LEVITE
391
LEVITE
appointed to assist Moses in administering justice (xviii, 25), are connected iu any special manner with the tribe of Levi. The first step towards a change was made in the institution of a liereditary priesthood in the family of Aaron during the tirst withdrawal of Moses to the solitude of Sinai (xxviii, 1). This, however, was one thing ; it was quite another to set apart a whole tribe of Israel as a priestly caste. The directions given for the construction of the tabernacle imply no pre-emi- nence of the Levites. The chief workers in it are from the tribes of Judah and Dan (Exod. xxxi, 2-6). The next extension of the idea of the priesthood grew out of the terrible crisis of Exod. xxxii. If the Levites had been sharers in the sin of the golden calf, they were, at any rate, the foremost to rally round their leader when he" called on them to help him in stemming the progress of the evil. Then came that terrible consecration of themselves, when every man was against his son and against his brother, and the offering with which they filled their hands (D3i;;i ^ixbri, Exod. xxxii, 29 ; comp. Exod. xxviii, 41) was the blood of their nearest of kin. The tribe stood forth separate and apart, recognising even in this stern work the spiritual as higher than the natural, and therefore counted worthy to be the repre- sentative of the ideal life of the people, "an Israel with- in an Israel"' (Ewiild, Alterthiim. p. 279), chosen in its higher representatives to offer incense and burnt-sacri- fice before the Lord (Deut. xxxiii, 9, 10), not without a share in the glory of the Urim and Thummim that were worn by the prince and chieftain of the tribe. From this time, accordingly, they occupied a distinct position. Experience had shown ho\v easily the people might fall back into idolatr}^ — how necessary it was that there should be a body of men, an order, numerically large, and, when the people were in their promised home, equally diffused throughout the country, as attestators and guardians of the truth. Without this the individ- ualism of the older worship would have been fruitful in an ever-multiplying idolatry. The tribe of Levi was therefore to take the place of that earlier priesthood of the first-born as representatives of the holiness of the people.
The tabernacle, with its extensive and regular sacri- ficial service, which required a special priestly order reg- ularly to perform the higher functions of the sanctuary, was the special occasion which also called into being the Levitical staff to aid the priests in their arduous task, inasmuch as the primitive and patriarchal mode of wor- ship which obtained till the erection of the tabernacle, and according to which the first-born of all Israelites performed the priestly offices (comp. Exod. xxiv, 5 with xix, 24, and see First-born), could not be perpetuated under the newly-organized congregational service with- out interfering with the domestic relations of the people. It was for this reason, as wcU as to secure greater effi- ciency in the sacred offices, that the religious primogen- iture was conferred upon the tribe of Levi, Avhich were henceforth to give their undivide<l attention to the re- quirements of the sanctuary (Numb, iii, 11-13). The tribe of Levi were selected because they had manifested a very extraordinary zeal for the glory of God (Exod. xxxii, 2G, etc.), had already obtained a part of this re- ligious primogeniture by the institution of the hered- itary ]irlesthood in the family of Aaron (Exod. xxviii, 1), and because, as the tribe to which jMoses and Aaron belonged, tliey would most naturally support and pro- mote the institutions of the lawgiver. To effect this transfer of office, the first-born males of all the other tribes and all the Levites were ordered to be numbered, from the age of one month and upwards; and when it was found that the former were 22,27;!, and tlie latter 22,000 (see below), it was arranged tliat 22,000 of the first-born should be replaced by the 22,000 Levites, that the 273 first-born who were in excess of the Levites should be redeemed at the rate of five shekels each, be- ing the legal sum for the redemption of the first-born child (Numb, xviii, 10), and that the 1305 shekels be
given to Aaron and his sons as a compensation for the odd persons who, as first-born, belonged to Jehovah. As to the difficulty how to decide which of the first-born should be redeemed by paying this money, and which should be exchanged for the Levites, since it was natu- ral for every one to wish to escape this expense, the Jlidrash (0/* Numb, iii, 17) and the Talmud relate that " Moses wrote on 22,000 tickets Levite C^lb 'p), and on 273 Five Shekels (D'^^p'^U U:^n), mixed them all up, put them into a vessel, and then bid every Israelite to draw one. He who took out one with Levite on it waz redeemed by a Levite, and he who drew one with Fire Shekels on it had to be redeemed by payment of this sum" {Sanhedrin, 17, a). There is no reason to doubt this ancient tradition. It was further ordained that the cattle which the Levites then happened to possess should be considered as equivalent to all the first-born cattle which all the Israelites had, without their being num- bered and exchanged one for one, as in the case of the human beings (Numb, iii, 41-51), so that the firstlings should not now be given to the priest, or be redeemed, which the Israelites were hereafter required to do (Numb, xviii, 15). In this way the Levites obtained a sacrificial as well as a priestly character. They for the first-born of men, and their cattle for the firstlings of beasts, fulfilled the idea that had been asserted at the time of the destruction of the first-born of Egypt (Exod. xiii, 12, 13).