Prolegomena to the History of Israel Part 12

In the pre-exilic literature apart from the Pentateuch it occurs very seldom. First in the prophets, once in the Book of Jeremiah (x.x.xiii. 17-22), in a pa.s.sage which in any case is later than the capture of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans, and certainly was not written by Jeremiah. /1/ The use of the name is an

1. In the LXX, chap. x.x.xiii. 14-26 is wanting. The parallelism between vers. 17-22 and 23-26 is striking. It looks as if David and Levi arose out of a misunderstanding of the families mentioned in ver. 24, namely, Judah and Ephraim. In any case wdwd in ver.

26 is an interpolation.

established thing in Ezekiel (573 B.C.), and henceforward occurs without interruption in the writings of the later prophets, a sign that its earlier absence is not to be explained as accidental, not even in Jeremiah, who speaks so frequently of the priests. /2/

1. Ezekiel xl. 46, xliii. 19, xliv. 10, 15, xlv. 5, xlviii.

11-13, 22, 31; Isaiah lxvi. 21; Zechariah xii. 13; Malachi ii. 4, 8, iii. 3.

In the historical books the Levites (leaving out of account 1Samuel vi. 15, 2Samuel xv. 24, and 1Kings viii. 4, xii. 31) /1/

1. Upon 1Samuel vi. 15 all that is necessary has been said at IV.II.1; on 1Kings viii. 4 see. I.III.1. That 1Kings xii. 31 proceeds from the Deuteronomic redactor, the date of whose writing is not earlier than the second half of the exile, needs no proof.

The hopeless corruptness of 2Samuel xv. 24 I have shown in Text. d.

BB. Sam. (Goettingen, 1871).

occur only in the two appendices to the Book of Judges (chaps.

xvii., xviii., and xix., xx.), of which, however, the second is unhistorical and late, and only the first is certainly pre-exilic. But in this case it is not the Levites who are spoken of, as elsewhere, but A LEVITE, who pa.s.ses for a great rarity, and who is forcibly carried off by the tribe of Dan, which has none.

Now this Jonathan, the ancestor of the priests of Dan, notwithstanding that he belongs to the tribe of Judah, is represented as a descendant of Gershom the son of Moses (Judges xviii. 30). The other ancient priestly family that goes back to the period of the Judges, the Ephraimitic, of Shiloh, appears also to be brought into connection with Moses; at least in 1Samuel ii. 27 (a pa.s.sage, however, which is certainly post-Deuteronomic), where Jehovah is spoken of as having made himself known to the ancestors of Eli in Egypt, and as thereby having laid the foundation for the bestowal of the priesthood, it is clearly Moses who is thought of as the recipient of the revelation. Historical probability admits of the family being traced back to Phinehas, who during the early period of the judges was priest of the ark, and from whom the inheritance on Mount Ephraim and also the second son of Eli were named; it is not to be supposed that he is the mere shadow of his younger namesake, as the latter predeceased his father and was of quite secondary importance beside him. But Phinehas is both in the Priestly Code and in Josh. xxiv. 33 (E) the son of Eleazar, and Eleazar is, according to normal tradition, indeed a son of Aaron, but according to the sound of his name (Eliezer) a son of Moses along with Gershom. Between Aaron and Moses in the Jehovistic portion of the Pentateuch no great distinction is made; if Aaron, in contradistinction from his brother, is characterised as THE LEVITE (Exodus iv. 14), Moses on the other hand bears the priestly staff, is over the sanctuary, and has Joshua to a.s.sist him as Eli had Samuel (Exodus x.x.xiii.

