Saint Aaron, High Priest of the Hebrews

The two brothers then went to speak to King Pha raoh an Pharaon Sovereign of Egypt who elevates Joseph to power. d asked him for the people of Israel the freedom to go into the desert to offer sacrifices to God. We know the resistance and hardening of the king, and the plagues that afflicted Egypt in punishment for the sin of its leader. The rod that Aaron carried in La verge qu'Aaron portait Instrument of miracles and symbol of Aaron's divine election. his hand was the instrument that God used in this circumstance to perform several miracles. It was transformed into a serpent, turned the waters of the Nile into blood, filled Egypt with frogs, and covered the whole country with gnats. Aaron took part in everything Moses did thereafter for the deliverance of the people of Israel. He was his brother's interpreter, both before Pharaoh and before the people, God having established him as the prophet of Moses, as He had established Moses as the god of Pharaoh. It was also he who gathered the manna in a vessel that was later placed in the tabernacle to preserve it for posterity. During the battle that Joshua fought against the Amalekites, Aaron and Hur, his brother-in-law, assisted Moses who was praying for victory on the top of the hill, and supported his arms, one on each side, for they noticed that the enemies had the advantage when weariness caused him to lower them. When, a few days after the victory, they went to camp at the foot of Mount Sinai, God willed that Aaron should go up with Moses to hear His commandments, although it was forbidden to anyone else, under penalty of death, to even touch the base of the hill. It was there that Aaron was established as Moses' substitute, and charged with resolving the difficulties that might arise during his absence, which was to last forty days.

However, the people, impatient to see Moses again, went so far as to forget God Himself. They came in a crowd to besiege Aaron to force him to give them other gods. Aaron had the weakness to yield to the demands of this unruly multitude, and consented to the making of the golden calf; but his repentance equaled his fault, and God chose him to be the high priest of the Judaic religion. This preference excited a revolt led by Korah , Da Coré Leader of a revolt against the authority of Aaron. than, and Abiram, three ambitious men who aspired to this dignity and who were swallowed up with their families into the bowels of the earth. A great number of their partisans were consumed by the flames that escaped from the altar at the moment they were performing the customary incense offerings; others, in even greater numbers, perished by the fire from heaven which would have exterminated all these rebels had Aaron not placed himself, censer in hand, between the dead and the living to appease the wrath of God. A new miracle, less terrible but no less capable of silencing the murmurers, came to confirm his priesthood. By the order of God, the twelve rods of the twelve tribes were placed in the tabernacle, and the sovereign priesthood was to be conferred upon the tribe whose rod had blossomed during the following night. The next day, the rod of the tribe of Levi, th verge de la tribu de Lévi Instrument of miracles and symbol of Aaron's divine election. at is to say that of Aaron, was found laden with flowers and fruit. He was therefore proclaimed high priest a second time, and this dignity, which he exercised all his life, became hereditary in his family.

When the end of his career had arrived, God told Moses to lead him up Mount Hor, and to strip him of the vestments of the priesthood to clothe his son Eleazar, who was to succeed Éléazar Son of Aaron and his successor in the priesthood. him. Aaron did not have the consolation of entering the Promised Land, for having doubted the power of God, who commanded him to strike the rock of Kadesh with his rod, in order to bring forth water from it. He struck two blows instead of the one that was prescribed for him, and this lack of trust was punished in this world; which does not prevent him from having been rewarded in the next; for the Church honors him as a saint, and his name is read in the Roman Martyrology on the first of July. He died at the age of one hundred and twenty-three, and the people mourned him for thirty days.

Aaron was buried at the summit of Mount Hor, where his tomb is still venerated. An old Arab, who lives at the top of the rock, serves as guardian of this venerated place. Hardly any other relics of Aaron have been shown than the rod of which we have spoken, and which Moses had caused to be kept near the Ark of the Covenant, in memory of this wonder. Since the ruin of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar, it is not known what became of it; it has nonetheless been said that it was Rome Birthplace of Maximian. preserved in Rome, along with that of Moses, in the church of Saint John Lateran.

Most prints, sculptures, and paintings depict him holding in his hand the flowering rod that served to recognize the choice God had made of him to become high priest: this characteristic seems the most rational. — An 8th-century stained glass window at Le Mans Cathedral shows him holding in his arms the dying synagogue; another from the 16th century, at the Church of Saint-Patrice in Rouen, shows him holding the bronze serpent. — The mitre is also an attribute quite frequently given to him by ancient stained glass windows. — A figure taken from a miniature in an 11th-century Bible depicts him half-length, opposite Moses, and holding a vessel which is undoubtedly the one that contained the manna in the Ark of the Covenant, or the blood of the victims. — He is sometimes seen showing the golden calf to the Hebrew people, around which a dance is forming; or striking the rock from which a spring of living water flows. — Finally, modern paintings readily depict him with a censer in his hand.

Acta Sanctorum, 1st volume of July; — Cf. Baillet, etc.