_THE INHERITANCE OF THE LEVITES._
JOSHUA xxi. 1-42.
Once and again we have found reference made to the fact that Levites
received no territorial inheritance among their brethren (xiii. 14,
33, xiv. 3, 4). They had a higher privilege: the Lord was their
inheritance. In the present chapter we have an elaborate account of
the arrangements for their settlement; it will therefore be suitable
here to rehearse their history, and ascertain the relation they now
stood in to the rest of the tribes.
In the days of the patriarchs and during the sojourn in Egypt there
were no official priests. Each head of a house discharged the duties
of the priesthood in patriarchal times, and a similar arrangement
prevailed during the residence in Egypt. The whole nation was holy; in
this sense it was a nation of priests; all were set apart for the
service of God. By-and-by it pleased God to select a portion of the
nation specially for His service, to establish, as it were, a holy of
holies within the consecrated nation. The first intimation of this was
given on that awful occasion when the firstborn of the Egyptians was
slain. In token of His mercy in sparing Israel on that night, all the
firstborn of Israel, both of man and beast, were specially consecrated
to the Lord. The animals were to be offered in sacrifice, except in
the case of some, such as the ass, not suited for sacrifice; these
were to be redeemed by the sacrifice of another animal. Afterwards a
similar arrangement was made with reference to the firstborn of men,
the tribe of Levi being substituted for them (see Numb. iii. 12). But
this arrangement was not made till after the tribe of Levi had shown,
by a special act of service, that they were fitted for this honour.
Certainly we should not have thought beforehand that the descendants
of Levi would be the specially sacred tribe. Levi himself comes before
us in the patriarchal history in no attractive light. He and Simeon
were associated together in that massacre of the Shechemites, which we
can never read of without horror (Gen. xxxiv. 25). Levi was likewise
an accomplice with his brethren in the lamentable tragedy of Joseph.
And as nothing better is recorded of him, we are apt to think of him
as through life the same. But this were hardly fair. Why should not
Levi have shared in that softening influence which undoubtedly came on
the other brethren? Why may he not have become a true man of God, and
transmitted to his tribe the memory and the example of a holy
character? Certain it is that we find among his descendants in Egypt
some very noble specimens of godliness. The mother of Moses, a
daughter of the house of Levi, is a woman of incomparable faith.
Moses, her son, is emphatically "the man of God." Aaron, his brother,
moved by a Divine influence, goes to the wilderness to find him when
the very crisis of oppression seems to indicate that God's time for
the deliverance of Israel is drawing nigh. Miriam, his sister, though
far from faultless, piously watched his bulrush-cradle, and
afterwards led the choir whose praises rose to God in a great volume
of thanksgiving after crossing the sea.
The first honour conferred on Levi in connection with religious
service was the appointment of Aaron and his sons to the special
service of the priesthood (Exod. xxviii.; Numb. xviii. 1). This did
not necessarily involve any spiritual distinction for the whole tribe
of which Aaron was a member, nor was that distinction conferred at
that time. It was after the affair of the golden calf that the tribe
of Levi received this honour. For when Moses, in his holy zeal against
that scandal, called upon all who were on the Lord's side to come to
him, "all the sons of Levi gathered themselves unto him" (Exod. xxxii.
26). This seems to imply that that tribe alone held itself aloof from
the atrocious idolatry into which even Aaron had been drawn. And
apparently it was in connection with this high act of service that
Levi was selected as the sacred tribe, and in due time formally
substituted for the firstborn in every family (Numb. iii. 12, _sqq._,
viii. 6 _sqq._, xviii. 2 _sqq._). From this time the tribe of Levi
stood to God in a relation of peculiar honour and sacredness, and had
duties assigned to them in harmony with this eminent position.
