The tribe of Levi has, according to Dt, no in- heritance in the land ; Jahweh is their inheritance, i.e. the Levite priests are to live by their holy sei-vice (18"- id., also in the introduction 10°). Personal ownershiij of land on the part of a Levite is not therebj' excluded (18*). As he discharges his holy office, certain specified portions of the sarrifices and the dedicated gilts fall to the oliidating priest. He receives the shoulder, the cheek, and the maw of all ofi'erings in cattle and sheep (18^). The priest is to have the re'shith, the best, of com, must, oil, and (cf. 15'") wool of shceii (18^). According to 26""-, however, the whole of the re'ahith did not fall to the priest, at least not that of the fruit of trees (vv.---') ; on the contrary, a feast is to be made of this, which does not, however, exclude the sujjjiosition that a portion of this meal had to be given to the priest. In what relation this re'shith stands to the tenth, an<l whether the regulations about the re'shith belong to the original elements of the Deuteronomic law, is not quite clear (Nowack, p. 126); there is no mention of the olliciating priest having a share of the meals held with the tithes.
(^iiite peculiar weight is laid by the author of the Hcuteronomic law on injunctions of kindness to the Levites. These manifestly cannot have in view the Levites who exorcise priestly functions at Jerusalem, for they had their fixed perquisites from the olterings, and did not req^uire kindness. Katlier has the lawgiver in his nund the Levites of the country who did not discharge holy services, and he refers to them clearly in the expression, ' the Levite that is within thy gates ' (12'-- '* al.). It is expressly enjoined that the Levites, along with other needv persons, are to be invited to the meals held with' the tithes (U-'-s*), to the sacrificial meals (12"- "'• 26"), especially to the joyous cele- bration of the festivals (16"' "), and that the third year's tithe is to be given to them and to other needy ones (26'*). One is not, as it is expressed in
these enactments, to 'forsake' the Levil? (12** 14-'), who is thus in need of religious charity. It is not clear at the outset what kind of Levitea outside Jerusalem the author of the Deuteronomic law has in view in the above injunctions. It is generally supposed that he refers to the country Levites in general, in so far as these, owing to tlie centralization of the cultus demanded by the Deuteronomic law, would be deprived of theii former income derived from the numerous places of worship in the country, the bdmCth. But it is not at all likely that the author of the Deuteronomic law should confess to so special an interest in the priests of the bdin6th service which he prohibits, anti which was largely mingled with idolatrj'. Moreover, he evidently conceives of the Levites, who are commended to charitable support, as already in destitution ; it is not as of the future but as of something ])rescnt that he speaks, when he refers to the Levite 'who is within thy gates.' Probablj' he is thinking of those Levites who had not taken part in the service on the high places, and yet, as not belonging to the Jerusalem priest- hood, were excluded from officiating in the cultus of the temple. He may also have had this class specially in view in speaking of the Levites to whom he desires to open the entrance to the cultus at Jerusalem whenever they take up their abode there. That there were such Levites in the time of Josiah is not to be doubted. The priestly family to which Jeremiah belonged lived at Anathoth, probably traced its origin to the Elidje (see above, § 3), and can hardly be supposed to have been admitted by the Zadokite priests at Jerusalem to a share in the temple service. On the other hand, it is not conceivable, at least in the case of Jeremiai himself, that he took part in the bdmvth service, and thus his priestly desoent brought him no income. Other Levites, too, may have found themselves in the same situation.
The attitude of the author of the Deuteronomic law to the non-.ferusalemite Levites is of gre.at importance for the forming of ii judgment on his legislation and its origin. It is accordingly, in the opinion of the present writer, improbable that the author of the Deuteronomic law belonged, as is mostly held at present, to the Jerusalemite priesthood, and it is further extremely probable that although, like the proidiets long before him, he stands up for Jerusalem as the legitimate place of worship, the cultus forms he describes are not specifically Jerusalemite. To this may be ascribed many of the differences between the Deuteronomio prescriptions and those of other codes in the Penta- teuch. In any case the author of the Deutero- nomic law, in view of the many points of contact between Jeremiah and tlie laws in Dt, must have stood near to the circle in which Jeremiah moved, that is to say, at once the prophetical and the non- Jenisalemite Levitical circle. The circumstance that it was Hilkiah, the chief priest imder Josiah, who caused the ' book of the law ' {i.e. Deutero- nomj'), which he found in the temple during the execution of some repairs, to be submitted to the king (2 K 22^"-), is no evidence that this book was the genuine expression of the then aims of the Jerusalemite priesthood. We have no reason to doubt that Hilkiah bond fide regarded the book which he had found, and whose origin he need not have known, as the ancient book of the law, and gave weight to it as such, without regard to the ccn- venicnce or inconvenience of its contents. Besides, we may suppose that the requirement of the cen- tralization of the cultus, which underlies the whole of Dt, was so extremely welcome to the Jerusalemite chief priest that it would go less against the grain for him to take into the bargain other reciuirements which did not exactly serve the special interests of