Nadab son of Aaron נדב בן אהרן
Aaron's eldest son; he died on the day the Tabernacle was raised
Nadab was Aaron's firstborn, brother of Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. With his father and brothers he was consecrated a priest, and with the seventy elders he went up the mountain at the making of the covenant and saw there what the Torah tells sparingly: "and they saw the God of Israel".
The first of Nisan, 2449. Seven days the consecration went on, and on the eighth the Tabernacle was raised and the service began: fire came down and took the offering, and all the people fell on their faces. On that same day Nadab and Abihu "took each his censer, and put fire in it, and laid incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them". Fire went out and they died. Aaron their father "held his peace"—and that silence stands in the Torah as a line of its own.
Why. Chazal give several answers, and they do not agree: they ruled on the law in their teacher's presence; they entered having drunk wine; they consulted neither their father nor each other; they entered at an hour not theirs. The Torah names no cause—it names only what they were not commanded. To hold all these explanations side by side is more honest than to choose one.
He left no children, and the service passed to the younger brothers.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Vayikra 10:1–3 — the strange fire, the death of both, and Aaron's silence
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Eruvin 63a and Vayikra Rabbah 20 — several explanations of the cause that do not agree
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.