In the Hebrew Scriptures and the Koran, Aaron is the older brother of Moses and his spokesman because Moses was slow of speech, and of a slow tongue (Exodus 6 and 4)).
Unlike Moses, who grew up in the Egyptian royal court, Aaron and his elder sister Miriam remained with their kinsmen in the Eastern border-land of Egypt, Goshen.
The Land of Goshen is named in the Scriptures as the place in Egypt given to the Hebrews by the pharaoh of Joseph (Genesis 45), and the land from which they later left Egypt at the time of the Exodus. The sons of Jacob, living in Hebron, a city in the South West Bank south of Jerusalem, nestled in the Judaean Mountains at 930 m/3,050 ft above sea level, experienced a severe famine that lasted 7 years. Since Egypt was the only kingdom able to supply goods, at the 2nd year of famine, they were invited to live in the Land of Goshem.
The Land of Goshem was located in the Eastern Delta of the Nile, and is described as the best land in Egypt, suitable for both crops and livestock. No wonder why Moses was slow of spiritual speech, and of a slow tongue, since he grew inside the Egyptian court. Aaron's upbringing was different, he connected himself with pure nature in which the power of God was felt in its maximum level and the language developed by Aaron and his family were, most of the time, supernatural. They learned the way of the Hebrews and respected the Law of God.
The Nile Delta, a land-form that forms from deposition of sediment carried by the Nile as the flow leaves its mouth and spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea, was a perfect place for Aaron and his people to grow. It was and still is one of the world's largest river deltas and a rich agricultural region. People have lived in the Delta region for thousands of years, and it has been intensively farmed for at least the last five thousand years.
After the death of Joseph and those of his generation, the following generations of the sons of Jacob grew and became populous in number. The Egyptians feared potential integration or takeover, so they enslaved them and took away their sacred rights. Approximately 430 years later, Moses was called to lead the sons of Jacob out of Egypt. They pitched at 41 locations crossing the Nile Delta, to the last being the Plains of Moab.
Part of the Law of God that Moses received from Him at Mount Sinai granted Aaron the priesthood for himself and his male descendants, and Aaron became the first High Priest of the Israelites, and an Old Testament type of Christ. When crowned with a tiara Aaron represented the highest authority in Earth able to mediate between God and humankind, and when wearing a mitre, the maximum authority inside the priesthood. The elaborate Old Testament description of his vestments give us the idea of the power invested in him as the mediator of the human race. One of his attributes as a High Priest is a censer, because he alone could offer incense in the Holy of Hollies.
The Holy of Hollies was the most sacred area in the Tabernacle and in the Temple where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. It could only be entered by the High Priest once a year, to offer incense during the ritual of atonement, the reconciliation of man and God. Between the High Priest and God no intermediaries existed to effect the ritual of atonement. As the Hebrew Scriptures puts it: "Happy are you, Israel. Before Whom do you cleanse yourself and Who is it Who cleanses you? It is your Father in Heaven."
The miraculous flowering of Aaron's rod (his other supernatural attribute) was the divine indication of the exclusive right of his tribe to the privileges of priesthood. Aaron and the head of each of the other tribes of Israel laid their staffs in the Ark of the Covenant. Aaron's rod blossomed and produced ripe almonds, a sign that the Tribe of Levi, of which he was the leader, had been divinely chosen for the office by God. (Numbers 17).
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