(vy) As to the Levites, it is a very general error to regard them as priests of a lower grade, the rank and file, as it were, of the ‘ priestly tribe’ of Levi, from which the priests proper, with the high priest at their head, emerge as a special branch. But this is by no means the intention of P. The circumstance that it is from the tribe of Levi that the Levites are taken, is due to a Divine arrangement equally with the setting apart of the priests from Levi; it is not the consequence of the latter arrangement. On the contrary, the Levites are a selection from the people to represent them in connexion with the lower offices of the cultus. These offices ought to be discharged by the people themselves, or, to be more precise, by the firstborn who are consecrated to God. But here, again, the unavoidable absence of constant purity would have rendered such ser- vice impossible, seeing that the firstborn could not be kept from all contact with profane life. Hence, according to Nu 3*#-, each of the firstborn is to have his place taken by a Levite. Now, as there were only 22,000 Levites available, whereas the number of the firstborn was 22,273, the extra 273 of the latter had to be specially redeemed from their obligation by a further payment of five shekels each. In this requirement P’s real view of the character of the Levites finds very clear expression. They are a ‘ gift’ of the people to the priests (Nu 3° etc.), to minister to the latter. According to Nu 814, they are, like all ‘ wave- offerings,’ assigned to Jahweh through laying on of hands (see below) by the Israelites; they are ‘waved’ [t.¢., probably, led hither and thither, in place of being waved backwards and forwards in the hands, like other sacrificial gifts] by Aaron before Jahweh, and then fall, like all heave- and wave - offerings, to the priests as their property. Their installation is not spoken of, as in the case of the priests, as a consecration, but as an atone- ment and a purifying (Nu 821), In view of all this, we cannot speak of any priestly service rendered by the Levites. Nay, according to Nu
* The title so familiar to us, ‘high (lit. ‘great,’ 5}73) priest,’ appears in Ly 2110 in the form ‘the priest who is greater than his brethren,’ while in Ezr 75 we have ‘the priest [who is] the head.’
720 RELIGION OF ISRAEL
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
415, they are not to touch the sacred vessels upon pain of death, but to carry them only after they have been carefully covered up by the priests. It is true, however, that their superior condition of purity enables them to come nearer to the sanctu- ary than the profane multitude can do, and to serve as a bulwark to the latter against the destroying holiness of God (cf. above, p. 717).
(5) We have already (p. 658°f.) noted how even P recognizes also a kind of lay priesthood in the shape of the Nazirate undertaken for a fixed period of time.
(ad) The hallowed character of all property.— This principle finds expression partly in the ancestral custom of offering the firstfruits of barley, must, and oil (Nu 18"), and partly in a number of sacrificial transactions. Every due paid from the products of the soil signifies that one owes the whole to Jahweh, and it is only when He has received His portion that the rest is hal- lowed and given over freely to the use of man. Amongst the regular ritual dues is included also the tenth paid in early times to the king, only that it is no longer, as in Deuteronomy (1472), eaten at the sanctuary and given every three years to the peor, but is assigned to the Levites as a recompense for the service which they render in the sanctuary as representatives of the people (Nu Tsp ee), ¥
(a) But in P, as in the pre-Prophetic period, by far the most important place among gifts to God is held by the sacrifices. They, too, are in many instances the expression of the consciousness that man owes to God all blessings connected with his earthly possessions, and that he has solemnly to testify his gratitude for these. But this is not the only point of view. On the contrary, there were still at work here a number of motives, partly very ancient, whose presence in sacrificial transactions we have already had to note, although it is hard to say how far a consciousness of the original meaning of the ritual survives in the minds of the authors of P. The idea of the sacral com- munion (ef. above, p. 661 ff.) still continues to find expression in the employment of blood, as the most important part of all sacrificial transactions ; and, indeed, the blood is brought always the nearer to God in proportion to the importance and holi- ness of the sacrifice. Thus the blood of the peace- offering and the burnt-offering is poured only round about the altar (Ly 1°: 14 3?); whereas of the blood of the sin-offering the priest has to sprinkle a por- tion before the curtain which separates the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, to smear a por- tion on the horns of the altar of incense, and to pone the rest upon the ground beside the altar of