The tribe of Levi consisted of three main branches, corresponding to
Levi's three sons--Kohath, Gershon, and Merari. The Kohathites, though
apparently not the oldest (see Numb. iii. 17) were the most
distinguished, Moses and Aaron being of that branch. As Levites, the
Kohathites had charge of the ark and its sacred furniture, guarding it
at all times, and carrying it from place to place during the journeys
of the wilderness. The Gershonites had charge of the tabernacle, with
its cords, curtains, and coverings. The sons of Merari had charge of
the more solid parts of the tabernacle, "its boards and bars, its
pillars and its pins, and all the vessels thereof." Korah, the leader
of the rebellion against Moses and Aaron, was, like them, of the
family of Kohath, and the object of his rebellion was to punish what
he considered the presumption of the two brothers in giving to Aaron
the special honours of a priesthood which, in former days, had
belonged alike to all the congregation (Numb. xvi. 3). We are
accustomed to think that the supernatural proofs of the Divine
commission to Moses were so overwhelming that it would have been out
of the question for any man to challenge them. But many things show
that, though we might have thought opposition to Moses impossible, it
prevailed to a great extent. The making of the golden calf, the report
of the spies and the commotion that followed, the rebellion of Korah,
and many other things, prove that the prevalent spirit was usually
that of unbelief and rebellion, and that it was only after many signal
miracles and signal judgments that Moses was enabled at last to
exercise an unchallenged authority. The rationalist idea, that it was
enthusiasm for Moses that led the people to follow him out of Egypt,
and endure all the hardships of the wilderness, and that there is
nothing more in the Exodus than the story of an Eastern nation leaving
one country under a trusted leader to settle in another, is one to
which the whole tenor of the history offers unqualified contradiction.
And not the least valid ground of opposition is the bitter, deadly
spirit in which attempts to frustrate Moses were so often made.
Many of the duties of the Levites as detailed in the Pentateuch were
duties for the wilderness. After the settlement in Canaan, and the
establishment of the tabernacle at Shiloh, these duties would undergo
a change. The Levites were not all needed to be about the tabernacle.
The Gibeonites indeed had been retained as "hewers of wood and drawers
of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord," so that
the more laborious part of the work at Shiloh would be done by them.
If the Levites had clustered like a swarm of bees around the sacred
establishment, loss would have been sustained alike by themselves and
by the people. It was desirable, in accordance with the great law of
distribution already referred to, that they should be dispersed over
the whole country. The men that stood nearest to God, and who were a
standing testimony to the superiority of the spiritual over the
secular, who were Divine witnesses, indeed, to the higher part of
man's nature, as well as to God's pre-eminent claims, must have failed
egregiously of their mission had they been confined to a single city
or to the territory of a single tribe. Jacob had foretold both of
Simeon and Levi that they would be "divided in Jacob and scattered in
Israel." In the case of Levi, the scattering was overruled for good.
Designed to point God-wards and heavenwards, the mission of Levi was
to remind the people over the whole country that they were not mere
earth-worms, created to grub and burrow in the ground, but beings with
a nobler destiny, whose highest honour it was to be in communion with
God.
The functions of the Levites throughout the country seem to have
differed somewhat in successive periods of their history. Here, as in
other matters, there was doubtless some development, according as new
wants appeared in the spiritual condition of the people, and
consequently new obligations for the Levites to fulfil. When the
people fell under special temptations to idolatry, it would naturally
fall to the Levites, in connection with the priesthood, to warn them
against these temptations, and strive to keep them faithful to their
God. But it does not appear that even the Levites could be trusted to
continue faithful. It is a sad and singular fact that a grandson of
Moses was one of the first to go astray. The Authorized Version,
indeed, says that the young man who became a priest to the Danites
when they set up a graven image in the city of Dan, was Jonathan, the
son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh (Judg. xviii. 30). But the Revised
Version, not without authority, calls him Jonathan, the son of
Gershom, the son of Moses. Here we have a glimpse of two remarkable
facts: in the first place, that a grandson of Moses, a Levite, was
located in so confined a place that he had to leave it in search of
another, "to sojourn where he could find a place"--so entirely had
Moses abstained from steps to secure superior provision for his own
family; and, in the second place, that even with his remarkable
advantages and relations, this Jonathan, in defiance of the law, was
tempted to assume an office of priesthood, and to discharge that
office at the shrine of a graven image. We are far indeed from the
truth when we suppose that the whole nation of Israel submitted to the
law of Moses from the beginning with absolute loyalty, or when we
accept the prevalent practice among them at any one period as
undoubted evidence of what was then the law.
