For prey meaning booty of. Merlin (in Early Eng. Text. Soc), ii. 152, 'So thei entred in to the londe, and toke many prayes, and brent townes and vilages, and distroyed all the contreea'i Chapman, Iliads, ii. 205 —
'Come, fly Home with our ships ; leave this man here to perish with his preys' ;
PRICE
PRIESTS AND LEVITES
67
and Sliaks. // Ilcnry VI. IV. iv. 51—
'The r;u»ciil neople, thirsting; aft*r prey, Join with the traitor, ami Ihoy jointly swear To spoil the city and your royal court.*
J. Hastixg.s.
PRICE (from Lat. pretium, worth, value, thidiigh Old Fr. pris, preis) means in AV the worth of a person or thing in the widust sense, and not in uioiiey only. See esjjecially Mt 13'" ' When he had fc)und one pearl of great price ' (f ra woXimiiof liapyapiTTiv), and 1 P 3' ' the ornament of a meek and qtiiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price' (iroXirreX^s). Cf. Chaucer, Sir Thopas, 18.1, ' Men speke of romances of prys ' ; He 13* Tind. ' Let wedlocke be had in pryce in all poyntes.'
The verb to price (spelt 'prise') occurs in Zee 11'* 'A goodly price that I was prised at of them.' Cf. Mt 27" Rhera. 'They tooke the thirtie pieces of silver, the price of the priced, whom they did price of the children of Israel.' J. HASTINGS.
PRICK.— See GOAD in vol. ii. 194".
PRIESTS AND LEYITES.—
1. The names kijhin and Uwi.
2. The priesthowi in the earliest timea. 8. The priesthood from David to Josiah.
4. The priesthood according to Deuteronomy.
6. The priesthood from Josiah'a reform to the Exile.
0. The priesthood in Ezokicl's State of the future.
7. The priesthoofl from Ezekiel to Ezra.
8. The priesthood according to the law contained in the
'Priestly Wriliny." o. The priests in the IsM of BoUnese and in par. ticular t6r6th.
b. The Aaronite pricsta.
c. The high priest.
d. The Levites.
e. The 8er%'ing women.
f. The revenues of the priests and Leiit«a.
g. Tlie date of the pnestly system in the 'Priestly
\Vritinp.' •. The priesthood from Ezra to the Chronicler. 10. The priesthood after OT times.
a. Priests and Levites.
b. The revenues ol the priests and Lerites. 0. The duties and olKi es of the priests.
Literature.
(Thronghont this article the ahbreviation Getch., when not preceded by an author's name, stands for Baudissin's GegchichU' aes atUetst. Prietiterthumg, Leipzig, 1889. Whenever a citation consifits simply of an author's name and the number of a page, the reference is to that work of his whose title will be found In the Literature at the end of the article.]
1. The Names KObE.v and LUirt.—The name for ' priest ' in the OT is kohen (;n2). The same word driD) is met with in Phtcnician inscriptions as the oliicial name of the priest, as well as tlie feminine form p:n3. The corresponding word in Arabic, kAhin, is employed to designate the sooth- sayer. It is per se quite conceivable that the priests of the Hebrews were originally soothsayers (Stade, GVI, Bd. i., Uerlin, 1887, p. 471; cf. Kuenen, De God-idicnst vun Israel, Bd. i., Haarlem, 1869, p. 101). There are, certainly, no traces in the or of ecstatic conditions on the part of the priests, but one of their most important functions in the earlier history of Israel was the giving of oracles by means of the lot. A reference to this is to be discovered in the Urim and Tlnmimim which are described as still present in the dress of the high j)rie.st. But the Arabic usage is not decisive for the original meaning of the word kohcn ; the sense borne by kdhin ma}' be secondary, for the Arabs borrowed largely, in matters connected with the cullus, from tlie Israelites (.so also Van Hoonacker, Sncerdoce, etc. p. 235 f, ). The ecstatic form of prophecy apiiears in the OT coupled with priestly lunctionH only in the story of the youth of Samuel, to whom God speaks in a revelation, while he is odiciating as priest at the sanctuary (1 iS 3*"'). Ihis unusual coupling of the priestly and
the prophetic office may be due in this instance to the combination of two conceptions of the jierson of Samuel : one of which thought of him, as is the case for the most j)art in the story of his youth, as priest ; whereas the other, which alone has sur- vived in the narratives relating to his latei activity, thought of him as prophet.
The root meaning of the word kohcn does not appear to speak in favour of its being a designa- tion of the 'seer.' Derived from a verb kclTian, probably equivalent in meaning to kiin ' stand,' kohcn will be explained most simply as ' he that stands.' In other instances, too, tlie expression ' stand (icy) before Jahweli ' is used of the priestly ollice, especially of the service at the altar wliicli the priest performs standing. This last, then, is perhaps what is referred to also in the name ku/iai, which will then designate the priest as oHerer, or, since ' stand before one ' is said of service in general, as servant of the deity. This general conception deserves the preference, because in ancient times it is not the oll'ering of sacrilice but other functions thtit ajipear as the .special dut}' of the priests. The sense of ' servant ' is obtained for kOhCn also by Hitzi" (on Is 61'"), who connects the word with the I'i'el kihen (Is 61'" = I'rn ' make ready ' ; elsewhere, indeed, kihen is a derivative from kohen [see Ewald, Heb. Sprache, § 120c]), to which he assigns the sense ' parare, apt are, and then ministrare.'