I use the term "priesthood" here in an enlarged sense. I include, under that designation, the whole tribe of Levi, as possessing a sacerdotal or sacred character. It is of this tribe that I now propose to treat, in its constitution, its functions, and its revenues. No part of the Mosaic institution has been either more grossly misunderstood or more wickedly misrepresented. It is proper, therefore, to examine it in the relations just indicated.
The tribe of Levi had an organization quite different from that of the other tribes. These were settled in distinct provinces, and had each a government of its own. This had no landed property, did not live together, and was without an independent government. Its members were dispersed through all the territories of Israel, drew their livelihood from the other tribes, and were subject to the government of the province in which they lived.
How this happened, it is interesting to inquire. On the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, all their firstborn males were sanctified to the Lord, and destined to the altar. But the difficulty of obtaining from each family its firstborn son, the difficulty of detaching them from their private interests, as citizens of such a tribe or such a town, rendered this mode impracticable. Moses, therefore, without in the least changing the original principle, substituted, for this service, the tribe of Levi, in place of all the firstborn. But why was this tribe chosen? And, of all its members, why did Aaron and his sons obtain the priesthood? Two circumstances dictated the preference of the tribe of Levi--the smallness of its numbers and the zeal which it had displayed in punishing the Israelites for their idolatry in the matter of the golden calf. The talent, eloquence, and eminent public services of Aaron, which had already won the admiration and gratitude of his countrymen, pointed him out as the person most worthy of being raised to the second dignity in the state.
It is remarkable, and deserves attention, as showing the democratic character of this government, that the tribe of Levi, though designated by Jehovah to the service of the temple, received its legal institution from the Hebrew people, as represented in the states-general of Israel. In the first instance, Moses, with the senate and the congregation, consecrated the high priest and his associates, thus evincing, that it belonged to the general diet to choose the chief pontiff from among the priests most distinguished for their ability and merit, and to establish him in his charge.1 Afterwards, the whole assembly of the children of Israel was convoked to induct the Levitical order into their office. The people, by their representatives, laid their hands upon the Levites, and the high priest consecrated them in the name of the children of Israel, as an offering freely made by them to Jehovah their King.2
From the above detail it appears that the designation and institution of the high priest belonged, not to the council of priests, but to the senate, and must receive the confirmation of the people through their deputies. But this will still more clearly appear from some examples in the Israelitish history. Aaron had four sons. Two of them died without issue. Of the other two, Eleazar obtained the high-priesthood.3 But this dignity was not necessarily hereditary in his family, for, under the judges, it passed into the family of his brother. As to the motive for this change, and the manner in which it was made, the Bible is silent. But it informs us distinctly of the circumstances which restored the dignity to the family of Eleazar. Abiathar, having taken part against Solomon, was deposed, and Zadoc elevated to the pontificate in his place. By whom was this done? It was the congregation of Israel that chose, anointed, and established Zadoc in this office.4 Josephus cannot be accused of partiality to democratic ideas, and still less of depreciating the rights of the priests, yet he admits that this dignity was, and of right ought to be, conferred by the people. When the nephew of the high priest Onias publicly reproaches his uncle with his conduct, he tells him that it is strange that, having been elevated by the people to the honor of the high-priesthood, he should have so little concern for the welfare of his country. It was the people who gave the pontificate to Judas Maccabeus. It was the people, again, who conferred the same dignity upon his brother Simon. In short, the great principle of the ancient Hebrews, in which we recognize the germ of the modern idea of the three powers, was that there were three crowns in Israel, viz. the crown of royalty, the crown of the priesthood, and the crown of the law. The first was bestowed upon David and his descendants; the second was given to Aaron and his sons; but the third, which was superior to both the others, was the inheritance of all Israel. The king, the priest, the judge, all the magistracies, were the creatures of the law; and the law was enacted by the people. The constitution, in its parts, was pervaded with the democratic spirit.
