When they settled in Canaan, the Israelites had taken over the sacred places of the Canaanites and set up the worship of Jahweh at them. These sanctuaries did not all enjoy the services of a Levitical priest, as we see from the fact that a son of Micah the Ephraimite acted as priest. The numbers of the Le\'ites were probably insufficient to meet the needs of such service. They will have settled only at the more important sanctuaries. A reminiscence of this is preserved in the Priestly Writing of the Hexateuch, which conceives of specially appointed Levitical or priestly cities. Some or the names of cities specified in this con- nexion clearly point to ancient places of worship (cf. below, § 8, f end, and g).
The most important sanctuary in the time of the .Judges was the temple at Shiloh, whose annual festivals were resortecl to by a wide circle of worsbippers. There officiated Eli and his house, which traced back its priestly rights to the time of the Exodus from E<jrypt (1 S 2-'''), and thus at all events belonged to the category of the Levites. It may be that the house of Eli also laid claim to descent from the priestly brother of Moses, namely Aaron ; so at least the matter was viewed by those in later times who traced the descent of the Elida; to Ithamar a son of Aaron (1 Ch 24'). But it may be also, as we have seen, that originally the priest of the Exodus, and even the ancestor of the house of I'^li was held to be Moses himself, for whom his brother might come to be substituted only in after- times (Wellhausen, Proleqinncna^, p. 146 f.). In the history of the childhood of Samuel, Eli is introduced abruptly (1 S 1") ; a pas- sage paving the way for the mention of him must have been lost, and in this his genealogy was prob- ably given. Eli, as no doubt was the case equally with the head of the family elsewhere, held the position of chief priest in the temple, as may be gathered from the relation to him of Samuel and of his own sons. Eli's sons perished in the wars with the Philistines, and with them probably also the sanctuary of Shiloh, which is never afterwards mentioned as existing (1 S 4"''-)- The house of Eli was not, however, completely extinguished ; a great-grandson of his, Ahijah the son of Aliitub, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, bore Mie cplioil in the time of Saul (1 S 14'). He is eviiiiiilly identical with the son of Ahitub whom another source calls Ahimelech. This Ahimelech, apparently as chief priest, had his residence, along with his lathers' house, at Nob (1 S 21"- 22""),
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PRIESTS AND LEVITES
PRIESTS AND LEVITES
the 'city of the priests' (22"). Here then it would appear that the ancient priestly family of the Exodus gathere<l itself together after the downfall of Sliiloh. Renan (Histoire, i. 420, note 1) finds dilhculty in the identification of Ahijah with Aliimelech, because the priests of Nob can, he thinks, hardly have belonged to the family of the priests of Shiloh. But why not, and why should it be necessary to impute an error to 1 K 2-'', where Ebiathar (Ahimelcch's son) is reckoned to the house of Eli? There was similarly at Dan a Levitical priesthood which traced its descent to the before-mentioned LeWte of Micah the Eph- raimite, and consequently to Moses (Jg 18**).
3. The Priesthood from David to Josiah. — When David had acquired for his capital the Jebusite citadel, he conferred upon it the distinc- tion of transferring the sacred ark to the summit of its hill, the threshing-floor of Araunah tlie Jebusite. By this act he established a royal sanctuary of which the king was the proprietor, in the same sense in which the private person Micah was the owner of the sanctuary set up by him. David and, subsequently to the building of the temple by Solomon on Mt. Zion, his suc- cessors assumed a kind of chief priestly position at the .sanctuary of Jerusalem.* David presented olierings, manifestly discharging priestly functions in person, for it is said that he ' made an end of ottering' (2 S 6'''') ; he pronounced the liturgical blessing (v.'*), and danced in the priestly garb, the linen ephod, before the ark of the covenant (v.'*). Of Solomon, too, it is recorded that, at the dedica- tion of the temple, he ottered sacrifice (1 K 8'' ^'^■), and that three times in the year he offered burnt- otterings, and peace-otferings and ' sweet smoke ' (1 K y-*). There is no mention of priests on tins occasion ; their presence may, however, be taken for gTante<l ss self-evident, for, of course, Solomon could not, without help of some kind, have over- taken all the dedicatory oUerings. From the above statements, then, it is not clear to what extent Solomon in his offering discharged priestly functions in person. But it is difficult to suppose him to have acted in this matter difi'erently from David. In any case the blessing which, standing by tlie altar, he pronounced upon the people (1 K 8") is a priestly act. Of the first king of tlie Northern kingdom, Jeroboam, we are expressly told that he ascended the altar of Bethel and made the ottering (1 K 12^), although he too had priests at his command (v."). The position of the kings of the Northern kingdom in relation to its chief sanctuary at Bethel will have been practically the same as that of the kings of Judah to the temple at Jerusalem. Under Jeroboam 11. Amaziah the priest at Bethel speaks of the sanctuary there as a royal one (Am 7'^) ; Amaziah, that is to say, officiated under the king's commission. Of one of the later kings of Judah, Ahaz, it is expressly re- corded that he ascended the temple altar, kindled the ottering, poured out the dnnk-oU'ering, and sprinkled the altar with the sacrificial blood (2 K 16'-' ). Conseq^uently it is at least not an incorrect condition of things that is presupposed in Chronicles when we are told how Uzziah, the second jncdo- cessor of Ahaz, ottered incense upon the altar of incense (2 Ch 26"'^). All that belongs to the later standpoint of the Chronicler is the notion that this ottering by the king in person was an illegitimate encroachment upon the priestly privileges, and that Uzziah was on that account punished with leprosy ; perhaps al.so the assumption of a sjiecial altar for incense bespeaks a later viewpoint.