his sons alone are priests, qualified for sacrificing and burning incense; the Levites are hieroduli (3 Esdras i. 3), bestowed upon the Aaronidae for the discharge of the inferior services (Numbers iii. 9).  They are indeed their tribe fellows, but it is not because he belongs to Levi that Aaron is chosen, and his priesthood cannot be said to be the acme and flower of the general vocation of his tribe.  On the contrary, rather was he a priest long before the Levites were set apart; for a considerable time after the cultus has been established and set on foot these do not make any appearance,—­not at all in the whole of the third book, which thus far does little honour to its name Leviticus.  Strictly speaking, the Levites do not even belong to the clergy:  they are not called by Jehovah, but consecrated by the children of Israel to the sanctuary,—­consecrated in the place of the first-born, not however as priests (neither in Numbers iii., iv., viii., nor anywhere else in the Old Testament, is there a single trace of the priesthood of the first-born), but as a gift due to the priests, as such being even required to undergo the usual “waving” before the altar, to symbolise their being cast into the altar flame (Numbers viii.).  The relationship between Aaron and Levi, and the circumstance that precisely this tribe is set apart for the sanctuary in compensation for the first-born, appears almost accidental, but at all events cannot be explained by the theory that Aaron rose on the shoulders of Levi; on the contrary, it rather means that Levi has mounted up by means of Aaron, whose priesthood everywhere is treated as having the priority.  Equality between the two is not to be spoken of; their office and their blood relationship separates them more than it binds them together.

Now, the prophet Ezekiel, in the plan of the new Jerusalem which he sketched in the year 573, takes up among other things the reform of the relations of the personnel of the temple, and in this connection expresses himself as follows (xliv. 6-16):—­ “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Let it suffice you of all your abominations, O house of Israel! in that ye have brought in strangers, uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, to be in my sanctuary, to pollute it, even my house, when ye offer my bread, the fat and the blood, and have broken my covenant by all your abominations.  And ye have not kept the charge of my holy things, inasmuch as ye have set these 1 to be keepers of my

******************************************* In ver. 7 for WYPRW read WTPRW, in ver. 8 for WT#YMWN read WT#YMWM, and for LKM read LKN, in each case following the LXX. ******************************************