Ezekiel 44:9-16

9-16. It is not necessary to suppose, with Wellhausen, that these alien religionists (Ezekiel 44:7-8) had ever been the assistants of the higher order of priests in the inner court. It is far more probable that they had been assistants of the Levites. It is by no means proved that all the Levites up to this time had been accustomed to perform the highest duties of the priesthood, and that the whole tribe was now degraded by Ezekiel to the position which these foreigners had formerly occupied. This is an unproved hypothesis and is opposed to the explicit statements of Scripture. The Levites, as a whole, were themselves the assistants of the higher priestly order (Numbers 8:19; Numbers 18:6), and had charge of the vessels, etc., connected with the temple in general, while Aaron and his sons had exclusive charge of the altar sacrifices and vessels of the sanctuary, or inner temple (Numbers 18:2-6; Numbers 18:23). Ezekiel does call the Levites priests, but this by no means proves that up to this time all priests ( kohanem) had exercised the same functions. As we have shown in the Introduction, “Ezekiel and the Levitical Law,” the surrounding nations in their temple ritual recognized several orders of the priesthood, each having different functions, and this same distinction between the kohanem who were priests in the higher sense and “keepers of the altar” and the kohanem who were priestly Levites and assistants and “keepers of the house,” is made not only in many places in other books, such as 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Deuteronomy (Ezekiel 18:1-6), but even in Ezekiel itself (Ezekiel 40:45-46). Such Levites as had, previous to this exercised the higher priestly functions either by right or by sufferance seem from Ezekiel’s words to have been leaders in the great apostasy toward idol worship, of which the prophetic and historical books are full, being willing to minister in “high places” and on heathen altars, which Ezekiel himself declares had even been brought into the temple of Jehovah. (See chap. 8; Ezekiel 20:27-30, etc.; compare Judges 17:12; 2 Kings 23:8-9.) For this reason they are from this time to be degraded from this higher office, which is henceforth to be filled only by one branch of the Aaronic family, the Zadokites, which had proved most faithful (1 Kings 2:27; 1 Kings 2:35). The term kohen (priest), which probably had been taking on gradually a more narrow technical meaning as in the history of other rituals now becomes exclusively reserved for the higher order of clergy. (See Introduction.)