7-11). Plainly the older claims are his; in the main Jehovistic source, in J, Aaron originally does not occur at all, /2/ neither

1. That Aaron was not originally present in J, but owed his introduction to tile redactor who combined J nnd E together into JE, can be shown best from Exod vii. x. For Jehovah's COMMAND to appear before Pharaoh is in J given to Moses alone (vii. 14, 26 [viii. 1], viii. 16 [20], ix. 1, 13, x. 1); it is only in the sequel that Aaron appears along with him four times, always when Pharaoh in distress summons Moses and Aaron in order to ask their intercession. But strangely enough Aaron is afterwards completely ignored again; Moses alone makes answer, speaking solely in his own name and not in Aaron's also (viii. 5, 22, 25 [9, 26, 29]; ix. 29), and although he has not come alone ; he goes so and makes his prayer in the singular (viii. 8, 26 [12, 30], ix. 33, x. 18), the change of the number in x. 17 is under these circ.u.mstances suspicious enough. It appears as if the Jehovistic editor had held Aaron's presence to be appropriate precisely at the intercession.

is he mentioned in Deuteronomy x.x.xiii. 8. In the genealogies of the Priestly Code one main branch of the tribe of Levi is still called, like the eldest son of Moses, Gershom, and another important member is actually called Mushi, 2:e., the Mosaite.

It is not impossible that the holy office may have continued in the family of Moses, and it is very likely that the two oldest houses in which it was hereditary, those at Dan and at Shiloh, may have claimed in all seriousness to have been descended from him.

Afterwards, as Deuteronomy x.x.xiii. 8 seq. informs us, all priests honoured Moses as their father, not as being the head of their clan but as being the founder of their order. The same took place in Judah, but there the clerical guild ultimately acquired a hereditary character, and the order became a sort of clan. _Levite_, previously an official name, now became a patronymic at the same time, and all the Levites together formed a blood-kinship, /1/

1. The instance of the Rechabites shows how easily the transition could made.

a race which had not received any land of its own indeed, but in compensation had obtained the priesthood for its heritage. This hereditary clergy was alleged to have existed from the very beginning of the history of Israel, and even then as a numerous body, consisting of many others besides Moses and Aaron. Such is the representation made by Deuteronomist and subsequent writers, but in Deuteronomy we read chiefly of the _Levites_ in the provincial towns of Judah and of the _priests_, the _Levites_ in Jerusalem, seldom of Levi as a whole (x. 8 seq., xviii. 1) /2/

2. On Deut xxvii. compare Kuenen, Theol. Tidjdschr., 1878, p. 297.

That the hereditary character of the priesthood is here antedated and really first arose in the later period of the Kings, has already been shown in the particular instance of the sons of Zadok of Jerusalem, who were at first parvenus and afterwards became the most legitimate of the legitimate. But it is very remarkable how this artificial construction of a priestly family,--a construction which has absolutely nothing perplexing in itself-- was suggested and favoured by the circ.u.mstance that in remote antiquity there once actually did exist a veritable tribe of Levi which had already disappeared before the period of the rise of the monarchy. This tribe belonged to the group of the four oldest sons of Leah,--Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah,--who are always enumerated together in this order, and who settled on both sides of the Dead Sea, towards the wilderness. Singularly no one of them succeeded in holding its own except Judah; all the others became absorbed among the inhabitants of the wilderness or in other branches of their kindred. The earliest to find this destiny were the two tribes of Simeon and Levi (in Genesis xlix.

regarded as one), in consequence of a catastrophe which must have befallen them at some time during the period of the judges.

"Simeon and Levi are brethren, their shepherds' staves are weapons of slaughter; O my soul, come not thou into their a.s.sembly!

mine honour, be thou far from their band!

for they slew men in their anger, and in their self-will they houghed oxen; cursed be their anger--so fierce!

and their wrath--so cruel!

I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them over Israel!"

(Genesis xlix.5-7).

The offence of Simeon and Levi here rebuked cannot have been committed against Israelites, for in such a case the thought could not have occurred, which is here emphatically repelled, that Jacob, that is to say, Israel as a whole, could have made common cause with them. What is here spoken of must be some crime against the Canaanites, very probably the identical crime which is charged upon the two brothers in Genesis x.x.xiv., and which there also Jacob (ver. 30) repudiates,--the treacherous attack upon Shechem and ma.s.sacre of its inhabitants, in disregard of the treaty which had been made. In Judges ix. it is related that Shechem, until then a flourishing town of the Canaanites, with whom moreover Israelite elements were already beginning to blend, was conquered and destroyed by Abimelech, but it is quite impossible to bring into any connection with this the violent deed of Simeon and Levi, which must have taken place earlier, although also within the period of the judges. The consequences of their act, the vengeance of the Canaanites, the two tribes had to bear alone; Israel, according to the indication given in Genesis xlix.

