So the LORD said to Aaron, “You and your sons and your father’s house must bear the iniquity involving the sanctuary. And you and your sons alone must bear the iniquity involving your priesthood.
1 And the Lord said unto Aaron, Thou and thy sons. By this solemn appeal God stirs up the priests to devote themselves to their duty with the greatest fidelity and zeal, for He declares that if anything should be done contrary to the requirements of religion, they should be accounted guilty of it, since those are said to “bear the iniquity of the sanctuary”...
The coherence of this chapter with that foregoing is very observable. I. The people, in the close of that chapter, had complained of the difficulty and peril that there were in drawing near to God, which put them under some dreadful apprehensions that the tabernacle in the midst of them, which they hoped would have been their joy and glory, would rather be their terror and ruin.
Commenting on Numbers 18:1-7
And the Lord spake unto Aaron,.... As the things spoken were such as concerned Aaron, he might be only and immediately spoken unto: thou, and thy sons, and thy father's house with thee; meaning both priests and Levites, the priests by him and his sons, and the Levites by his father's house: shall bear the iniquity of the sanctuary; the blame of any evil committed...