I pass now to the inquiry concerning the functions of the sacerdotal scribe. Morgan and other skeptical writers have wished to discover in the Levites a government of priests, intent solely on the enjoyment of sovereign power, and the exorbitant enrichment of their own order. But this idea is without foundation, and against truth, being wholly repugnant to the genius and scope of the institution.
The Levites were not a mere spirituality. Certainly they were ministers of religion, and charged with all the functions appertaining to the public worship of Jehovah. But so close was the relation between the law and the religion of the Hebrews, that all ecclesiastical persons were at the same time political persons. The entire tribe of Levi was set apart to God, the King of this commonwealth. Politically speaking, they were Jehovah's ministers of state. Hence this tribe, as constituted by Moses, was not only a priesthood, appointed to the service of the altar, but also a true temporal magistracy, having important and vital civil relations. The burden of government was, in great measure, laid upon its shoulders. Besides performing the ceremonies of public worship, it was destined to preserve in its integrity, and to interpret in the seat of justice, the text of the fundamental laws, to teach these laws to all Israel, to inspire the people with a love for them, to oppose all its own authority and influence against any and every attempt to overthrow them, and to bind firmly together all the parts of the body politic.
Let the reader transport himself, in imagination, to the age when Moses lived; let him look at the circumstances in which he found himself; let him consider the difficulties to be overcome by him; and this institution will readily become its own interpreter.
In the midst of men ignorant, debased by slavery, and prone to superstition; in the midst of twelve distinct republics, governed by their own assemblies, senates, and magistrates, Moses felt deeply the necessity of some means both of elevating the people and of uniting in close and strong bonds all these different parts of the body politic--some means which would continually recall their regards to the same end and prevent the evils to which federative republics are so liable, where the individual interests of the several members are apt to overpower and bear down the general interest and welfare. To obtain this agency, Moses gave to the tribe of Levi the particular organization under which we find it. He distributed it throughout all the other twelve tribes, and assigned to it certain specific duties. The high priest, as president of the tribe and supreme interpreter of the text of the law, had his permanent residence at the capital of the nation. Thus the center of the particular system of conservatism and union corresponded with the center of the republic itself. From this center, the system spread itself out to the utmost extremities of the nation. Everywhere, its influence was exerted to inspire a love of law and order, to promote peace, to cement the bonds of social and political union, to insure a constantly progressive civilization--in a word, to place continually before the eyes of all their countrymen that law to which their own individual interest and happiness were indissolubly united.
Let us look at another difficulty which met the Jewish lawgiver in the framing of his constitution, and particularly in the organization of this magistracy. The individuals to compose it must be taken from among men, who, instead of watching over the preservation of the text of the law, would quite as likely hasten to change it according to their own caprices, and, instead of teaching it to others, would themselves, perhaps, tear and lacerate its provisions, beyond the possibility of recovery. To parry this danger, and at the same time to establish the institution upon natural guaranties, Moses had recourse to the power of private interest. By making the functions of the Levites hereditary, he was enabled to unite their essential interests to those of the other tribes, by a combination which would, as it were, compel them to fulfil the objects of their charge. He excluded them from all inheritance in the soil of Israel and made them wholly dependent, in their private interests, upon the rest of the people. Thus the Levite would be led to attach himself to the law, on which his own livelihood depended. He would seek the peace and welfare of the state, because they were the necessary conditions of his own. Self-interest would prompt him to respect the law, in order that others might respect it. Self-interest would lead him to publish it, that the precepts which consecrated his own right might not be forgotten. Self-interest, in fine, would cause him to watch over its entire execution, thus making of this tribe a true and powerful instrument of conservatism.
