4. Priests.—1. We have already (p. 633%) pointed out how few and uncertain are the traditions of the Mosaic period regarding the founding of the Jahweh priesthood.* Even in the period with which we are now dealing, the stream of tradition is a tiny one. This is simply explained on the ground that priests were not required for the most important transaction of the cultus, namely sacrifice, but only for bearing the sacred Ark (so, according to J and E, Jos 3° 4°" 66f-) + for taking charge of a ‘God’s house,’ i.e. the container of an image of Jahweh, and for consulting the sacred lot, which was connected in some way with this image. In the whole Book of Judges there is no mention of priests except in the first appendix (chs. 17 and 18); but that narrative, when rightly interpreted, is extremely instructive in regard to the conditions prevailing under the Judges. The Ephraimite Micah constructs a ‘God’s house’ containing a Divine image [on the plurality of images, which owe their origin to the welding together of two parallel accounts and to a pro- cess of glossing, see above, p. 641°], and appoints one of his sons to be priest. But when a young Levite, z.¢. a member of the tribe of Levi, who has hitherto sojourned in Bethlehem-judah as a gér, passes by, he engages him, for a yearly salary of ten shekels of silver and the cost of food and clothing, to serve as ‘father’ and priest; and he now feels sure that Jahweh will bless him because he has a Levite for priest. The very designation of a young man as ‘father’ (17° 18) shows that this honorific title (used especially, no doubt, as a mode of address) was regularly given to priests as it was, according to 2 K 2” 67! 1314, to prophets.
* Cf. Baudissin’s art. Prizsrs AND Luyirus in vol. iv. p. 67 ff., and the same author's Geschichte des alttest. Priesterthums, Leipzig, 1889. Unfortunately, this exhaustive monograph is not uninfluenced by the author’s untenable hypothesis that the source P originated as early as the 7th cent. B.c,, much about the same time as Deuteronomy.
t Everywhere in these passages only ‘the priests’ are spoken of except on the first mention of them in 38, where, in harmony with the usage of Deuteronomy, we have the addition ‘the Leyites,’ the two designations combined being=‘the Levitical priests.’ The glossator meant to leave no possibility of doubt that even then the only priests that could be held legitimate were those sprung from Levi.
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
A counterpart to this is found in Jg 5’, where Deborah is called a ‘mother in Israel.’ ;
We see from the above, that, even for attending to a ‘God’s house’ and an oracle-image, a Levite was not indispensable, but that particular value was attached to him when his services could be ob- tained. For, as a descendant of the tribe of Moses, he was supposed, on the ground of the family tradition, to have the best acquaintance with ritual affairs, and, above all, with the method of obtaining oracles. And Micah had all the more ground for this assumption, seeing that his Levite, as we first learn from 18°, was a son of Gershom and a grandson of Moses,* named Jonathan. Thus there was a priesthood known then, which traced its origin direct to Moses, and there is no reason to doubt the historicity of the statement (18°) that in particular the priests of the oracle-image at Dan, which evidently stood in high repute down to B.C. 734, sprang from the family of the above- named Jonathan, and thus of Moses. The circum- stance that the image, along with the priest, was originally stolen by the Danites (18'*"), would cer- tainly not damage its character in the least, from the naive point of view of these early times.
2. It is not till the end of the period of the Judges that we encounter once more a priesthood in Israel, in the person of Eli, with his sons Hophni and Phinehas, in attendance on the sacred Ark at Shiloh (18 1% % 21% 44%). According to the Deuteronomic addition, 2?*, Eli and his sons are the descendants of a priestly family to whom, in Egypt, Jahweh had already entrusted all fire- offerings of the Israelites. By this is meant, of course, the priestly tribe of Levi, the ‘ chosen of all the tribes’ (v.23). The earlier accounts of Eli and his family say nothing of their having belonged to Levi, and the indifference of the ancient sources to any such connexion is shown by the frank state- ment about the priestly functions discharged by the young Samuel, who was of the tribe of Ephraim (1 S 2}8 3!*, according to which-he slept beside the Ark). The Deuteronom. prediction put in the mouth of an unnamed man of God (27"#-) contains what might be called a programme of the subse- quent history of the priesthood, the meaning of which is perfectly transparent to us. The destruc- tion of the house of Eli with the sword (v.**) refers to Saul’s massacre of the priests of Nob (22!8*),+ The transference of the sanctuary to Nob (without the Ark, which had been carried off by the Philis- tines, and was ultimately stationed at Kiriath- jearim, 4% 51-7!) was, without doubt, due to the destruction of the Shiloh temple by the Philistines (cf. Jer 7/%), Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, who, in Saul’s time, officiated there as priest (1 8 217%: