The Chronicler gave a corresponding number of high priests to the twice twelve generations of forty years each which were usually assumed to have elapsed between the exodus and the building of Solomon’s temple, and again between that and the close of the captivity; the official terms of office of these high priests, of whom history knows nothing, have taken the place of the reigns of judges and kings, according to which reckoning was previously made (1Chronicles v. 29, seq.).  One sees clearly from Sirach l., and from more than one statement of Josephus (e.g., Ant., xviii. 4, 3, xx. 1, 11), how in the decorations of Aaron (where, however, the Urim and Thummim were wanting; Nehemiah vii. 65) people reverenced a transcendent majesty which had been left to the people of God as in some sense a compensation for the earthly dignity which had been lost.  Under the rule of the Greeks the high priest became ethnarch and president of the synedrium; only through the pontificate was it possible for the Hasmonaeans to attain to power, but when they conjoined it with full-blown secular sovereignty, they created a dilemma to the consequences of which they succumbed.

CHAPTER V. THE ENDOWMENT OF THE CLERGY.

The power and independence of the clergy run parallel with its material endowment, which accordingly passes through the same course of development.  Its successive steps are reflected even in the language that is employed, in the gradual loss of point sustained by the phrase “to fill the hand,” at all times used to denote ordination.  Originally it cannot have had any other meaning than that of filling the hand with money or its equivalent; we have seen that at one time the priest was appointed by the owner of a sanctuary for a salary, and that, without being thus dependent upon a particular employer, he could not then live on the income derived from those who might employ him sacrificially.  But when the Levitical hereditary priesthood arose in the later kingdom of Judah the hands of the priests were no longer filled by another who had the right to appoint and to dismiss, but they themselves at God’s command “filled their own hand,” or rather they had done so in the days of Moses once for all, as is said in Exodus xxxii. 26-29, an insertion corresponding with the position of Deuteronomy.  It is obvious that such a statement, when carefully looked at, is absurd, but is to be explained by the desire to protest against outside interference.  Even here the etymological sense is still sufficiently felt to create an involuntary jar and leads to a change of the construction; but finally all sense of it is lost, and the expression becomes quite colourless:  “to fill the hand " means simply “to consecrate.”  In Ezekiel not only the priest but also the altar has its “hand filled” (xliii. 26); in the Priestly Code the abstract milluim ["consecrations”] is chiefly used, with subject and object left out,