But while the tribe of Levi, as it came from the hand of Moses, constituted a true civil magistracy, it was far from being, as Morgan would have us believe, the tyrant of the state. No, the state had but one master under the constitution of Moses, and that was the law. To this the sons of Levi were as much bound to submit as the other citizens. "Lex major sacerdotio,"--the law is greater than the priesthood--was the principle of the Hebrew polity. How vast, how radical, herein, the difference between the priesthood of Egypt and the priesthood of Israel! The former made the laws themselves, changed them at will, and concealed the books in which they were written from all profane eyes. The latter were simply charged with preserving the laws intact, with keeping them constantly exposed to the eyes of the people, and with teaching them all to all exactly.
If Moses, as is alleged, had really intended to form a government of priests, clothed with absolute powers, would he, being of a sane mind, have pursued the course that he did? Would he have begun by striping the priests of the power conferred by territorial estates? Would he have continued by depriving them of the authority derived from the command of the military forces of the nation? Would he have ended by withholding from them the influence which illusion always enables he knowing to wield over the ignorant? Moses was no stranger to these things. He had seen them all, and he had seen their almost omnipotence in Egypt. These are capital points in the argument, and it is idle to attempt either to deny or evade their force. Moses took away from his priesthood the power derived from property, the power derived from military command, the power derived from illusions. What, then, did he leave it? Nothing but the power of the law, a law which they did not make, which they could not change, and which they were themselves bound to obey. Here, surely, is no basis of tyranny. Here is no foothold for despotism. Here is no germ or aliment of ecclesiastical oppression. The Hebrew priests could become despots and tyrants only by overthrowing the constitution which gave them being, and on which their whole livelihood depended.
One of the most important of the civil functions of the sacerdotal order, under the Hebrew constitution, was that of acting as judges. This required for its performance a large proportion of its members. No less than 6,000 of them, in the time of David, acted as judges and genealogists. "The declaration of Moses on this point," says Michaelis, "is perfectly clear, Deuteronomy 21:5. 'On the mouth of the priest shall every controversy and every stroke depend.' It was, in an especial manner, the business of the priests, in all disputes of a more serious nature, to pronounce the final decision, and lay down the law, much in the same manner as it is of our judicial faculties and tribunals of appeal." The words of Moses in his valedictory ode and benediction to Israel (Deuteronomy 33:9-10)--"He who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him, neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children, and shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law"--must undoubtedly be meant of teaching these laws in the seat of judgment, inasmuch as the expressions employed refer to that impartiality which is so essential an attribute of a good judge.
The Levites were also the literati of all the faculties. They were by birth obliged to devote themselves to the sciences. They formed a sort of literary aristocracy, whose influence was intended to counteract the hasty measures likely to result from the strongly democratic character of the government. They acted as physicians, as teachers, as transcribers of books, as writers of contracts and other law papers, as chroniclers and historians, as astronomers, and as mathematicians employed in the service of the state.
The tribe of Levi, then, comprehended the learned of all names, the sages and professors of law and jurisprudence, of medicine and physiology, of the physical and mathematical sciences--in short, of all the so-called liberal arts and sciences, the possession and application of which constitute the civilization of a country. It was to be the chief instrument of a continuing and progressive mental, moral, and religious culture of the people. Its business was to produce, preserve, and perfect all the necessary sources and conditions of national civilization; to form and train up the people of the country to be obedient, free, useful citizens and patriots, living to the benefit of the state, and prepared to die for its defense.
Such, in a political point of view, were the noble functions, such the strongly conservative character of the sacerdotal order, under the Mosaic constitution. Yet the Hebrew priesthood was far from having obtained a range of powers equal in extent and magnitude to that embodied in the college of Roman pontiffs. Within the jurisdiction of this latter body were included, besides what belonged to religious affairs, adoptions, marriages, funerals, wills, oaths, consecrations, the care of the public annals, the arrangement of the calendar, and, in conference with the jurisconsults, the determination of the rules and forms of judicial procedure.
