Leviticus21:16–24

Blemished priest ↔ blemished sacrifice verbal / quotation — confirmed

The defect that bars the priest is the same defect, named by the same word, that bars the animal he would offer. Benson and Poole both saw the symmetry: Christ "was typified both by the priest and sacrifice, and therefore both were to be without blemish." The link is verbal and rare — the noun mūm (H3971) occurs in only nineteen verses of the whole OT, and the catalogue's ‘iw·wêr/pissêaḥ ("blind/lame") pair recurs almost verbatim in the law of the lamb. Held honestly: these are both Levitical/Deuteronomic cult texts in the same Hebrew vocabulary, so the connection is strong but it is shared technical language, not one passage quoting another.

Leviticus 21:18 · Leviticus 22:20-25 · Deuteronomy 15:21

basis: rare shared lexemes make this a VERBAL link, though not a quotation — neither passage cites the other; they share Leviticus/Deuteronomy cultic vocabulary. (Lev 21:18 ↔ Deut 15:21): H6455 piççêach (in 13 vv), H5787 ʻivvêr (in 23 vv), H3971 mʼûwm (in 19 vv), H176 ʼôw; (Lev 21:21 ↔ Lev 22:20/25): H3971 mʼûwm + H7126 qârab + H3899 lechem

Malachi's reversal — the priests offer what the law forbade verbal / quotation — confirmed

Centuries later Malachi turns this very statute back on a corrupt priesthood. The law forbade a blind or lame priest to draw near; Malachi indicts priests who bring the blind and lame animal near to the altar: "When you offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? … Offer it now to your governor!" (Mal 1:8). The mirror is exact and the shared vocabulary is rare — ‘iw·wêr (blind), pissêaḥ (lame), and qârab (draw near/offer) all carry over. What Leviticus guarded in the priest's body, Malachi finds violated in the priest's offering.

Leviticus 21:18 · Leviticus 21:21 · Malachi 1:8

basis: rare shared lexemes (Verifier, Lev 21:18 ↔ Mal 1:8): H6455 piççêach (in 13 vv), H5787 ʻivvêr (in 23 vv), H7126 qârab (in 260 vv), H176 ʼôw — verbal in vocabulary (Malachi deliberately echoes the priestly list back on a corrupt priesthood); not a formal citation

The offering must be whole as the priest is whole — the red heifer structural / thematic — confirmed

The same governing rule — that what comes near to God's holiness must be without flaw — reaches past the priest to the victim. The red heifer of the purification-water must be one "on which never came yoke" and in which there is no mūm: "a red heifer without defect, in which there is no blemish" (Num 19:2). The unit's load-bearing word reappears at the head of Israel's most mysterious sacrifice, the ash that cleanses the unclean. Priest and offering are bound under one demand. Held honestly: the link is the single shared word mūm (H3971, rare at 19 occurrences) within the same Mosaic cult vocabulary — a structural/thematic resonance, not a quotation; the contexts (priestly fitness vs. the heifer's purity) are distinct but governed by the one principle Barnes names, that "all which is devoted to the service of God should be as perfect as possible of its kind."

Leviticus 21:21 · Numbers 19:2

basis: shared lexeme (Verifier, Lev 21:21 ↔ Num 19:2): H3971 mʼûwm (in 19 vv); same Mosaic cult-purity vocabulary, but no quotation — the heifer-text does not cite the priest-law; the bond is the shared principle of an unblemished thing devoted to God

The skin-diseases among the covenant curses verbal / quotation — confirmed

Two of the rarest defects in the catalogue — gārāb (scab/itch) and yallepheth (scurf/ring-worm) — are vanishingly uncommon words. gārāb stands in only three verses of the whole OT, and one of them is Deuteronomy 28:27, where it falls among the covenant curses: "The LORD will strike you with … the scab and the itch, from which you cannot be healed." The disease that disqualifies a priest from the altar is, in Deuteronomy's curse-list, a stroke of judgment on a disobedient nation. Held honestly: this is a single rare shared lexeme; the link is verbal in vocabulary but the two contexts (priestly fitness vs. national curse) are distinct, so the thread is the word, not a shared argument.