6, x.x.xiv. 30, did not feel any call to interfere on their behalf or make common cause with them. Thus they fell to pieces and pa.s.sed out of sight,--in the opinion of their own nation a just fate. In the historical books they are never again mentioned.

It is quite impossible to regard this Levi of the Book of Genesis as a mere shadow of the caste which towards the end of the monarchy arose out of the separate priestly families of Judah. The utterance given in Genesis xlix. 5-7 puts the brothers on an exact equality, and a.s.signs to them an extremely secular and blood-thirsty character.

There is not the faintest idea of Levi's sacred calling or of his dispersion as being conditioned thereby; the dispersion is a curse and no blessing, an annihilation and no establishment of his special character. But it is equally an impossibility to derive the caste from the tribe; there is no real connection between the two, all the intermediate links are wanting; the tribe succ.u.mbed at an early date, and the rise of the caste was very late, and demonstrably from unconnected beginnings. But in these circ.u.mstances the coincidence of name is also very puzzling: Levi the third son of Jacob, perhaps a mere patronymic derived form his mother Leah, and levi the official priest. If it were practicable to find a convincing derivation of levi in its later use from the appellative meaning of the root, then one might believe the coincidence to be merley fortuitous, but it is impossible to do so. the solution therefore has been suggested that the violent dissolution of the tribe in the period of the judges led the individual Levites, who now were landless, to seek their maintenance by the exercise of sacrificial functions; this lay to their hand and was successful because Moses them an of G.o.d had belonged to their number and had transmitted to them by hereditary succession a certain preferential claim to the sacred office.

But at that time priestly posts were not numerous, and such an entrance of the levites _en ma.s.se_ into the service of Jehovah in that early time is in view of the infrequency of the larger sanctuaries a very difficult a.s.sumption. It is perhaps correct to say that Moses actually was descended from Levi, and that the later significance of the name Levite is to be explained by reference to him. In point of fact, the name does appear to have been given in the first instance only to the descendants of Moses, and not to have been transferred until a later period to those priests as a body, who were quite unconnected with him by blood, but who all desired to stand related to him as their head. Here it will never be possible to get beyond conjecture.

IV.III.3 While the clerical _tribe of the Levites_ is still brought forward only modestly in Deuteronomy (x. 8 seq.

xviii. 1; Joshua xiii. 14, 33), it is dealt with in very real earnest in the Priestly Code. The _tribe of Levi_ (Numbers i. 47, 49, iii. 6, xvii. 3, xviii. 2) is given over by the remaining tribes to the sanctuary, is catalogued according to the genealogical system of its families, reckons 22,000 male members, and even receives a sort of tribal territory, the forty-eight Levitical cities (Josh. xxi.). At the beginning of this chapter we have already spoken of a forward step made in the Priestly Code, connected with this enlargement of the clergy, but of much greater importance; hitherto the distinction has been between clergy and laity, while here there is introduced the great division of the order itself into sons of Aaron and Levites.