The revenues of the tribe of Levi next claim our attention.5 These were undoubtedly liberal, but they have been greatly overrated and overstated by men who would neither weigh the advantages they gave in return, nor take the trouble to inform themselves of the real nature, extent, and value of their services to the state. Morgan, in particular, has indulged in the wildest and most extravagant calculations, and, as Michaelis says, has called falsehood to his aid, with a view to exaggerate the amount of the already too great income of his supposed spirituality. What, then, was the provision which the law made for the priests and Levites, as near as we can ascertain it from the history? The tribe of Levi, at the time of the enumeration in the wilderness, contained 22,000 males, or, probably about 12,000 arrived at adult age. The other tribes numbered 600,000 capable of bearing arms. Consequently, the Levites constituted about a fiftieth part of the whole nation. Besides cities to dwell in, this tribe was to receive a tenth of all the produce of the land, both fruit and cattle. From this it would appear that the income of each individual Levite was equal to the average income of five other Israelites. But if we should conclude from hence that this was the actual proportion, we should deceive ourselves.
A variety of circumstances tended to diminish the tithe accorded to Levites. 1. They were themselves obliged to hand over a tenth of it to the priests. 2. The whole land of Israel was not titheable; no woodlands, no timber, paid any tithe at all. 3. Even the cattle which constituted an important, if not indeed the most important part of the Israelitish husbandry, paid only a tithe of the young. When the tenth lamb, calf, kid, &c. were paid as tithe, the remainder of the flock and the herd paid nothing more, in wool, milk, butter, or flesh. Hence it is plain that the whole country of the Hebrews by no means paid a tenth of its produce to the Levites. The greater part of the soil, indeed, as all the woodlands and pasture grounds, either paid nothing at all, or so slight a percentage as to be really of little account. 4. The rendition of the tithes was left entirely to the conscience and the loyalty of each individual Israelite. No compulsory process could be instituted to compel a payment of them, neither did the priests or the magistrates have any superintendence or oversight of the matter. It will readily be imagined that the law must have been often but partially complied with, and sometimes wholly eluded. That this was actually the case appears from a command issued by king Hezekiah,6 and from the censures addressed by the prophets to the Hebrew people.7 5. If one or more of the tribes abandoned themselves to idolatry, the Levites lost the revenues accruing to them from such tribes. This undoubtedly often happened. The condition of the Levites could not have been one of much prosperity or abundance at the time of the idolatry of Micah, when one of them, belonging to the tribe of Judah, was obliged to go about the country, seeking for some employment, and was glad to find it, even in the service of an idolatrous Israelite, on condition of receiving his food, one suit of clothes, and ten shekels of silver (about five dollars) by the year. A memorable example of the loss of revenue to the sacerdotal tribe from religious apostasy, we have in the history of the reign of Jeroboam, when the Levites, driven out from their habitations to make room for idolatrous priests, took refuge in Judah and Jerusalem.8 6. Another considerable subtraction must be made from the income of the Levites, if an opinion of Joseph Scaliger and Salvador is well founded. I am not, indeed, convinced that their idea is correct; neither am I convinced that it is erroneous. I shall therefore state the opinion, which they have advanced, and leave the reader to examine and judge for himself. It is well known, that, besides the tithe for the support of the Levites, the Israelites were required to pay a second tithe, which, however, was not properly of the nature of a tax, since it was to be consumed by the people themselves, at the offering-feasts and other entertainments, in the place which the Lord should choose, to put his name there. To these, besides other friends, they were admonished to invite Levites, widows, orphans, strangers, poor people, and their own servants, thus giving them an occasional season of festivity. There is also, apparently, mention made of a third tithe for every third year, to be expended in similar festive entertainments at home.9 Three opinions have obtained respecting this last mentioned tithe. One is that it was really an additional tithe, distinct from the other two. For this notion, however, there does not appear to be any sufficient foundation. The second opinion, which, as it is the more common, seems, I confess, to be the more probable, is that what seem to be two tithes were in reality one and the same, and the law in Deuteronomy 14:28-29 is merely a direction, requiring that so much of the second tithe as should not have been consumed in offering-feasts at the place of the altar, should, during the third year, be expended in similar entertainments at home. The third opinion is that of Scaliger and Salvador, referred to above. It is that every third year the tithe of the Levites did not belong to them exclusively, but was to be shared by them with three other classes of persons, viz. widows, orphans, and strangers. Upon the whole, it is manifest that the income of a Levite must have fallen very far below that of five common Israelites.
