6. Revenues of the Leintes. — Thus consecrated to the service of the Lord, it was necessary that the tribe of Levi should be relieved from the temporal pursuits of the rest of the people, to enable them to give themselves wholly to their spiritual functions, and to the cultivation of the arts and sciences, as well as to preserve them from contracting a desire to amass earthly possessions. For this reason they were to have no territorial possessions, but Jehovah was to be their inheritance (Numb, xviii, 20; xxvi, 62; Deut. x, 9; xviii, 1, 2; Josh, xviii, 7). To reward their labor, which they had henceforth to perform instead of the first-bom of the whole peojjle, as well as to compensate the loss of their share in the ma- terial wealtli of the nation, it was ordained that they should receive from the other tribes the tithes of the produce of the land, from which the non-priestly portion of the Levites in their turn had to offer a tithe to the priests as a recognition of their higher consecration (Numb, xviii, 21-24, 26-32; Neh. x, 37). If they had had, like other tribes, a distinct territorj' assigned to them, their influence over the people at large would be diminished, and they themselves would be likely to forget, in labors common to them with others, their own peculiar calling (Neh. x, 37). As if to provide for the contingency of failing crops or the like, and the conse- quent inadequacy of the tithes thus assigned to them, the Levite, not less than the widow and the orphan, was commended to the special kinchiess of the people (Deut. xii, 19 ; xiv, 27, 29).
LEYITE
394
LEVITE
But, though they were to have no territorial posses- sions, still they required a place of abode. To secure this, and at the same time to enable the Levites to dis- soininate a knowledge of tlie law and exercise a refined anil intellectual intluence among the people at large, iijjon whose conscientious paj'ment of the tithes they were dependent for subsistence, forty-eight cities were assigned to them, six of which were to be cities of ref- uge for those who had inadvertently killed any one (Numb. XXXV, 1-8). From these forty-eight cities, which they obtained immediately after the conquest of Canaan, and which were made up by taking four cities from the district of every tribe, thirteen were allotted to the priestly portion of the Levitical tribe. Which cit- ies belonged to the priestly portion of the tribe, and which to the non-priestly portion, and how they were distributed among the other tribes, as recorded in Josh. xxi, will be seen from the following table:
i. KOUATUITES :
a Pnp«t« ( Jndah and Simeon 0
ai^i^^s,ti, \Benjamin 4
j Ephraim 4
h Not Priests. . . -I Dan 4
(Half Mauasseh (west) 2
fHalf Mauasseh (east) 2
.. „ Issachar 4
11. Geesuonites. ...-^ Asher 4
t Naphtali. '. 3
I Zebulun 4
iii. Meeaeites < Reuben 4
(.Gad J
Total 48
Each of these cities was required to have an outlying suburb (T"i^'2, TipodartLo) of meadow land for the pas- ture of the flocks and herds belonging to the Levites, the dimensions of which are thus described in Numb. XXXV, 4, 6 : '• And the suburbs [or pasture-ground ] of the cities which ye shall give unto the Levites are from the wall of the city to the outside a thousand cubits round about; and ye shall measure from without the city the east corner two thousand cubits, and the south comer two thousand cubits, and the west corner two thousand cubits, and the north corner two thousand cu- bits, and the city in the centre." These dimensions have occasioned great difficulty, because of the apparent contradiction in the two verses, as specifying first 1000 cubits and then 2000. The Sept., Josephus (^Ant. iv, 4. 3), and Philo (Z>e sacerd. honorihus) get over the diffi- culty by reading 2000 in both verses, as exhibited in diagram I, a, while ancient and modern commentators.
Levitical City. — Diagram I, a.
who rightly adhere to the text, have endeavored to rec- oncile the two verses by advancing different tlieories, of which the following are the most noticeable: 1. Ac- cording to the Talmud (Kruhin, b\, a), the .sjiace " meas- ured from the wall 1000 cubits round about"' was used as a common or suburb, and the space measured "from without the city on the east side," etc.. was a further tract of land of 2000 cubits, used for fields and vino- yards, the former being " the suburbs" properly ^o called, and the latter " the fields of the suburbs," as represented in diagram I, h. Against this view, however, which is tlie most simple and rational, and which is adopted by ^Mainionidcs {liilrhoth Shnnitii Ve-.Iohil, xiii, 2), bishop I'atrick, and most English expositors, it is urged that
Levitical City. — Diagram I, h.
it is not said that the 2000 cubits are to be measured in aU directions, but only in the east, south, etc., direction, or, as the Hebrew has it, east, south, etc., corner (nx£). 2. It means that a circle of 1000 cubits radius was to be measured from the centre of the city, and then a square circumscribed about that circle, each of whose sides was 2000 cubits long, as exhibited in diagram II. But the sono cubits aonooiiV.ts