The first narrative in Leviticus, and it is a catastrophe. Two of Aaron’s sons take censers, put fire and incense in them, and offer strange fire — and fire comes out from before the LORD and kills them. The text gives one reason, four words long: which he commanded them not. Everything else people say about this passage — wrong coals, wrong incense, wrong room, wrong initiative, drunkenness — is inference, and the drunkenness reading rests entirely on a wine prohibition that turns up six verses later. Moses tells Aaron that God will be sanctified in those who come near him, and the verse ends: and Aaron held his peace. He and his surviving sons are then forbidden to mourn. The chapter closes with Aaron winning an argument with Moses about procedure.