But it may be suggested that very important elements have been omitted in making the above estimate. I reply that so far as the Levites proper are concerned, nothing has been excluded. The priests enjoyed other revenues, to which I am now going to turn my attention. In the first place, they had a tenth of the tithe of the Levites. Then there were the first fruits of the earth, the firstlings of cattle, the redemption money for the firstborn of men, portions of every sacrifice of which the blood came not into the holy of holies, all things devoted, all matters of vow, the skins of the burnt offerings, and some other minor sources of income.10 I do not mention the half-shekel poll tax, ordered at the numbering of the Israelites in the wilderness, because I am convinced that was paid but once prior to the captivity, and that the Jews under the second temple, in making it an annual tribute, went beyond the requisition of the law of Moses.
The items of income, enumerated above, undoubtedly formed a very considerable sum total, which came into the hands of the priests. The question is, did it all belong to them as their private property, which they were at liberty to expend in whatever way they pleased? The thing is impossible, and those who think so, err egregiously. They confound two things, which are distinct in themselves and ought to be carefully distinguished--the minister and the ministry; and they imagine analogies between the Hebrews and other nations, which have no existence except in their own fancy. The tabernacle first, and the temple afterwards, were not, like our churches, wholly religious in their design and use. On the contrary, they had a character and a purpose eminently political. Public worship was certainly performed there. But there also the states-general held their sessions, and there the national treasure was kept. The Israelite who consecrated anything to Jehovah must not be supposed to have devoted it to the priest in person, but simply to have made use of his ministry to convey it into the sacred treasury, which was no other than the national treasury. Not to the priests themselves, therefore, but to Jehovah belonged whatever came into their hands. A liberal sum was, doubtless, allowed for the support of their families, but, after this had been taken out, the rest became a part of the public treasure.
This is what I had to say on the constitution, the functions, and the revenues of the sacerdotal tribe among the Hebrews. Three considerations the Levites rendered to the rest of the Israelites for whatever they received from them: 1. The tribe of Levi gave up to the other tribes their whole share of the promised land, except so much as was sufficient to afford them a place of habitation. 2. They parted with the right of an independent government, such as the other tribes enjoyed, and completely sunk their political existence. 3. They gave up themselves to the national service, as ministers of religion, ministers of state, magistrates, teachers of the people, and literati of all the faculties, as explained in a former part of this chapter--services the most laborious, responsible, and useful to the commonwealth. For all this, they received a simple annuity, liberal it may be, but depending solely upon the national faith for its payment, while they divested themselves of all power of re-entry in case of non-payment. Let the benefits surrendered and the services performed be weighed in just balances, and the rent-roll of the tribe of Levi will appear rather below than above the demands of reason and justice.
NOTES:
1 Leviticus 8:2-5. 2 Numbers 8:5-22. 3 Numbers 20:26. 4 1 Chronicles 29:22. 5 I make a general reference here to the passages which relate to this subject, viz. Numbers 18; Leviticus 2, 7, 27:30-33; Exodus 23:19; Deuteronomy 26:2-10; Exodus 13:13, 30:11 seqq.; Leviticus 23:19,20; Deuteronomy 18:4; Exodus 4:20. 6 2 Chronicles 31:4. 7 Jeremiah 8:10, Malachi 3:8. 8 2 Chronicles 11:13-14. 9 Deuteronomy 14:28-29, 26:12. 10 Numbers 28:5-32, Leviticus passim.