Not in Deuteronomy only, but everywhere in the Old Testament, apart from Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, Levite is the priest's t.i.tle of honour. /1/ Aaron himself is so styled in the

1. Exodus iv. 14; Deuteronomy x.x.xiii. 8; Judges xvii. seq.; Exodus x.x.xii. 26-28; Deuteronomy x. 8 seq., xii. 12, 18 seq.

xiv. 27, 29, xvi. 11, 14, xvii. 9, 18, xviii. 1-8, xxiv. 8, xxvii. 9, 14, x.x.xi. 9, 25; Joshua iii. 3,xiii. 14, 33, xiv. 3 seq., xviii. 7; Judges xix. seq., 1Samuel v1. 15; 1Kings xii. 31, Jeremiah x.x.xiii 17-22; Ezekiel xliv. 8 seq.; Isaiah lxvi. 2, Zechariah xii. 13, Malachi Ii. 4, 8, iii. 3. Only the glosses 2Samuel xv. 24, and 1Kings viii. 4 (compare, however, 2Chronicles v. 5) can rest upon the Priestly Code.

often-quoted pa.s.sage, Exodus iv. 14, and that too to denote his calling, not his family, for the latter he has in common with Moses, from whom, nevertheless, it is intended to distinguish him by the style, "thy brother the Levite." In Deuteronomy we are struck by the deliberate emphasis laid on the equal right of all the Levites to sacrificial service in Jerusalem-- "The priests, the Levites, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the offerings of Jehovah and his inheritance....And if a Levite come from any of thy cities out of all Israel, where he sojourned, and come to the place which Jehovah shall choose, then he shall minister in the name of Jehovah his G.o.d as all his brethren the Levites do who stand there before Jehovah"

(Deuteronomy xviii. 1, 6, 7). Here the legislator has in view his main enactment, viz., the abolition of all places of worship except the temple of Solomon; those who had hitherto been the priests of these could not be allowed to starve. Therefore it is that he impresses it so often and so earnestly on the people of the provinces that in their sacrificial pilgrimages to Jerusalem they ought not to forget the Levite of their native place, but should carry him with them. For an understanding of the subsequent development this is very important, in so far as it shows how the position of the Levites outside of Jerusalem was threatened by the centralisation of the worship. In point of fact, the good intention of the Deuteronomist proved impossible of realisation; with the high places fell also the priests of the high places.

In so far as they continued to have any part at all in the sacred service, they had to accept a position of subordination under the sons of Zadok (2Kings xxiii. 9). Perhaps Graf was correct in referring to this the prophecy of 1Samuel ii. 36 according to which the descendants of the fallen house of Eli are to come to the firmly established regius priest, to beg for an alms, or to say, "Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests' offices, that I may eat a piece of bread:" that historically the deposed Levites had no very intimate connection with those ancient companions in misfortune is no serious objection to such an interpretation in the case of a post-Deuteronomic writer.

In this way arose as an illegal consequence of Josiah's reformation, the distinction between priests and Levites.

With Ezekiel this distinction is still an innovation requiring justification and sanction; with the Priestly Code it is a "statute for ever," although even yet not absolutely undisputed, as appears from the Priestly version of the story of Korah's company. /1/ For all Judaism subsequent to Ezra, and so for

1. Distorted references to the historical truth are round also in Numbers xvii. 25 and xviii. 23, pa.s.sages which are unintelligible apart from Ezekiel xliv. Compare Kuenen, Theol. Tijdschr., 1878, p. 138 seq.

Christian tradition, the Priestly Code in this matter also has been authoritative. Instead of the Deuteronomic formula "the priests the Levites," we henceforward have "the priests and the Levites," particularly in Chronicles, /2/ and in the

