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One final approach: they brought a korban which they were not commanded to bring. There was nothing wrong with their motivation, but they did something they were not commanded to do, and you don’t mess around in the Mishkan.
A powerful but simple question on this approach emerges: how were they supposed to know? They were the first ones serving in the Mishkan ever! Was there a history of do’s and don’ts they should have learned from? Was there a “hey, guys, if you do that, here’s what happens?” Nope. Just two simple pesukim. They went in, brought a korban, and a fire consumed them.
An answer can be found if you rewind to the end of Shemot, in Parshat Pekudei. Nineteen times in the parsha of roughly 80 pesukim, it says kasher tziva Hashem et Moshe, or something tantamount to that phrase. Essentially, when creating the actual clothing for the kohanim that they can serve in, 19 times it says “they did exactly as they were told.”
Central to the entire parsha was the warning that you need to do this exactly as you were told. Although they were never warned that they should not bring an unasked for korban, they should have realized based upon the repeated command to only do what they were supposed to do.
If so, that begs one more question. How did they miss 19 warning flags? Here we might benefit from going back to the survey of alternative answers offered above. If you look closely, many of the answers I quoted paint Nadav and Avihu as possessing the self-perception of “I’m better than those around me.” Maybe they didn’t want to get married because no woman was good enough. The thought that “We’re better than Moshe and Aharon, so when they die we’ll take over” and interpreting the law in front of their teachers both fit this theory as well.
When you get caught up in your own awesomeness (and the fact that they did is even justifiable to a degree – the last few parshiyot are dedicated toward the building of the Mishkan, the most special place in the whole camp, the focus of everyone’s attention, and they are among only five humans who can enter it!) you often forget that the rules apply to you too. Their death is a sobering reminder of what happens when this mentality gets to your head. When you think you’re the biggest somebody in the room, it becomes easy to think you are better off than everyone else. Thus, in a sense, this theory may unite many of the answers given surrounding this mysterious episode and teach us a lesson as well.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Aaron Horn
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