Leviticus 21:1-24
21 * And Jehovah said to Moses “Tell the priests, Aaron’s sons, one of them is not to defile himself among his kinsfolk for a deceased person
2 except for his next of kin, his mother and his father and his son and his daughter and his brother,
3 and his maiden sister who is close to him, who has not belonged to a husband—for her he shall defile himself.
4 * He shall not defile himself, husband, among his kinsfolk, to profane him.
5 * They shall not produce baldness on their heads nor shave the sides of their beards nor make scars in their flesh.
6 They shall be holy to their God and not profane their God’s name, because it is they who present Jehovah’s fire-offerings, the bread of their God, and they are to be sacred.
7 They shall not marry an unchaste or violated woman nor a divorced woman. For he is holy to his God,
8 and you are to hallow him because it is he who presents your God’s bread; you shall hold him holy, because I Jehovah who hallow you am holy.
9 And when any priest’s daughter debases herself to be unchaste she is debasing her father; she shall be burned up.
10 * “And the high priest, he on whose head the anointing-oil is poured and who is installed to wear the garments, shall not dishevel his head nor tear his clothes
11 nor go in to any dead person; not for his father nor his mother shall he defile himself;
12 and he shall not go out from the sanctuary so as not to profane the sanctuary of his God, because he has upon him his God’s sign of devotion in anointing-oil; I am Jehovah.
13 And he shall marry a wife in her maidenhood;
14 a widow or a divorced woman or a violated woman or an unchaste woman, these he shall not marry, but shall marry a maiden of his kinsfolk,
15 and not desecrate his descendants among his kinsfolk, because I am Jehovah who hallows him.”
16 And Jehovah spoke to Moses,
17 saying “Tell Aaron ‘Any man of your descendants, generation after generation, who has in him a bodily fault, shall not come near to present his God’s bread:
18 any man who has in him a bodily fault shall not come near, a blind man or a lame man or a man with features disfigured or deformed
19 or a man with a broken leg or arm
20 ** or a hunchback or a gaunt man or a man with a cataract in his eye or a man with scab or eruption or rupture,—
21 any man of Priest Aaron’s issue who has in him a bodily fault shall not approach to present Jehovah’s fire-offerings. He has a fault in him, he shall not approach to present his God’s bread. His God’s bread,
22 from the holiest of the holy and from the holy, he shall eat;
23 only he shall not go in to the veil nor approach the altar, because he has a fault in him, and not profane my sanctuary, because I am Jehovah who hallows them.’”
24 And Moses told Aaron and his sons and all the sons of Israel.
Footnotes
^ 21:1 Lit. sons, he shall not defile
^ 21:4 Unc.; susp.
^ 21:5 Or bald spots
^ 21:10 Lit. And the priest greater than his brothers, he
^ 21:20 (gaunt) Or dwarf
^ 21:20 (cataract) Unc.
