In this week’s parsha we read of the sin of Nadav and Avihu, which led to their untimely deaths in the midst of the celebration of the mishkan’s inauguration: “And Aaron's sons, Nadav and Avihu, each took his pan, put fire in them, and placed incense upon it, and they brought before the Lord foreign fire, which He had not commanded them. And fire went forth from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord (10:1-2).”
Many interpretations have been suggested to explain the nature of Nadav and Avihu’s sin. What is a “foreign fire,” and why was the offering of such fire treated with such severity? Netziv explains this episode based on a pasuk in the beginning of this parsha, “And Moses said, ‘This is the thing the Lord has commanded; do [it], and the glory of the Lord will appear to you’ (9:6)." Moshe, in the preceding five pesukim, had already commanded the Jews all the details of the korbanot to be brought. If so, what is he adding by the seemingly redundant command to do “the thing the Lord has commanded?” Netziv explains that there were some Jews who yearned for spirituality and closeness to Hashem, but thought that they could achieve closeness to Hashem by inventing their own rituals and crafting new religious experiences. Moshe told them that bridging the philosophical chasm between finite man and infinite Divinity cannot be accomplished by human reason or intuition alone. We may be able to invent experiences that seem spiritual, but we cannot figure out how to actually connect to Hashem on our own, because He transcends human logic. Only Hashem Himself, in His infinite wisdom, knows the recipe for building an authentic Jewish experience which connects heaven and earth, and He revealed this recipe to us in the mitzvot of the Torah.
Therefore, while it may be worthwhile to use common sense in improving our middot and performing chessed, the one place in which common sense does not belong is the mishkan. “This is the thing the Lord has commanded; do [it], and the glory of the Lord will appear to you.” The revelation of Hashem’s Divine presence in a physical house transcends common sense and human logic, and only following the exact commandment of Hashem, which is perfectly calibrated in accordance with all of the spiritual forces of the upper and lower realms, can succeed in achieving this lofty goal.
Netziv explains that the exact nature of Nadav and Avihu’s sin is actually explicit in the pasuk: “and they brought before the Lord foreign fire, which He had not commanded them.” Their tragic mistake was not in the specific offering that they brought, but in it being “foreign,”—that it was improvised by them and “not commanded” by Hashem. This belief, that ritual creativity is the path to spirituality, contradicted the very essence of the mishkan and our service of Hashem. They were punished because their religious philosophy stood in direct contrast to Moshe’s revelation and threatened to undermine the entire project of bringing Hashem’s presence down from heaven into the mishkan.
The message of this tragic incident is subtle but compelling. There is certainly room for creativity and initiative in many areas of Judaism, and we must always strive to make Torah and tefillah relevant to our lives. But we must also realize that the ritual aspects of Torah are finely crafted works of infinite wisdom and not merely nice experiences, and we must be very careful not to adapt the Torah to our subjective notions of spirituality and thereby substitute a foreign fire for the true light and warmth of Torah. May we all merit to accomplish the task of performing “the thing the Lord has commanded,” and thereby be able to reveal “the glory of the Lord” to the entire world.
