Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 10-12.
To my knowledge I have never come across anyone referencing the fact that Nadab and Abihu were among those who went up Mt Sinai with Moses, Aaron, and the 70 elders. So, they had seen God, yet here they are using fire in their censers other than that which God commanded. I believe that the honor they had received at Mt Sinai played a role in their deaths here. Jesus said. “To whom much is given, much is required.” These two men (I was going to write “young men”, but realized that was unlikely to be true, considering that Moses was in his 80s by this point and Aaron was Moses’ older brother) had been given a lot, both in honor and in knowledge. They took a “short cut” when they knew the correct way, and they did this on their very first time as priests. In the same way, those of us who have been given much knowledge about how God wants us to live (in my case, by the example of my parents’ faith and that of the many other great men and women God has put in my life over the years, and by my regular reading of the Bible) will be held to a higher standard of behavior than those who have rarely, or never, been exposed to God’s Word. I probably deserve to suffer the same fate as these two of Aaron’s sons.
I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.