How then came it to pass that afterwards, as one must conclude from the statements in Chronicles, the Levites stood to the priests in a proportion so much more nearly, if even then not quite fully corresponding to the law?  Simply by the “Levitising” of alien families.  At first in the community of the second temple the Levites continued to be distinguished from the singers, porters, and Nethinim (Ezra ii. 41-58), guilds which from the outset were much more numerous and which rapidly grew (Nehemiah xi. 17, 19, 36, xii. 28 seq.; 1Chronicles ix. 16, 22, 25).  But the distinction had in fact no longer any actual basis, once the Levites had been degraded to the rank of temple-servitors and become Nethinim to the priests (Numbers iii. 9).  Hence, where the Chronicler, who is at the same time the author of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, is not reproducing old sources but is writing freely, he regards the singers also and the porters as Levites.  By artificial genealogies of rather a rough and ready kind the three families of singers, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan are traced up (1Chronicles v1.. 1 seq.) to the old Levitical families of Kohath, Gershon, and Merari (see Graf, as above, p. 231; and Ewald, iii. p. 380 seq.).  How far the distinction between the Nethinim and the Levites was afterwards maintained (Josh. ix. 21 seq., I Esdras i. 3; Ezra viii. 20) is not clear.  It would not be amiss if Ezekiel’s intention of banishing foreigners from the temple found its fulfilment only through these heathen hieroduli, the Mehunim, the Nephisim, the sons of Shalmai, and the others whose foreign-sounding names are given in Ezra ii. 43 seq., obtaining admission into the tribe of Levi by artificial genealogies.  A peculiar side light is thrown upon the course of development by the fact that the singers who in Ezra’s time were not yet even Levites, afterwards felt shame in being so, and desired at least externally to be placed on all equality with priests.  They begged of King Agrippa II. to obtain for them the permission of the synedrium to wear the white priestly dress. ***********************************************

The copestone of the sacred structure reared by the legislation of the middle books of the Pentateuch is the high priest.  As the Aaronites are above the Levites so is Aaron himself above his sons; in his person culminates thc development of the unity of worship inaugurated by Deuteronomy and the agency of Josiah.  No figure of such incomparable importance occurs anywhere else in the Old Testament; a high priest of pre-eminent sanctity is still unknown to Ezekiel even.  Even before the exile, it is true, the temple worship at Jerusalem had become so magnificent and its personnel so numerous as to render necessary an orderly division of offices and a gradation of ranks.  In Jeremiah’s time the priests constituted a guild divided into classes or families with elders at their head; the principal priest had a potent voice in the appointment of his inferior colleagues (1Samuel ii. 36); alongside of him stood the second priest, the keepers of the threshold, the captain of the watch as holders of prominent charges. 1 But in the Law the position of Aaron is not merely