Leviticus 21

¹And the Lord said to Moses , Speak to the priests , the sons of Aaron , and say to them, No one shall make himself unclean for the dead among his people ,

²except for his closest relatives , his mother , his father , his son , his daughter , his brother ,

³or his virgin sister (who is near to him because she has had no husband ; for her he may make himself unclean ).

⁴He shall not make himself unclean as a husband among his people and so profane himself.

⁵They shall not make bald patches on their heads , nor shave off the edges of their beards , nor make any cuts on their body .

⁶They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God . For they offer the Lord ’s food offerings , the bread of their God ; therefore they shall be holy .

⁷They shall not marry a prostitute or a woman who has been defiled , neither shall they marry a woman divorced from her husband , for the priest is holy to his God .

⁸You shall sanctify him, for he offers the bread of your God . He shall be holy to you, for I, the Lord, who sanctify you, am holy .

⁹And the daughter of any priest , if she profanes herself by whoring , profanes her father ; she shall be burned with fire .

¹⁰The priest who is chief among his brothers , on whose head the anointing oil is poured and who has been consecrated to wear the garments , shall not let the hair of his head hang loose nor tear his clothes .

¹¹He shall not go in to any dead bodies nor make himself unclean , even for his father or for his mother .

¹²He shall not go out of the sanctuary , lest he profane the sanctuary of his God , for the consecration of the anointing oil of his God is on him: I am the Lord.

¹³And he shall take a wife in her virginity .

¹⁴A widow , or a divorced woman , or a woman who has been defiled , or a prostitute , these he shall not marry . But he shall take as his wife a virgin of his own people ,

¹⁵that he may not profane his offspring among his people , for I am the Lord who sanctifies him.

¹⁶And the Lord spoke to Moses , saying ,

¹⁷Speak to Aaron , saying , None of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God .

¹⁸For no one who has a blemish shall draw near , a man blind or lame , or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long ,

¹⁹or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand ,

²⁰or a hunchback or a dwarf or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles .

²¹No man of the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord ’s food offerings ; since he has a blemish , he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God .

²²He may eat the bread of his God , both of the most holy and of the holy things ,

²³but he shall not go through the veil or approach the altar , because he has a blemish , that he may not profane my sanctuaries , for I am the Lord who sanctifies them.

²⁴So Moses spoke to Aaron and to his sons and to all the people of Israel .