5 2 3 6 tion with independent part of their own. So far from representing Connecanything like the separate spiritual power of modern hier- the general archies, they are completely incorporated with the civil in- condition of society. stitutions of the nation, and with very few exceptions swayed to and fro by its influences. In spite of their pasture-lands, they often appear to have been a needy and ill-provided class. The Levites are constantly reckoned amongst the objects of eleemosynary support,' and are described as dependent on irregular channels for their supplies even of ordinary food. A good piece of roast flesh-a jovial supper—a cake of bread the remains of the meat offerings and drink offerings the heaps of corn, olives, and honey that were laid in the Temple courts, were the avowed objects of the homely ambition of the Jewish hierarchy. In the desert the order was controlled by the supreme power of the great Lawgiver. Through him, and not through Aaron, are 7 communicated the ordinances of its existence. By him, and not by Aaron, not Aaron only but Aaron's sons were anointed for their office. In the order of the precedence in the court of David they rank after the commander-in-chief and the historiographer. One instance is recorded of a violent attempt to snatch at wider power; but that is within the sacred tribe itself; not of the Priesthood against the supreme jurisdiction of Moses, but of the Levites against the 10 Priesthood. In the lawless period of the Judges, the sacerdotal caste largely shared in the wild, licentious character of the whole age. The Levite of Dan, the Levite of Bethlehem, Hophni and Phinehas, Eli himself, were average types of the disorder of Improvements by David and Solomon. the time. They rarely rise above it; they never herald the approach of better days. After the establishment of the monarchy they become, far more than Prophet or Captain of the Host, mere instruments in the hands of the King. The King was himself a partaker in the consecration of their own sacred oil. Ahimelech trembles at the least thought of resistance to Saul's despotic will. He and his whole house are swept away apparently with a less shock to the national conscience, with a less 2 guilt on Saul's part, than was incurred by the slaughter of the Canaanite outcasts, the Gibeonites. Abiathar, his son, was deposed by Solomon. Zadok was, it would seem, appointed by Saul, and established first in joint possession of the Priesthood by David, and then in sole possession by Solomon. The influence of these great Princes was nowhere more powerfully exercised than in their modification of the Priestly offices, the duties of which were laid down by Solomon with a minute and rigorous care equal to any now exercised in the Christian Church by the most vigilant of Pontiffs. 3 Nothing shows more strikingly the vivifying and renovating power of these reigns, than that even into this cold mechanism they infused a new life, and therefore a new importance. Then, for the first time, the military character of the order gives way to more peaceful influences; the gentler music of the Prophetic schools is added in the Levitical service to the wild trumpets and dissonant horns of the earlier age; and hymns and prayers enter into the mute Priestly functions. Then also it broke its strict hereditary bounds. Some of its highest functions, those of sacrifice and benediction, were performed by the two powerful Kings, who 1 Sam. xxi. 1. 2 Ibid. xxii. 18; 2 Sam. xxi. 2. Contrast this with the importance ascribed by the Rabbinical traditions to the slaughter of Ahimelech, which, in their judgment, was the cause of See Lecture XXVI. Its growth kingdom. in the of Judah, united in their persons to a degree unknown before, the royal and sacerdotal offices. Even the inferior members of the royal family shared in the same enlargement, and are enrolled by the sacred writers amongst the Priests' with a boldness which, of all the great versions of the Old Testament, the Vulgate alone has had the honesty and the courage thoroughly' to recognise. But, although this was a temporary phase of its history, the Jewish Priesthood then received an impulse in Judah which it never since lost. In the kingdom of Israel, the mere fact of the religious revolution of Jeroboam cut them off from occupying any important position. But this very circumstance threw them with greater force on the kingdom of Judah. As from the time of the disruption, the northern kingdom was, as we have seen, the chief scene of the influence of the Prophets, so the southern was the chief scene of the influence of the Priests. The geographical situation of the Priestly cities, in the southern tribes of Judah, Simeon,2 and Benjamin, doubtless contributed to this