Imago Dei

Priests have been despised throughout the modern era, but in Scripture the priest is a foretaste of the destiny of the human race. He is a sign of the restoration of the imago Dei.

John Davies explains how (A Royal Priesthood, 164-5): “Just as the original creation of the cosmos . . . is incomplete until humanity as the image or visual representation of God is placed in the world as its custodian and vice-regent . . . so the recreated or restored world represented by the tabernacle is not finished when the last inert furnishing is in place. The sanctuary is robbed of much of its meaning apart from the presence of its priests.”

As the “image” and “likeness” in the tabernacle that is made according to the heavenly “pattern,” the priest “may be said to form a vital part of the elaborate representation in a stylized and symbolic form of a heavenly or ideal prototype. Here is the prospect of Eden restored, and a restored humanity to dwell in it in security and harmony with God and with the world around them.”

Though a single high priest is given access to Yahweh’s presence, he represents “a people restored to pristine perfection. He is a visible prospect of a glorious condition and acceptability to God such as might once again become a wider reality, rather than a limited and stylized experience of a privileged few. When the priest enters the divine presence in the sanctuary, the community enters through him. He exists and functions within the cult, then, to hold up the ideal and affirm the prospect to Israel of a royal and priestly dignity which is in principle the possession of the whole community” (166).

Aaron is not a high priest at the expense of Israel’s priestly status. He embodies more fully what the whole community possesses, and he is a pledge of a future fulfilled priesthood for the whole community of God, a priesthood extended to the plebs. As Davies puts it, the royal priesthood of Israel is the “covenant grant” to Israel, the gift of Yahweh their sovereign, and the high priest is the living sign of that grant.