In Luke 22, one of Jesus’ disciples (identified in John’s Gospel as Peter) attempts to defend Jesus from arrest by striking the High Priest’s servant with his sword, cutting off his right ear. Jesus rebukes his wayward disciple, and promptly stretches out his hand to heal the servant’s ear.
A remarkable display of healing grace? A typically Christlike display of love for enemies.
Yes, indeed. And yet so much more.
It turns out that this isn’t the only time on the Bible that people else up with blood on their right ear. (The left ear, by contrast, is never even mentioned in the Bible.)
In Leviticus 14, the blood is placed on the right ear of one who is to be cleansed from leprosy. Interesting.
Even more strikingly, perhaps, in Exodus 29 and Leviticus 8, blood is placed on the right ear of man who is to be ordained as a Priest. These texts describe how Aaron and his sons first “lay hands” on the head of the sacrificial ram. The ram is then killed, and its blood placed on the right ear of the man to be consecrated. With this in mind, it’s intriguing to see how Jesus describes what is happening during his arrest: they have come, he says, to “lay hands” on him (Luke 22:53). So then, in Luke 22, the chief priests, officers and elders take Jesus, the soon-to-be sacrificial ram, into their hands, and one of their number is ordained as priest.
This constitutes an implicit criticism of the Old Covenant priestly ministry of Israel’s Priests, a number of whom are present in Luke 22, including some senior priestly figures (“chief priests”). These men are displaced by the priestly ministry of the lowest of their number, a slave. Remember, too, that we have no reason to believe that this slave was himself actually a party to the plot against Jesus; most likely he was there simply because he was under the High Priest’s authority. Caught up in the conflict between his master and the Messiah, he is cleansed from their impurity and given a symbolic vocation as a member of the New Covenant priestly people of God.
