God addressed the following legal passage to Aaron directly—rather than through Moses—in reward for his having accepted God’s punishment of his sons without protest.
God spoke to Aaron, saying, “Do not drink wine in such a way that will lead to intoxication, neither you nor your sons with you, neither when you enter the Tent of Meeting nor when you approach the Outer Altar, so that you not die, for doing so is a capital offense. This is an eternal statute for your generations.
Only when you are sober is there any reason to distinguish between which actions render the sacrifices you offer up holy and which disqualify them, rendering them profane; and between priests who are ritually defiled and therefore unfit for service and those who are not ritually defiled and therefore fit for service—whereas if you are intoxicated, whatever sacrificial rites you perform are automatically disqualified, even if you performed them correctly and were undefiled when you performed them.
Similarly, only a sober person is fit to instruct the Israelites regarding all the statutes that God has spoken to them through Moses; an intoxicated person is unfit to teach. Nevertheless, a sage who does render a legal decision while intoxicated is not subject to the death penalty, as are priests who officiate while intoxicated.”