Leviticus 21:20 · Leviticus 22:22 · Deuteronomy 28:27

basis: rare shared lexeme (Verifier, Lev 21:20 ↔ Deut 28:27): H1618 gârâb (in only 3 vv) — verbal by rarity, not a quotation; also H8311 sâraʻ (in 3 vv) shared Lev 21:18 ↔ Lev 22:23. The two contexts (priestly fitness vs. national curse) differ; the bond is the rare word

"No blemish in him" — the standard inverted in a man structural / thematic — confirmed

The unit's keyword recurs, negated, in the portrait of Absalom: "In all Israel there was no one so highly praised for his handsome appearance as Absalom; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish (mūm) in him" (2 Sam 14:25). The same rare noun that here disqualifies is there a mark of perfect outward form — and the irony of Absalom is that flawless beauty cloaked a rotten heart. Scripture itself thereby warns against reading the priestly mūm as a verdict on inner worth.

Leviticus 21:17 · Leviticus 21:21 · 2 Samuel 14:25

basis: shared lexeme (Verifier, Lev 21:18 ↔ 2 Sam 14:25): H3971 mʼûwm (in 19 vv) + H376 ʼîysh + H3808 lôʼ; thematic inversion (disqualifying flaw vs. flawless form), no quotation claimed

The High Priest "without blemish" → Hebrews 7:26 flagged — verify source

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read the whole unit toward Christ: "In all these regulations for preserving the unsullied purity of the sacred character and office, there was a typical reference to the priesthood of Christ (Heb 7:26)" — "such a high priest … holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners." Poole and Benson concur that the unblemished priest "typified … Christ, the great High Priest." Flagged on purpose: this is a cross-Testament link (Hebrew Leviticus ↔ Greek Hebrews), so it cannot rest on a shared Strong's number — the Verifier finds no verbal basis across the language barrier. The conceptual bridge is real and ancient (the Greek μῶμος renders Hebrew mūm in the LXX, and 1 Peter 1:19 calls Christ ἄμωμος, "without blemish"), but Hebrews 7:26 does not quote Leviticus 21; it draws a typological inference. We tier it typological and flag the provenance of the claimed connection.

Leviticus 21:17 · Leviticus 21:21 · Hebrews 7:26 · 1 Peter 1:19

basis: cross-Testament (Hebrew↔Greek) — no shared Strong's possible; not a quotation but a typological inference asserted by JFB/Poole/Benson. Conceptual bridge is the LXX μῶμος = mūm and ἄμωμος of 1 Peter 1:19; left flagged because the link is interpretive, not citational

The priest and the sacrifice without blemish ancient/widely-held

The old commentators read this passage with one eye on Calvary. Poole: the priest was "to represent Christ, the great High Priest, who was typified both by the priest and sacrifice, and therefore both were to be without blemish." Leviticus required a whole-bodied priest at a whole-bodied altar; the New Testament names a High Priest "holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners" (Heb 7:26) who offered Himself as "a lamb without blemish or defect" (1 Peter 1:19). The Greek ἄμωμος there is the negated form of the same μῶμος the LXX uses to translate the mūm of this chapter — the shadow's keyword, fulfilled in the substance. In Christ, for the first time, priest and victim are unblemished in the same person.

Leviticus 21:21 · Hebrews 7:26 · 1 Peter 1:19

Excluded from the altar, He gathers the excluded to the table novel

The mercy folded into the law — the blemished priest barred from the altar yet kept at the table (vv. 22–24), "not treated as an outcast" (Barnes) — reads, under the gospel, as a shadow inverted by its fulfillment. The very people a holiness-of-form code would keep at a distance are the ones Jesus draws near: "the blind and the lame came to Him at the temple, and He healed them" (Matt 21:14) — the very pair (‘iw·wêr, pissêaḥ) this chapter heads its catalogue with. And His parable of the great banquet sends the servant to bring in "the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame" (Luke 14:21). The flawless High Priest is precisely the one who seats the flawed at the feast. Held honestly: this is a thematic reading of the gospel's reversal, offered to be weighed — and Matthew and Luke are Greek (τυφλοὶ καὶ χωλοί), so the bond to the Hebrew ‘iwwêr/pissêaḥ is conceptual, not a shared lexeme; Leviticus 21 does not predict these scenes.

Leviticus 21:18 · Leviticus 21:22 · Matthew 21:14 · Luke 14:21