aharon

The Hebrew Bible never explains this name, and no one has found a convincing Hebrew word behind it. What the name carries is not a meaning but a career. Aaron is introduced as the brother who can speak, sent to meet Moses (מֹשֶׁה) in the wilderness and to say to Pharaoh what Moses cannot bring himself to say. He holds up his brother's hands in battle, and he also melts down the people's gold and makes the calf while Moses is on the mountain. The text is unusually honest about him: it gives him the highest office in Israel and reports his worst failure in the same book.

From the middle of Exodus onward the name is welded to the priesthood. The ordinary word for a priest (כֹּהֵן) names the job; "Aaron" names the man in whom the job began, and the law keeps saying "Aaron and his sons" where we would say "the priests." His clothing, his anointing, his once-a-year entry into the innermost room, and his death on the mountain with his robes passed to his son are all told as the founding of an office rather than the life of an individual.

So the name outlives the man, and the later books use it three ways at once:

• "the sons of Aaron" becomes the standing term for Israel's priests, centuries after his own sons had died
• "the house of Aaron" is called on in worship alongside Israel itself and all who fear the LORD
• being "of the offspring of Aaron" is what entitles a man to burn incense, and nothing else does

That last point is the sharp edge of the name. Every priest is a Levite (לֵוִי), but not every Levite is a priest: the Levites carry, guard, and assist, while only Aaron's line may approach the altar. A great deal of Israel's later history, from Korah's rebellion to King Uzziah's punishment, turns on that one line being drawn where it is.