was plain: do not drink wine or any stronger drink. At other times, priests were allowed to drink. God was not requiring every priest to live like a Nazarite, a person set apart by a special vow of abstinence. But when they were serving in the tabernacle, they had to avoid alcohol.

This was later included among the laws for Ezekiel’s temple (Ezekiel 44:21), and the same principle is required of gospel ministers, who are not to be given to wine (1 Timothy 3:3). Drunkenness is wrong in anyone, but it is especially shameful and harmful in ministers. Of all people, they should have the clearest minds and the purest hearts.

The penalty was serious: if they ignored this command, they would die. That could mean death while drunk, with judgment coming on them suddenly, like the warning in Luke 21:34. Or it means they would make themselves liable to be cut off by God’s hand. The fact that death can come at any time should lead us to live soberly and watchfully (1 Peter 4:7). It is sad when people use the certainty of death as a reason for careless living, saying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

The reasons for the command were also clear. The priests had to be sober so they could carry out their work properly, because wine can lead people to make mistakes (Isaiah 28:7). They needed self-control so they could tell the difference between what was holy and what was common, and never mix the two (Leviticus 10:10). It matters greatly for the Lord’s ministers to separate holy from unholy, and to distinguish between what is precious and what is worthless (Jeremiah 15:19).

They also had to be sober so they could teach the people (Leviticus 10:11), since that was part of the priests’ duty (Deuteronomy 33:10). People who are given to drunkenness are not fit to teach God’s statutes. A person living by fleshly desires cannot truly know the things of the Spirit from experience, and such a teacher tears down with one hand what he tries to build up with the other.