Why Did Nadav and Avihu Die?

A radically different understanding emerging from the Torah's wider narrative

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I. The Inexplicable Story

I can’t think of a more apt use of the word “inexplicable” than in describing the tragic and traumatic deaths of Nadav and Avihu. On what should have been the happiest day of his life, Aharon stands in horror as the ceremony to inaugurate the Mishkan is interrupted by the sudden deaths of his sons, Nadav and Avihu (Lev. 10:1–3).

But any attempts to parse the story flounder in the narrative’s sheer shallowness. Because not only is it a mere three verses, but these measly three verses themselves manage to somehow do two things simultaneously to amplify our befuddlement – being not just incredibly light with any actual details but also deeply cryptic in the details they do share.

All we are told is that Nadav and Avihu take their fire pans, into which they place fire and incense. That fire, the Torah stresses, is an ēsh zara, “an alien fire,” asher lo tzivvah otam, “that [God] had not commanded upon them” (v. 1), resulting in their instant consumption by divine fire:

And fire came forth from the LORD and consumed them; thus they died before the LORD. (v. 2)

And the final verse relates Moshe’s response to Aharon, to which Aharon has no reaction: vayyiddom Aharon, “and Aharon was silent” (v. 3).

Commentators scramble to explain the scene, with the two best-known explanations assuming that Nadav and Avihu sinned. Either because they directly flouted God’s command with their non-commanded fire; or because they did what they did because they were drunk – they were utterly gazeboed – hence God’s instruction to Aharon in the immediate aftermath of Nadav and Avihu’s death that kohanim are prohibited from drinking any wine or alcohol when serving in the Mishkan (vv. 8–9). But there are many more answers, still. Indeed, Rabbi Sacks lists eight further explanations offered by Ḥazal and early commentators!

But (almost) all of these answers orbit two shared beliefs. The first is that Nadav and Avihu died because they sinned. And while this doesn’t seem like too outlandish a belief – the Torah stresses, after all, that they did something God had not explicitly commanded – there’s some nuance to this that I think often goes unnoticed. But it’s the second shared belief of so many of these answers that only ends up intensifying the sheer inexplicability of the story.

II. The Need for a Wider Lens

At the heart of many of the more oft-quoted explanations of the story of Nadav and Avihu’s death is a methodological assumption: that the story itself contains all the clues for unpacking it. And the name to give this interpretive methodology is “local.” To understand a Biblical story, you need only look at the local verses – the verses in the immediate vicinity of the narrative.

And this leads, generally, to explanations that fixate on the Torah’s insistence that God had not commanded Nadav and Avihu to bring fire, on understanding Moshe’s statement to Aharon, or on the verses that immediately follow the story – the prohibition of wine.

But there’s another interpretive methodology: what can be called “global” or “holistic.” Here, the core assumption is that the narrative before us does not exist in a vacuum – it is but one thread in the wider tapestry of the Torah’s overarching story. Here, rather than restricting the interpretation to the verses themselves, a much broader analysis is undertaken to explain the story.

And here, there is an incredible understanding of Nadav and Avihu’s deaths by one of my favorite Tanakh teachers, Rabbi Dr. Yonatan Grossman – that I’m going to adapt¹ – that illustrates how the holistic interpretive method offers a much more powerful understanding of the story.

It begins by recognizing that, despite the terse and cryptic nature of the narrative, there are five different elements within:

• The characters: Nadav and Avihu.

• The setting: the Mishkan’s inauguration.

• The recurring object: fire.

• The mentioned-only-once object: incense.

• The explanation: Moshe’s response to Aharon.

Processing each of these elements results in a very different understanding of Nadav and Avihu’s deaths.

III. The Gad & Asher of the Exodus Generation

I think that for many of us, we don’t really think much about Nadav and Avihu until the moment they die in Parashat Shemini. Maybe a close reader of the Torah will have noticed their appearance in a few other narratives until now, but we don’t really think of them as “main characters.”

