Scripture Daily

Context No. 746 of 4322 · Leviticus

Context · Reflection

Leviticus 6:8-13: in context

8The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 9“Command Aaron and his sons, saying, ‘This is the law of the burnt offering: the burnt offering shall be on the hearth on the altar all night until the morning; and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning on it. 10The priest shall put on his linen garment, and he shall put on his linen trousers upon his body; and he shall remove the ashes from where the fire has consumed the burnt offering on the altar, and he shall put them beside the altar. 11He shall take off his garments, and put on other garments, and carry the ashes outside the camp to a clean place. 12The fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it, it shall not go out; and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning. He shall lay the burnt offering in order upon it, and shall burn on it the fat of the peace offerings. 13Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually; it shall not go out.

In the middle of Leviticus's instructions for the priests comes the law of the burnt offering, and its refrain is a single command about the altar fire: it shall not go out. The offering rests on the hearth through the whole night, and every morning the priest is to add fresh wood and lay the day's offering in order and keep the flame alive. Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually, the passage says twice; it shall not go out. The perpetual fire, the sign of unbroken worship, is not kept by one great lighting. It is kept by someone showing up every single morning with an armful of wood.

And there is a humbler task folded in beside it. Before the fire can be fed, the priest, dressed in his holy linen, has to rake out the ashes of yesterday's offerings and set them by the altar, then change his clothes and carry the ashes outside the camp to a clean place. The sacred work includes the dirty, repetitive part. Keeping the flame means clearing the ash, morning after morning, so that today's fire has room to burn. Nothing about it is dramatic. It is just the daily, unglamorous tending without which the fire everyone admires simply dies down and goes out.

The everlasting fire stayed lit only because someone fed it and cleared its ashes every single morning. What flame in my life am I expecting to keep burning on its own, without the daily, ordinary tending it actually needs?

Sources