Numbers 16:36

"And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest, that he take up the censers out of the burning, and scatter thou the fire yonder; for they are holy, even the censers of these sinners against their own lives; and let them be made beaten plates for a covering of the altar: for they offered them before Jehovah, therefore they are holy; and they shall be a sign unto the children of Israel. And Eleazar the priest took the brazen censers, which they that were burnt had offered; and they beat them out for a covering of the altar, to be a memorial unto the children of Israel, to the end that no stranger, that is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to burn incense before Jehovah; that he be not as Korah, and as his company: as Jehovah spake unto him by Moses."

The great purpose of preserving the bronze censers and of making from them a memorial "unto the children of Israel" was that of perpetuating the Aaronic priesthood as exclusive possessors of that priesthood, as stated in Numbers 16:40.

"To the end that no stranger, that is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to burn incense before Jehovah ..." This regulation displeased many in Israel, and when Jeroboam came to the throne of the Northern Israel, one of his sins was that of appointing priests of all the people (1 Kings 13:33,34). It was from this basic root that the eventual destruction of the Northern Israel derived. No priesthood of Israel in any sense was ever able either to add to or to diminish from the Sacred Scriptures, because, the power to augment is also the power to diminish, and it is simply inconceivable that if any such power had pertained to Jewish priests, particularly those of Northern Israel who generally were not Aaronic in any sense, and still less any of those in Southern Israel (Judah), could ever have left in the Pentateuch (and the Prophets also) such a fantastic array of material that is detrimental to the image of that priesthood as actually found there. Aaron was an idolater in the matter of the golden calf. Nadab and Abihu were destroyed by Jehovah for disobedience. And God finally disinherited, outlawed, and cursed the whole Levitical priesthood for their sins and arrogant disobedience. "I will send the curse upon you: yea, I have cursed your blessings already" (Malachi 2:2).