Exodus 29:37

Seven days make thou atonement upon the altar to consecrate it; and it shall be the altar of the Holy of Holies. Every one of the sons of Aharon who approacheth to the altar must be holy; to the rest of the people it is not lawful to approach, lest they be burned with the fiery flame which cometh from the holy place.

כל הנוגע, anyone touching or approaching the altar too closely would become sanctified by this, i.e. he had to see to it that he was in a state of ritual purity prior to approaching the altar.

כל הנוגע, “anything which touches, etc;” according to Rashi the word כל here, if taken at face value, means: that even if an animal that was not fit as a sacrificial animal under any circumstances and had by mistake come into contact with the altar, it would have been disqualified for any further use, that it must not be removed from the altar. [Sanctification is used here in the negative sense of the word, out of bounds for anyone else. Ed.]. In order to forestall our getting the wrong impression, the verse following spelling out an example of an animal qualified as a sacrifice, teaches that was meant in verse 37 were only animals basically qualified as sacrifices, which had incurred a disqualification after being on the sacred grounds of the Temple. It is worth examining why in this verse the burnt offering has not been mentioned by name. Presumably, the Torah thought that the reader would understand that the verse speaks of a burnt offering, the name “burnt offering” having been spelled out in verse 44 of our chapter. Our author feels that this is a somewhat forced answer and that there is no need for such a forced answer. He suggests instead that seeing that our verse speaks of an offering tendered twice on each day, that the reader surely knows that this could only refer to a burnt offering. The details about this offering have been spelled out in Numbers 28,3. Our author raises a question involving a commentary by Rashi on the portion dealing with the daily burnt offerings. (Numbers 28,4) On the words: את הכבש האחד תעשה בבוקר, “you shall present the one sheep in the morning,” he writes: that this has been repeated there although it has already been recorded here, as here it referred to a one time event, the consecration of Aaron and his sons as priests, [subsequent priests being born as such to their respective fathers and not needing consecration; Ed.] The paragraph in Numbers refers to legislation that is permanent, and remained in force as long as a Temple functioned. [This editor refers the reader to an interesting comment by K’lee yakar on why in the one verse the Torah speaks about אחד, “one,” whereas in the other portion dealing with the basically same sacrifice the Torah used the prefix ה, i.e. האחד, “the one.”] Our author feels that there was another occasion when the priests had to be consecrated in the time of Ezra when the second Temple had been consecrated and the claim of someone being a priest had to be documented anew due to the seventy years of exile the Jews had endured when not all could prove their ancestry beyond doubt. It will again become necessary to do so when the messiah will come, hopefully soon in our time. Our author feels that this is why Rashi in referring to the consecration rites never mentions a word about these being unique in Jewish history.