And that’s a mistake.

Because it means that when they appear in the opening verse to this story – “Now Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu …” – it feels like they’ve come out of nowhere. But it shouldn’t. Because Nadav and Avihu have been surprisingly central in some key episodes in the Torah until now. Their problem (and ours) is that, because their father is Aharon and their uncle is Moshe, they’re always overshadowed by others in the scene – until this one.

Nadav and Avihu are perhaps best thought of as the Gad and Asher of the Exodus generation. When you read the stories involving Yaakov’s sons, you know Gad and Asher are in the scene – if you were making a movie, you’d still have to cast actors to play them – but they aren’t the focus because any scene in which Gad and Asher are present always involves far more significant characters: your Yaakovs, Yehudahs, or Yosefs.

And our inability to recognize Nadav and Avihu’s centrality is exacerbated by the fact that, though they are to play a central role in the Mishkan’s inauguration, they aren’t explicitly named. Because when the Torah reports Moshe’s instructions for the inauguration, it simply states that “On the eighth day, Moshe called Aharon and his sons, and the elders of Israel” (Lev. 9:1). While this means that Nadav and Avihu – along with Elazar and Ittamar – are clearly central figures in the inauguration ceremony, we just don’t notice it.

But there’s an even more significant episode in which we tend to overlook Nadav and Avihu’s explicitly central role: the Revelation at Har Sinai. In Parashat Mishpaṭim’s more detailed retelling of how Moshe received the Torah, it begins with God’s summons:

Then [God] said to Moshe: “Ascend to the LORD, you, Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy elders of the Jewish people, and bow low from afar.” (Ex. 24:1)

And though Moshe alone “went inside the cloud and ascended the mountain” (v. 18), Nadav and Avihu are among the select few who receive a clear vision of God: “and they saw the God of Israel: under His feet there was the likeness of a sapphire brick, like the very sky for purity” (v. 10).

All of which is to say that Nadav and Avihu don’t appear out of the blue in the story that relates their tragic death. Until now, they’ve been key figures in the leadership of the Jewish people – they are not only expected to participate in the Mishkan’s inauguration along with their father, but they were part of a select elite who were privy to a clear vision of God Himself.

IV. The Revelation at the Mishkan’s Inauguration

But the link between Har Sinai and the Mishkan’s inauguration is not restricted to just Nadav and Avihu. Because the entire point of the ceremony is so that, as Moshe states, “the Presence of the LORD may appear to you” (Lev. 9:6). The core purpose of the Mishkan’s inauguration is another divine revelation before the people.

And this explains the key role of fire in the entire inauguration ceremony. Because the first appearance of fire at the inauguration is not Nadav and Avihu’s alien fire, it’s at the inauguration ceremony’s completion: “fire came forth from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat parts on the altar. And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces” (Lev. 9:24).

What’s noteworthy here is the people’s reaction to the appearance of the fire: they see the fire, they shout, and then they fall on their faces – an act of part-prostration, part-hiding. It conveys the people’s perception of the fire, that they realized that what was before them was no ordinary fire but something holy. They thus bow before it yet also cover their eyes as an automatic reaction to its sheer holiness, because one cannot see a vision of God (“none shall see me and live” [Ex. 33:20]).

The people realize that the fire before them is not just a fire from heaven but is, in some significant sense, a physical representation of God Himself. And the reason for this is simple: it’s not the first time they’ve seen this. At Har Sinai, too, while Moshe, Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and the seventy elders had climbed the mountain to behold a clear vision of God before them, “the Presence of the LORD appeared in the sight of the Jewish people as a consuming fire at the top of the mountain” (Ex. 24:17).²

And here, there is a specific holistic point to make about the Torah’s overarching narrative. Because, while the specific details of each and every parashah have distracted us from any broader story, the immediate aftermath of Parashat Mishpaṭim’s telling of the Revelation at Har Sinai is God’s command that the people build a Mishkan in which He can dwell among them.

