"Why would you need a priest to stop a clearly immoral action? .Any immoral action ought to be automatically null and void."
I get the feeling you're approaching moral theology from a much more advanced "hierarchical" framework than most Israelites of the time likely subscribed to. The concept of "the Law was made for man, not man for the Law" was not well-understood; neither, in all likelihood, was the nature of God: while it is clear the ancient Israelites knew they themselves were to have no other God before their national God it is much less clear that whether they understood, before the Babylonian captivity, this to mean there exists *one and only* God.
All this gets back to the reason for establishing clergy and hierarchies in the first place: man in his fallen state cannot be relied upon to follow through the necessary steps. But the apocryphal tale of the priest refusing to annul the vow is also a cautionary tale illustrating the catastrophic results of misuse of authority.
In reply to <p>As I understand it, the by Pixie5
"Why would you need a priest to stop a clearly immoral action? .Any immoral action ought to be automatically null and void."
I get the feeling you're approaching moral theology from a much more advanced "hierarchical" framework than most Israelites of the time likely subscribed to. The concept of "the Law was made for man, not man for the Law" was not well-understood; neither, in all likelihood, was the nature of God: while it is clear the ancient Israelites knew they themselves were to have no other God before their national God it is much less clear that whether they understood, before the Babylonian captivity, this to mean there exists *one and only* God.
All this gets back to the reason for establishing clergy and hierarchies in the first place: man in his fallen state cannot be relied upon to follow through the necessary steps. But the apocryphal tale of the priest refusing to annul the vow is also a cautionary tale illustrating the catastrophic results of misuse of authority.