The descendants of Ebiathar, when expelled from the priesthood at Jerusalem, are hardly likely to have all remained settled at Anathoth. Prob- ably a portion of thorn found employment at the sanituaries of the Northern kingdom, where they took part in the otticial worship of Jalnveh under the figure of a bull. In this way we may explain the narrative in the Jehovistic book, which attri- butes to Aaron a part in bull-worship. Ex 32'"- {Gesrh. p. 199 ; so (ireviously Th. N(ildeke, Untcr- suchnng&n zur Kritik dcs AT, Kiel, 18G9, p. 55, note). At all events the Northern kingdom too had an organized priestly body, as may be gathered from the story that, after the downfall of Samaria, a priest from amongst the exiles was sent back to Epliraim, to instruct the inhabitants of the land in the worship of the god of the land, i.e. Jahweh (2 K 17"').
liesides Ebiathar and Zadok and the son of Ebi- athar and the son of Zadok, there is mention of another otherwise unknown 'Ira as priest under David (2 S 2U-"'). According to the traditional text he was a Jairite, i.e. belonged to a Gileadite family, and was consequently no Levite ; but perlia[is the statement should be emended to the etlect that he was a Jattirite, i.e. belonged to the priestly city Jattir in Judah (so [following Thenius, ad lnc.'\ Gcsch. p. 192, and Lolir, (id loc), in which case the pos.sibiIity is not excluded that he was a Levite. In addition to him, Davids own sons are called in 2S8"'/io///)ni/n. In itself there is nothing unpossible in the view that David appointed members of his own non-Levitical family to be actual priests, for we see from the picture of Samuel as a priest that at that time and probably for long afterwards the priestly status was not at all bound up with a special descent. But, on the other hand, again.st understanding IcCihiXnim in the literal sense, when applied to iJaviil's sons {as is done by Lohr and JI. P. Smith, ad loc), is the circumstance that just immediately before (v.") the priests of David, nanielj' Zadok and Ebiathar, have been already enumerated amongst the other court otiicials. Hence it is perhaps proliablo rather that the sons of David only bore the title of kdliilnim in the same way aa, in the time of Solomon, we find Zabud, a son of Nathan (prob- ably the son of David), called ' kO/ien, friend of the king' (1 K 4° [Van Uooiiacker, Succrdoce, etc.
£28tJf., and Benzinger, ad luc, following B and uc. of the LXX, strike out the [n: ; but Kittel, ad luc, dofenus its genuineness]), where in any case ' friend ' is a title. But kO/un can scarcely be the title of a court olUcial in the sense of ' representa-
tive,' scilicet, of the king (so Klostermann, ad loc, who reads 2 S S" kOluinc hn-melckh). As little justilicatiou is there for giving up the statement in Samuel in favour of the dillerent expression of the Chronicler (1 Ch 18"), as is done by Van Hoon- acker, Succrdocc, etc. p. 275 f. Ilitzig's emenda- tion of kCihilnim to sokhiiiim, 'administrators' (Is 22">), which is adopted afresh by Cheyue, rests upon the correct impression that from the context it nmst be a court office that is in view, and the emendation is not demonstrably wrong. Yet it would be surprising if in two passa-jes copj'ists erroneously introduced the word kohen in a context where this word must have struck them as strange. Perhajis, then, kOhCn is in both instances the origimil reading after all. Such a title as ko/icn niaj' be an imitation of the Pha-nicians, amongst whom members of the royal house were often invested with priestly olliccs (so Movers, and similarly Ewald ; see Gcsih. p. 191 f., and cf., further. Driver on 2 S 8", who is not quite decided as to the sense of kululnim in this passage, although he believes that it means priests of sumo kind).
Although the Jud;can kings always reserved for them.selves a kind of chief iiricstly ijosition, yet in view of the importance of tlie temple at Jerusalem as the central sanctuary, and the considerable number of priests which such a sanctuary ])re- supp().>es, it is hardly jiossible to avoid su|iposing that amongst the Jerusalemite priests there was one who claimed the lirst jjlace, as had already been done at Shiloh by the head of the priestly family. The priest who evidently claimed this lirst place is in the Books of Kings called for the most ))art simply 'the kolicn' ; so Jehoiada (2 K l\»'- aL), Urijah (16""- ">'•), and llilkiah (i-J.^o al.). The same title is given in Is 8- to Uriah, and in Jer 29-'' to Jehoiada,* Along with this we have once in Kings (2 K 25'* = Jer 52**) the term 'head- priest' (kohcn hd-ro'sh) applied to Seraiah. This title in this instance (dili'erently in 2 S IS" where we should read lia-kOhCn hd-ro'sh) is certainly not due to later insertion (Nowack, p. 107, note 1), for in that case the designation 'high priest,' sanctioned by the Priests' Code of the I'entateuch, would have been cmplo3'ed. The title ' head-jiriest,' found nowhere else except in Ezr 7° and in Chron- icles, where it occurs along with 'high priest,' is certainly, for the very reason that it is not found in the Priests' Code, derived from earlier anticiuity. On the other hand, it is possible that the title by which the later high i)riest is distinguished.