In other words, after seeing the initial fire atop Har Sinai, the people go straight into building the Mishkan, which culminates in a second revelation: the same fire appearing once again – signifying that the very God who appeared at Har Sinai has once again appeared at the Mishkan’s inauguration.³

It’s no coincidence, then, that the cast of characters in the Revelation at Har Sinai – Moshe, Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and the seventy elders (Ex. 24:1) – must play a central role in the Mishkan’s inauguration, too (Lev. 9:1). The inauguration ceremony is another revelation; it’s the sequel to Har Sinai.

And there is a further subtle but significant observation that reinforces all of this. The zivḥei shelamim, the public peace offerings, are only offered during two ceremonies in the Torah – and you’ve guessed which they are: that which accompanied the Revelation at Har Sinai (Ex. 24:5) and that which accompanied the inauguration of the Mishkan (Lev. 9:18).⁴

V. Why Everything Goes Wrong

Now we can process Nadav and Avihu’s tragic deaths. Having played a prominent role in the Mishkan’s inauguration, the ceremony is complete, resulting in a heavenly, holy fire appearing – just like at Har Sinai – to symbolize God’s acceptance of the Mishkan as His home:

Fire came forth from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat parts on the altar. And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces. (Lev. 9:24)

Interestingly, though this verse is the conclusion of the inauguration ceremony, the way we divide the Torah into aliyyot makes this the first verse of the third aliyyah. In other words, though it is the culmination of what has come before, it is also the introductory verse to what happens next:

Now Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, each took his fire pan, put fire in it and laid incense on it; and they offered before the LORD alien fire, which had not been enjoined upon them (Lev. 10:1).

Despite the chapter break, the way we read the story makes it clear that Nadav and Avihu’s actions are in reaction to the presence of the divine fire. Having been involved in the ceremony until now, they see the fire descend and act upon it.

But crucially, they don’t do something here that is problematic – they do somethings.

First, they put fire into their firepans, which is obviously a problem – so much so that the Torah emphasizes the extent of their violation by belaboring just how problematic it was, stressing that it was an alien fire that was not commanded. But the issue with the fire itself here might “simply” be, as Rashbam suggests, that there can only be one fire at the inauguration.

And I think there’s what to say here to explain why the Torah stresses the non-commanded nature of Nadav and Avihu’s fire here, why the Torah is so offended by Nadav and Avihu’s additional fire – with the sheer strength of feeling on display by the Torah here making us see the fire as the central object in the story. Because the Torah is horrified by the additional fire because of its (unintentional) theological implications: if the One God is symbolized by fire, the introduction of another fire defeats the symbolism of the moment and introduces nothing but confusion.

But what gets lost in the chaos of the narrative is that Nadav and Avihu aren’t just bringing fire for fire’s sake. They place the fire in their fire pans for an obvious reason:⁵ the once-mentioned object, the keṭoret, the incense.

Because if you think about the story for a moment, there seems to be little reason to include the incense in the story unless it’s the key to the entire thing. Because if the incense were unimportant to the narrative – if Nadav and Avihu’s sin revolved around their use of fire – then the verse could have simply not included any reference to the incense and have made just as much sense:

Now Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, each took his fire pan and put fire in it; and they offered before the LORD alien fire, which had not been enjoined upon them.

The incense must be Chekhov’s gun here. It is central to explaining the entire story.

VI. Obscuring God

And this is R. Dr. Yonatan Grossman’s first incredible insight into the story. Because, as Sefer Vayikra later details, incense plays a crucial role in the Mishkan. Aharon is explicitly commanded never to enter the Holy of Holies at will, because he will die upon encountering God’s Presence dwelling in the cloud within (Lev. 16:2).

