How did Old Testament priests make a living?
Israel's priests received no tribal land inheritance, so Leviticus 7:8-10 assigns them a working wage from the altar itself — the hide of every burnt offering, whole ownership of any cooked grain offering they present, and an equal share among all the priests of any uncooked grain offering brought to the altar.
Israel's priests owned no farmland — they had no tribal inheritance the way the other eleven tribes did — so the law built their income directly into the sacrificial system. Leviticus 7:8-10 spells out exactly what a priest keeps for himself.
First, the hide. Every animal burnt offering is entirely consumed on the altar; nothing of the meat is eaten. But the skin is different:
"The priest who offers any man's burnt offering shall have for himself the hide of the burnt offering that he has offered." — Leviticus 7:8
In a pastoral economy, a cured animal hide (עוֹר, or, H5785) had real market value — this was the one tangible payment from an offering otherwise given wholly to God.
Second, the grain offerings, which are divided by a precise rule. If the grain has already been cooked before it's brought — baked in an oven, or made on a griddle or in a pan — it belongs entirely to "the priest who offers it" (Leviticus 7:9). But if it's brought uncooked, mixed with oil or dry, it's pooled and split evenly "among all the sons of Aaron, one as much as another" (7:10). A prepared dish goes to the individual priest who handled it; raw bulk flour goes into the common pool for the whole rotating priesthood to share.
This working wage sits inside a bigger arrangement. Because the priests held no land, the wider Torah generalizes the same principle across the whole priestly economy: the LORD gives Aaron "all the holy contributions of the people of Israel" as "a portion forever" (Numbers 18:8-20), and the Levites "eat the LORD's food offerings as their inheritance" (Deuteronomy 18:1-5). The men who served the altar lived from the altar — full stop.
The New Testament assumes this arrangement is still recognizable centuries later and builds an argument on it. Defending the right of gospel workers to be paid for their labor, Paul reaches for this exact rule:
"Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel." — 1 Corinthians 9:13-14
Paul isn't tracing a word back to its Hebrew root here — he's reasoning straight from the institution: the hide, the baked grain, the priest's fixed due, to a principle for how the church should support those who serve it.
The full study on The Priests' Portion covers the whole set of instructions the priests worked under — the fire that could never go out, what counted as "most holy," and what had to be destroyed rather than eaten.
What does 'Jesus suffered outside the gate' mean?
Hebrews 13:11-12 draws directly on Leviticus's rule that a sin offering whose blood entered the sanctuary had to have its body burned outside the camp (Leviticus 6:30, 16:27) — Jesus, whose blood does the same atoning work, likewise suffered outside Jerusalem's wall, so 'outside the gate' names Golgotha as the place of a true sin offering.
What does 'most holy' mean in Leviticus?
In Leviticus 'most holy' (קֹדֶשׁ קָדָשִׁים, qodesh qodashim, literally 'holy of holies') marks the highest grade of sacred status the ritual system knows, and it comes with two fixed rules: only priestly men may eat the offering, and only inside the sanctuary court — and holiness so classified is contagious, passing to anything that touches it.
Why did the fire on the altar never go out?
Leviticus 6:12-13 commands a perpetual fire (אֵשׁ תָּמִיד, esh tamid) on the altar because it was never lit by human hands in the first place — it came down from the LORD himself, and to let it die would be to surrender something the priests had not kindled.
Why was the sin offering burned outside the camp?
Leviticus 6:30 rules that when a sin offering's blood is carried into the sanctuary itself, the flesh may not be eaten at all — because that happens only when the offering atones for the priests or the whole nation, and the priests who would eat it are the very people being atoned for, so the carcass is burned outside the camp instead.