result. The Priesthood which had been in the time of David divided between three competitors, in the time of Solomon between two, were at last concentrated in the single person of the chief descendant of Zadok, who in the time of Jehoiada assumed for the first or nearly the first time, the title of High Priest.' Under him there occasionally appears a Second Priest,' and under these an indefinite number, known as the doorkeepers.' Jehoiada, after the Captivity. Azariah, Hilkiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are amongst the chief personages of the later history. After the return, Ezra, Joshua, Simon the Just, and Jaddua figure as con 5 12 Sam. viii. 18; 1 Kings iv. 5. The LXX. translates sometimes iepeus, sometimes auλapxal; the A. V. always 'chief rulers; the Vulgate always 'sacerdotes.' 2 Josh. xxi. 11–19; 1 Chr. vi. 54-60. 3 Zadok and Abiathar, and (1 Chr. xxvii. 5) Jehoiada the First. 10; The only exceptions are Lev. xxi. * 2 Kings xii. 9, xxiii. 4, xxv. 18. Its inferior place. spicuously. And in the Maccabees, for the first time since Eli, a priestly dynasty mounts the throne; and, though at last rendered still more dependent on the will of the Roman governors than it had formerly been on that of the Jewish Kings, the High Priesthood retained its hold on the nation till the end, and disappeared only with the fall of Jerusalem, whilst the Priestly and Levitical functions have continued even to this day.' 2 It will be seen that, in point of religious importance, the Levitical Priesthood was inferior not only to the Prophetic office which stood in direct antagonism, but to the Lawgiver, the King, and the Psalmist. Moses was incomparably superior to Aaron, David to Abiathar, Solomon to Zadok. The vices, even the idolatries of the kingdom of Judah, received from them hardly any rebuke. They served, as it would appear, the altars of the false gods, as well as of the true. Full of interest and beauty as is the Book of Chronicles, it yet, least of any of the sacred books, partakes of the supernatural gift of courageous impartiality which elsewhere is so remarkable. The whole sacrificial system to which they administered awakened, in the highest spirits of the Jewish Church itself, a feeling almost amounting to aversion. Its inferiority to the rest of the Mosaic revelation is stated by the Prophets in terms so strong as almost to reject it from the category of divine ordinances at all. 'I 'spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the3 In the later Prophetic literature, See Jer. xxxiii. 18, 21, 22; Ezek. xl. 46, xliii. 19, xliv. 10, 15, xlv. 5, xlviii. 13; Mal. ii. 4, 8, iii. 3. The same usage prevails in Deut. x. 8, 9, xvii. 9, 18, xviii. 1, xxi. 5, xxiv. 8, xxvii. 9, xxxi. 9. This peculiarity of phraseology is well put in the Bishop of Natal's work on the Pentateuch, Part 3, §§542, 630, 668. Ezek. xx. 31, 40. 6 3 1 2 'day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt concern'ing burnt offerings or sacrifices.' 'Sacrifice and burnt 'offering Thou didst not desire.' Was it to Me that ye 'offered sacrifices and burnt offerings during the forty years ' in the wilderness?' I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of he-goats.' 'I hate and despise your 'feast days.1 ... Though ye offer Me burnt offerings and 'your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.' Leave as much room as we will for Oriental diction, grant that the expressions may have been sharpened by the peculiar circumstances of the time, still the contempt, the irony, the disgust expressed at the very thought of the slaughtered victims, has a strength which must be of universal significance, and which could hardly be exceeded by the disdainful language of Western philosophy or modern Puritanism. In one remarkable passage, ascribed to Asaph the psalmist, this Prophetic protest is raised to the rank even of a new revelation. There God is described as descending on Mount Zion, in storm and fire, as He had before descended on Mount Sinai, and declaring not merely in the presence of His own people, but to the whole universe, a deeper and wider law even than that of Moses. He the Lord of the world stood in no need of sacrifices. It was not to be thought that He, to whom belonged the numberless cattle that strayed over hill and forest, could desire to devour the flesh of bulls, or drink the warm blood of the goat. The only sacrifice which He could value was that of thanksgiving, of prayer, and of a life just, pure, tender, and true.5 This is a lesson from its history which, in spite of its wide difference from all Christian ministries and priesthoods they 1 Ps. xl. 6. This seems the most probable sense of Amos v. 25 (Dr. Pusey). 3 Isa. i. 11. 4 Amos v. 22. Ps. 1. 1, 2, 12, 13, 14, 23. |