The solution from God, is incense: “so that the cloud from the incense screens the cover that is over the Ark of the Pact, lest he die” (v. 13). As Ḥizkuni stresses, invoking God’s declaration that “none shall see me and live” (Ex. 33:20), the incense smoke obscured God’s Presence from view so that no one could see the cloud.

And it’s thus no coincidence that the command to Aharon to not witness the Divine Presence – the command to use incense to obscure God’s Presence from view – is introduced with a reference to Nadav and Avihu’s deaths:

The LORD spoke to Moshe after the death of the two sons of Aharon who died when they drew too close to the presence of the LORD. (Lev. 16:1)

Because Nadav and Avihu’s reaction to the presence of the divine fire was not to bring fire for fire’s sake, it was to take their fire pans, into which they placed fire and incense. The fire was there to activate the incense – because their goal was to obscure the divine fire from the eyes of the people.

And this leads to R. Dr. Grossman’s second incredible insight. Because while the Mishkan’s inauguration is the second time that the Jewish people witness God representing Himself as fire, Nadav and Avihu don’t know that. Because while the people were witnessing the fire at Har Sinai, Nadav and Avihu were having a much clearer vision of God, away from the people, further up the mountain.

Nadav and Avihu thus see the fire descend and the people react by covering their faces – and misread the situation. Rather than realizing that this was all intended, they do what they think they are supposed to do and protect the people. They start creating smoke from incense to obscure the sight of the fire from the people, so that the people can look up again.

But this, while motivated by the best of intentions, is wrong. As Moshe himself explains:

The Moshe said the Aharon: “This is what the LORD meant by saying, ‘Through those near Me I show Myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.’” And Aharon was silent. (Lev. 10:3)

This is an incredibly cryptic explanation unless it’s read as a critique of Nadav and Avihu’s introduction of incense. Because the entire purpose of the inauguration ceremony was for God to reveal Himself before all the people. Though the people themselves reacted by covering their faces – though it was dangerous for the people to witness a physical representation of God – that was the entire point.

Tragically, though they don’t “sin” in a classic sense, Nadav and Avihu commit a catalogue of errors in mistakenly trying to protect the people. They introduce a second fire and thus a theologically confusing image – which they use to obscure the representation of God Himself.

The only solution is more divine fire: one that consumes them instantly, illustrating the supremacy of the divine fire in the room – and transforming them into just another sacrifice, va-tokhal otam, consumed by God, that illustrates His power.

And Aharon is silent in response because he can have no response. And this story is still a tragedy. But rather than a cryptic tragedy that defies explanation, it becomes a tragedy of errors at the holiest moment in the history of the Jewish people.

1. There are times when I am unabashedly nothing more than a Rabbi Dr. Yonatan Grossman cover band.

2. This fits with the most well-known physical representation of God: when He appears as a non-consuming-yet-consuming fire in a bush before Moshe (Ex. 3:2). Indeed, there is what to say about the symbolism of the menorah here: it’s an artistic representation of a tree – with trunk and branches – aflame.

3. The power of this is lost on us because we’re so strictly monotheistic. But in a polytheistic world, the general assumption is that deities are bound by their locality. The idea that the same God atop Har Sinai is the very same God who is in the Mishkan is, for the people of the time, revolutionary. Perhaps this also explains the non-commandment with which the Ten Commandments begin. The God atop Har Sinai explicitly identifies Himself as the same God who took them out of Egypt.

4. R. Dr. Grossman notes that there is one other place where the zivḥei shelamim are mentioned, in Parashat Emor where the Torah commands them to be offered on Shavuot (Lev. 23:19). As he notes, this forges a connection between the festival of Shavuot and the Giving of the Torah that otherwise goes unmentioned in the Torah itself.

5. Though perhaps this is all a tragedy of nominative determinism. If you picked up an object called a “fire pan,” you, too, would feel compelled to put some fire in it. If only the object had been called a “water pan,” the whole thing could’ve been avoided.