2. Except in 2 Chrom v. 5, x.x.x. 27.

ancient versions the old _usus_ loquendi is frequently corrected. /3/

3. E.g., Josh. iii. 3 and Isaiah lxvi. 21 in the LXX, Deuteronomy xviii. 1 and Judges xvii. 13 in "Jerome; and many pa.s.sages in the Syriac. On the carrying out of the new organisation of the temple _personnel_ after the exile, see Vatke, p. 568, Graf (in Merx's Archiv, i., p. 225 seq.), and Kuenen (G.o.dsdienst, ii. p. 104 seq ). With Zerubbabel and Joshua, four priestly families, 4289 persons in all, returned from Babylon in 538 (Ezra iv. 36-39); with Ezra in 458 came two families in addition, but the number of persons is not stated (viii. 2). Of Levites there came on the first occasion 74 (ii. 40); on the second, of the 1500 men who met at the rendezvous appointed by Ezra to make the journey through the wilderness, not one was a Levite, and it was only on the urgent representations of the scribe that some thirty were at last induced to join the company (viii. 15-20). How can we explain this preponderance of priests over Levites, which is still surprising even if the individual figures are not to be taken as exact? Certainly it cannot be accounted for if the state of matters for a thousand years had been that represented in the Priestly Code and in Chronicles. On the other hand, all perplexity vanishes if the Levites were the degraded priests of the high places of Judah. These were certainly not on the whole more numerous than the Jerusalem college, and the prospect of thenceforward not being permitted to sacrifice in their native land, but of having slaughtering and washing for sole duties, cannot have been in any way very attractive to them; one can hardly blame them if they were disinclined voluntarily to lower themselves to the position of mere laborers under the sons of Zadok. Besides, it may be taken for granted that many (and more particularly Levitical) elements not originally belonging to it had managed to make way into the ranks of the Solomonic priesthood; that all were not successful (Ezra ii. 61) shows that many made the attempt, and considering the ease with which genealogies h.o.a.ry with age were then manufactured and accepted, every such attempt cannot have failed.

How then came it to pa.s.s that afterwards, as one must conclude from the statements in Chronicles, the Levites stood to the priests in a proportion so much more nearly, if even then not quite fully corresponding to the law? Simply by the "Levitising" of alien families. At first in the community of the second temple the Levites continued to be distinguished from the singers, porters, and Nethinim (Ezra ii. 41-58), guilds which from the outset were much more numerous and which rapidly grew (Nehemiah xi. 17, 19, 36, xii. 28 seq.; 1Chronicles ix. 16, 22, 25). But the distinction had in fact no longer any actual basis, once the Levites had been degraded to the rank of temple-servitors and become Nethinim to the priests (Numbers iii. 9). Hence, where the Chronicler, who is at the same time the author of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, is not reproducing old sources but is writing freely, he regards the singers also and the porters as Levites. By artificial genealogies of rather a rough and ready kind the three families of singers, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan are traced up (1Chronicles v1.. 1 seq.) to the old Levitical families of Kohath, Gershon, and Merari (see Graf, as above, p. 231; and Ewald, iii. p. 380 seq.).

How far the distinction between the Nethinim and the Levites was afterwards maintained (Josh. ix. 21 seq., I Esdras i. 3; Ezra viii. 20) is not clear. It would not be amiss if Ezekiel's intention of banishing foreigners from the temple found its fulfilment only through these heathen hieroduli, the Mehunim, the Nephisim, the sons of Shalmai, and the others whose foreign-sounding names are given in Ezra ii. 43 seq., obtaining admission into the tribe of Levi by artificial genealogies. A peculiar side light is thrown upon the course of development by the fact that the singers who in Ezra's time were not yet even Levites, afterwards felt shame in being so, and desired at least externally to be placed on all equality with priests. They begged of King Agrippa II. to obtain for them the permission of the synedrium to wear the white priestly dress.

The copestone of the sacred structure reared by the legislation of the middle books of the Pentateuch is the high priest. As the Aaronites are above the Levites so is Aaron himself above his sons; in his person culminates thc development of the unity of worship inaugurated by Deuteronomy and the agency of Josiah.

No figure of such incomparable importance occurs anywhere else in the Old Testament; a high priest of pre-eminent sanct.i.ty is still unknown to Ezekiel even. Even before the exile, it is true, the temple worship at Jerusalem had become so magnificent and its personnel so numerous as to render necessary an orderly division of offices and a gradation of ranks. In Jeremiah's time the priests const.i.tuted a guild divided into cla.s.ses or families with elders at their head; the princ.i.p.al priest had a potent voice in the appointment of his inferior colleagues (1Samuel ii.

36); alongside of him stood the second priest, the keepers of the threshold, the captain of the watch as holders of prominent charges. /1/ But in the Law the position of Aaron is not merely