Seeing that they died, Moses said to Aaron, comforting him, “This is evidently what God spoke about when He said, ‘I will be sanctified through the example I will make of those whom I have chosen to be nearest to Me, and in this same way I will be honored before all the people.’
I assumed this meant that when the Tabernacle would be inaugurated, either you or I would die in punishment for some misdeed, in order to demonstrate how seriously the service of God must be taken—after all, if God punishes preeminently righteous people, He will certainly punish those who are less righteous. But apparently, your two eldest sons were more righteous than either of us, and for that reason God chose to teach the people this crucial lesson by making an example of them rather than of us. In fact, your two remaining sons are also apparently more righteous than we are, since all four of your sons had been sentenced to die as your punishment for your role in the incident of the Golden Calf, and my prayers at that time commuted this punishment by half. The fact that Nadav and Avihu died this way indicates that Eleazar and Itamar were slated to die similarly.”
Aaron and his sons were silent, accepting God’s decree and Moses’ consolation.
Moses summoned his cousins Mishael and Eltzafan, the sons of his and Aaron’s uncle Uziel, and said to them, “In order not to allow the sadness of this tragedy to mitigate our joy over the dedication of God’s Tabernacle, draw near and carry your dead kinsmen from before the Sanctuary to outside of the camp. True, it would seem that since you are Levites, you should not ritually defile yourselves today, because doing so will prevent you from participating further in the celebration of the inauguration of the Tabernacle; but inasmuch as the bodies must be removed in order for the celebration to continue, removing them can be considered an essential part of the celebration itself, and it is therefore fitting that you be the ones to do this, specifically because you are Levites, the officiants of the Tabernacle. And yes, God Himself disrupted the celebration by punishing your relatives immediately rather than waiting until another day, but for our part, we must do our best not to allow the mood to be dampened any more than He has deemed necessary.
This being the case, I would ordinarily have asked Eleazar and Itamar to tend to their dead brothers, since they are obligated to do so. But they have been specifically commanded not to leave the Tabernacle precincts today, and therefore cannot remove them.”
So Mishael and Eltzafan approached and carried Nadav and Avihu, who were still dressed in their intact, priestly tunics, to outside the camp, as Moses had spoken.
Chasidic Insights
Physical world into God’s home, we are bidden to undertake our “runs,” our temporary departure from worldly pursuits to renew our inspiration, expressly for the purpose of enhancing our “returns.” By so doing, we ensure that we will sense the preeminence of the “return” over the “run,” and thereby be protected from the sort of unchecked “run” that results in total departure from this world. In this context, Nadav and Avihu’s “sin” consisted of emphasizing the “run” at the expense of the “return,” and pursuing the “run” for its own sake, rather than as a prelude to the subsequent “return.” Therefore, after this incident, God forbade drinking wine to intoxication, i.e., “drinking” the inner dimensions of the Torah in a way that leads to the rapturous expiration of the soul and the abandonment of our Divine mission.
