LEVITICUS 21:16-24

 Q: In these verses God will not allow any person with a “defect” to serve as a priest. 

I can understand objections to offering sacrifices with defects, but not allowing someone to serve as 

a priest due to a birth defect, over which they had no control, seems harsh; does it not? What do you

make of this?  

One easy, but very unsatisfying, way to answer this question is to simply say, “God's ways are not our

ways.”  Another truism is that God slowly revealed truths to mankind so that what is concealed in the

Old Testament is only revealed fully in the New Testament. But we can probably go into a little more 

depth than that.  

As mitigating factors to what seems like a harsh rule, we must first keep in mind that these restrictions 

did not apply to Jews in general or even the priesthood in general, but only to the high priest who 

would offer sacrifices in the very presence of God (according to The New Bible Commentary: Revised,

 p. 160).  Even though such priests with physical blemishes could not be considered holy, they were 

not considered to be ritually impure and could handle sacred items unless they happened to be 

temporarily disqualified through other reasons outlined in Leviticus 22:1-16. 

Allen Ross  (Holiness to the LORD, pp. 386-387) has perhaps best expressed the reason for such

restrictions: “The priests were holy because they were in the presence of the Holy One. Their entire 

physical condition had to display the perfection of God's creation, just as the sacrifices had to be the 

best of the animal world. Bodily perfection was an extension of holiness...The Old Testament dealt 

with physical features because the cultic laws required physical wholeness for temple worship – 

because it foreshadowed the actual going into the presence of God in glory. Churches today have 

no ruling corresponding to the physical defects listed here; the church is primarily concerned that 

ministers meet the spiritual qualifications for leadership taught elsewhere in the Old Testament...and 

that they have the proper spiritual gifts expected of those who lead the congregation.”

Some other possibly relevant Scriptures:

 
	Isaiah predicted a time when being a eunuch would no longer bar a person from the LORD's

 presence. (Isaiah 53:3-4) 

 	Jesus specifically singled out the crippled and the blind as those we should invite to our banquets 

(Luke 14:13) 

 	The first recorded Gentile convert was a eunuch. (Acts 8) 

 	Old Testament worship was but a shadow of what was to come. With Jesus as our perfect high

 priest in heaven, everyone who approaches him, regardless of physical handicap, has access to God's 

very presence. (Hebrews 8)