SUMMARY
The Lord commands Aaron and his sons to bless the people, promising to accomplish this through the words of the priests.
ANALYSIS
This now timeless and powerful benediction was first pronounced over God’s people at the end of a section on the purity and defilement of the camp. This indicates something of the significance of those purity laws for ancient Israel. In maintaining purity, people found themselves blessed by God. The laws were one way that God brought the “peace” (shalom) promised in the blessings. At the same time, the blessing was never limited to this single context in Israel’s life and worship. It became a fundamental liturgical formula, which is indicated by its careful poetic structure. (Psalm 67, for example, brings the language of the benediction into the worship of the community.) Extending a blessingBlessing is the asking for or the giving of God's favor. Isaac was tricked into blessing Jacob instead of his firstborn Esau. At the Last Supper Jesus offered a blessing over bread and wine. To be blessed is to be favored by God. More was a powerful phenomenon in the culture of the time (see, for example, the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 27). To receive a blessing marked the bestowal of favor and promise; to lose or forfeit a blessing portended a diminished future.
This particular blessing presents God’s favor in three tangible ways: blessing and security, illumination and grace, and the sustained attention (“his countenance”) that brings peace. In times of distress, Israel frequently prayed that God look at them, see them, hear them, turn to them, pay attention to them (for example, Psalms 6:4; 9:13; 27:7; 80:14; 119:153). In Psalm 80, they pray, “Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved” (Psalm 80:3, 7, 19). To be in distress is, in a way, to be “invisible” to God. To have God’s gracious attention–God’s “face”–is to be blessed, precisely as this priestly benediction promises.
