Ordination in the Old Testament

The word for ordination appears in Exod 29:22, 26, 27, 31, 34; Lev 7:37, 8:22, and 28, describing Moses’ appointing of Aaron and his sons as priests, and the sacrifices used in ordination. All of these passages include the same Hebrew term, מִלֻּא (millu', “filling”), which can also refer to the installation of priests (see BDB 571). The KJV, NKJV, Douay-Rheims 1899, and ASV translate the word as “consecration”; LEB uses “ordination” for only the Exod 29 verses, and “consecration” for the three Leviticus passages. While these differences may indicate a legitimate translation issue, they also highlight the difficulty of discussing postbiblical Jewish and Christian practices of ordination, which lack precise biblical antecedents. No biblical Hebrew or Greek term corresponds one-to-one with the contemporary use of “ordination” (Collins, “Ordination,” 339).