In a passage of Deuteronomic complexion, which cannot have been written long before the exile, we read in a prediction made to Eli regarding the overthrow of his house by Zadok:  “I said indeed, saith Jehovah the God of Israel, that thy house and the house of thy father shall walk before me for ever; but now I say, Be it far from me, for them that honour me I will honour, but they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.  Behold, the days come that I will cut off thine arm and the arm of thy father’s house, ...and I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind; and I will build him a sure house, and he shall walk before mine anointed for ever” (1Samuel ii. 27-36).  Here it is the house of Eli, and of Eli’s father, that is the priestly family duly chosen in Egypt; contrary to hereditary title, and contrary to a promise of perpetual continuance, is it deposed at the higher claims of justice.  The faithful priest who is to fill the vacant place is Zadok.  This is expressly said in 1Kings 2:27; and no other than he ever had a “sure house” and walked uninterruptedly as its head and ruler before the kings of Judah.  This Zadok, accordingly, belongs neither to Eli’s house nor to that of Eli’s father; his priesthood does not go back as far as the time of the founding of the theocracy, and is not in any proper sense “legitimate;” rather has he obtained it by the infringement of what might be called a constitutional privilege, to which there were no other heirs besides Eli and his family.  Obviously he does not figure as an intermediate link in the line of Aaron, but as the beginner of an entirely new genealogy; the Jerusalem priests, whose ancestor he is, are interlopers dating from the beginning of the monarchical period, in whom the old Mosaic sacerdotium is not continued, but is broken off.  If then they are called in the Priestly Code “sons of Aaron,” or at least figure there among the sons of Aaron, with whom they can only in point of fact be contrasted, the circumstance is an unmistakable indication that at this point the threads of tradition from the pre-exilic period have been snapped completely, which was not yet the case in Ezekiel’s time. 1

******************************************** 1.  To satisfy the Pentateuch it is shown in the Book of Chronicles, by means of artificial genalogies, how the sons of Zadok derived their origin in an unbroken line from Aaron and Eleazar.  Compare my Pharisaer u.  Sadducaer, p. 48 seq.  This point was first observed by Vatke (p. 344 seq.), then by Kuenen (Theol.  Tijdschr., iii. p. 463-509) and lastly by me (Text der BB.  Sam., p. 48-51). ********************************************

The relation between the priestly legislation and the Book of Ezekiel, which has now been shown, gives direction and aim to the following sketch, in which it is sought to exhibit the individual phenomenon in its general connection.