Blood and oil for anointing?
Exodus 29:10 begins a lengthy set of instructions regarding the ceremonies that had to be performed to “consecrate” (Ex 29:1; lit. “make holy”) Aaron and his sons as priests. Modern readers may wonder at the elaborate and often bloody details of the rituals described here. Ancient readers would have puzzled much less over the details, partly because of previous experiences with such rites but also because they understood the nature of what was taking place. To serve as a priest, a person had to be prepared for contact with that which was holy—the sacred realm, the world of the divine. Ancient Israelite society operated on the understanding that there were three distinct categories or states in which persons (and objects) could find themselves: the state of uncleanness, the state of cleanness and the state of holiness. Yahweh inhabited the last, and animals unfit to eat inhabited the first. Persons could move between being clean and unclean, depending on what th...