488 L E V I T E S
and especially Theodotus, ap. Polyhistor, in Müller's Fragmenta, iii. 217 sq.), and the curse of Jacob on the ferocity of his sons is quite forgotten.[1] In the oldest history, however, the treachery of Levi and Simeon towards a community which had received the right of connubium with Israel is represented as a crime, which imperilled the position of the Hebrews and was fatal to the future of the tribes directly involved.
But while the Levites were scattered throughout Israel their name does not disappear from the roll of the tribes. In the Blessing of Moses (Deut. xxxiii.), where Simeon is passed over, Levi still appears, not as a territorial tribe but as the collective name for the priesthood. The priesthood meant is that of the northern kingdom under the dynasty of Jehu, to which the chapter in question belongs; and in fact we know that the priests of the important northern sanctuary of Dan traced their origin to a Levite (Jud. xvii. 9), Jonathan the son of Gershom, the son of Moses (Jud. xviii. 30).[2] That the Judæan priesthood were also known as Levites in the later times of the kingdom appears from the book of Deuteromony, especially from x. 8 sq., xviii. 1 sq.; and we learn from Ezek. xliv. 10 sq. that the Judæan Levites were not confined to the service of the temple, but included the priests of the local high places abolished by Josiah. Alike in Judah and in the north the priestly prerogative of Levi was traced back to the days of Moses (Deut. x. 8, xxxiii. 8); but in later times at least the Judæan priesthood did not acknowledge the Levitical status of their northern colleagues (1 Kings xii. 31). It must, however, be observed that the prophets Amos and Hosea never speak of the northern priesthood as illegitimate, and Hosea iv. certainly implies the opposite. Presumably it was only after the fall of Samaria, and the introduction of large foreign elements into the population of the north, that the southern priests began to disavow the ministers of the sanctuaries of Samaria, most of whom can no longer have been representatives of the old priesthood as it existed before the northern captivity (2 Kings xvii. 28, comp. Amos vii. 17, Jud. xviii. 30, 2 Kings xxiii. 20, in contrast with verses 8 sq.).
In the most developed form of the hierarchical system the ministers of the sanctuary are divided into two grades. All are regarded as Levites by descent, but the mass of the Levites are mere subordinate ministers not entitled to approach the altar or perform any strictly priestly function, and the true priesthood is confined to the descendants of Aaron. In the documents which reveal to us the actual state of the priesthood in the northern and southern kingdoms before the exile, there is no trace of this distinction. Every Levite is a priest, or at least is qualified to become such (Deut. x. 8. xviii. 7). The subordinate and menial offices of the tabernacle are not assigned to members of a holy guild; in Jerusalem at least they were mainly discharged by members of the royal body-guard (the Carians and footmen, 2 Kings xi. 4, Heb.), or by bond slaves, the ancestors of the later Nethinim, – in either case by men who might even be uncircumcised foreigners (Ezek. xliv. 7 sq.). A Levitical priest was a legitimate priest; when the author of 1 Kings xii. 31 wishes to represent Jeroboam's priests as illegal he contents himself with saying that they were not taken from the sons of Levi. The first historical trace of a modification of this state of things is found in connexion with the suppression of the local high places by Josiah, when their priests were brought to Jerusalem and received their support from the temple offerings, but were not permitted to minister at the altar (2 Kings xxiii. 9). The priests of the temple, the sons of Zadok, were not prepared to concede to their provincial brethren all the privileges which Deut. xviii. had proposed in compensation for the loss of their local ministry. Ezekiel, after the fall of the temple, in planning a scheme of ritual for the new temple, raises this practical exclusion from the altar to the rank of a principle. In the new temple the Levites who had ministered before the local altars shall be punished by exclusion from proper priestly work, and shall fill the subordinate offices of the sanctuary in place of the foreigners who had hitherto occupied them, but shall not be permitted to pollute Jehovah's house in future by their presence (Ezek. xliv. 7 sq.). After the exile this principle was actually carried out: priests and Levites are distinguished in the list of the Jews who returned under the decree of Cyrus (Ezra ii.; Neh. vii.); but the former, that is, the descendants of the pre-exilic priests of the royal temple, greatly outnumber the Levites or descendants of the priests of the high places. At this time other classes of temple servants, the singers, the porters, the Nethinim or slaves of the sanctuary, and the children of Solomon's slaves, whose hereditary service would, on Eastern principles, give them a pre-eminence over other slaves of the sanctuary, are also still distinguished from the Levites; but these distinctions lost their significance when the word Levite itself came to mean a subordinate minister. In the time of Nehemiah, Levites and singers, Levites and porters, are very much run into one (Neh. xi., xii., xiii.), and ultimately the absorption of the other classes of subordinate ministers into the hereditary guild of Levites is formally expressed in the shape of genealogies, deriving the singers, and even families whose heathenish and foreign names show them to have originally belonged to the Nethinim, from the ancient stock of Levi.[3]
The new hierarchical system found its legal basis in the Pentateuch, or rather in the so-called priestly legislation, first publicly accepted as an integral part of the Torah under Ezra and Nehemiah. Here the exclusion of the Levites from all share in the proper priesthood of the sens of Aaron is precisely formulated (Num. iii. sq.); their service is regulated from the point of view that they are essentially the servants and hereditary serfs of the priests (iii. 9), while, en the other hand, they are recognized as possessing a higher grade of holiness than the mass of the people, and are endowed with the tithes, of which in turn they pay a tithe to the priests (Num. xviii. 21 sq.). These regulations as to tithes were enforced by Nehemiah; but the subordinate position of the Levites was hardly consistent with their permanent enjoyment of revenues of such importance, and we learn from the Talmud that they were finally transferred to the priests.[4] Another provision of the law, viz., the assignation to the Levites of certain cities with a definite measure of inalienable pasture ground (Num. xxxv.; Lev. xxv. 34), was apparently never put in force after the exile.
As the priestly legislation carried its ordinances back into the time of Moses (see PENTATEUCH), so the later developments of the Levitical service as they existed in the time of the Chronicler about the close of the 4th century
2 It is generally agreed that Moses ((
Hebrew characters)) is the true reading. The later Jews corrected the name to Manasseh by inserting the letter (Hebrew characters), but did not venture to do so except above the line ((Hebrew characters)), so that the reading of the archetype can still be restored.
- ↑ According to Wellhausen's analysis (Jahrb. f. D. Theol, xxi. 435 sq.), the old narrative consisted of Gen. xxxiv. 3, 7*, 11, 12, 19, 25*, 26*, 30, 31, the asterisk denoting that only parts of the verses marked by it are ancient. The latest and most satisfactory discussion is that of Kuenen (Theol. Tijdsch., xiv. 257 sq.), in which the opposite view of Dillmann (Genesis, ad l.) is fully refuted.
- ↑ 2
- ↑ See the details, and the proof that the later Levites included men whose actual ancestry belonged to other tribes, in Ewald's Geschichte, iii. 380; Wellhausen, Geschichte, i. 152, 229; Graf in Merx's Archiv, i. 231.
- ↑ See Mishna, Maaser Sheni, chap. v. end, and the Jerusalem Gemara (iii. 259 of Schwab's translation); Yebamoth, f. 86a; Carpzov, App. ad Godw., p. 624; and Hottinger, De Dec., vi. 8, ix. 17.
