Why did Moses clothe Aaron, the high priest, and his sons (Lev. 8:7, 13)?

Origen writes, “Indeed, it is said that God made those. ‘For God made skin tunics and clothed Adam and his wife’ (Gen. 3:21). Therefore, those were tunics of skins taken from animals. For with such as these, it was necessary for the sinner to be dressed. It says, ‘with skin tunics,’ which are a symbol of the mortality which he received because of his skin and of his frailty which came from the corruption of the flesh. But if you have been already washed from these and purified through the Law of God, then Moses will dress you with a garment of incorruptibility so that ‘your shame may never appear’ (Cf. Ex. 20:26) and ‘that this mortality may be absorbed by life’ (Cf. 2 Cor. 5:4).”¹⁶⁴⁹

He also says, “For, before everything, the priest who assists at the divine altars ought to be girded with purity, otherwise he will not be able to cleanse the old and establish the new unless he has put on the linens. About the linen clothes, it has been frequently spoken already, and especially when we were speaking about the priestly garments, that this kind has the form of purity, from the fact that the origin of flax is brought forth from the earth so that it conceived without any mixture.”¹⁶⁵⁰

1646 Origen, Homilies on Numbers , trans., Thomas P. Scheck (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2009) 22.4.1: pp. 137–138. See also Robert B. Eno, Teaching Authority in the Early Church. Message of the Fathers of the Church, V. 14 (Wilmington, Del.: M. Glazier, 1984): p. 84.

1647 Joseph W. Trigg, “The Charismatic Intellectual: Origen’s Understanding of Religious Leadership.” Church History 50, no. 1 (1981): 5–19: p. 14.

1648 Origen, Homilies on Numbers 2.1 (7.9.22–27), quoted in Joseph W. Trigg, “The Charismatic Intellectual: Origen’s Understanding of Religious Leadership.” Church History 50, no. 1 (1981): 5–19: pp. 14–15.

1649 Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 1–16 6.2.7 (FOTC 83:120).

1650 Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 1–16 4.6.3 (FOTC 83:78).