But let us now turn our attention to the distribution of the Levites
as it was planned. We say deliberately "as it was planned," because
there is every reason to believe that the plan was not effectually
carried out. In no case does there seem to have been such a failure
of official arrangements as in the case of Levi. And the reason is not
difficult to find. Few of the cities allotted to them were free of
Canaanites at the time. To get actual possession of the cities they
must have dispossessed the remaining Canaanites. But, scattered as
they were, this was peculiarly difficult. And the other tribes seem to
have been in no humour to help them. Hence it is that in the early
period of the Judges we find Levites wandering here and there seeking
for a settlement, and glad of any occupation they could find (Judg.
xviii. 7, xix. 1).
The provision made by Joshua for the Levites was that out of all the
other tribes, forty-eight cities with their suburbs, including the six
cities of refuge, were allotted to them. It is necessary for us here
to call to mind how much Canaan, like other Eastern countries and some
countries not Eastern, was a land of towns and villages. Cottages and
country-houses standing by themselves were hardly known. A house in
its own grounds--"a lodge in a garden of cucumbers"--might shelter a
man for a time, but could not be his permanent home. The country was
too liable to hostile raids for its inhabitants to dwell thus
unprotected. Most of the people had their homes in the towns and
villages with which their fields were connected. In consequence of
this each town had a circuit of land around it, which always fell to
the conquerors when the town was taken. And it is this fact that
sometimes makes the boundaries of the tribes so difficult to follow,
because these boundaries had to embrace all the lands connected with
the cities which they embraced. If it be asked, Did the Levites
receive as part of their inheritance all the lands adjacent to their
cities, the answer is, No. For in that case the only difference
between them and the other tribes would have been that the Levites had
forty-eight little territories instead of one large possession, and
there would have been no ground for the distinction so emphatically
made that "the Lord was their inheritance," or "the sacrifices of the
Lord made by fire."
The cities given to the Levites, even when cleared of Canaanites, were
not possessed by Levites alone. We may gather the normal state of
affairs from what is said regarding Hebron and Caleb. Hebron was a
Levitical city, a city of the priests, a city of refuge; they gave to
the Kohathites the city, with the suburbs thereof roundabout; "but the
fields of the city, and the villages thereof, gave they to Caleb the
son of Jephunneh for his possession" (vv. 11, 12). What are called
"suburbs," or, as some prefer to render, "cattle-drives," extended for
two thousand cubits round about the city on every side (Numb. xxxv.
5), and were used only for pasture. It behoved the Levites to have
cattle of some kind to supply them with their food, the main part of
which, besides fruit, was milk and its produce. But, beyond this, the
Levites were not entangled with the business of husbandry. They were
left free for more spiritual service. It was their part to raise the
souls of the people above the level of earth, and, like the angel in
the "Pilgrim's Progress," call on those who might otherwise have
worshipped the mud-rake to lift up their eyes to the crown of glory,
and accept the heavenly gift.
In fact, the whole function of the Levites, ideally at least, was as
Moses sung:--
"And of Levi he said,
Let thy Urim and thy Thummim be with thy godly one,
Whom thou didst prove at Massah,
With whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah;
Who said of his father, and of his mother, I have not seen him;
Neither did he acknowledge his brethren,
Nor knew his own children:
For they have observed Thy word,
And kept Thy covenant.
_They shall teach Jacob Thy judgments,
And Israel Thy law_:
They shall put incense before Thee,
And whole burnt offering upon Thine altar.
Bless, Lord, his substance,
And accept the work of his hands:
Smite through the loins of them that rise up against him,
And of them that hate him, that they rise not again."
Deut. xxxiii. 8-11 (R.V.).
But to come now to the division itself. The Kohathites, or leading
family, had no fewer than thirteen cities in the tribes of Judah,
Benjamin, and Simeon, and ten more in Ephraim, Dan, and Manasseh. The
thirteen in Judah, Benjamin, and Simeon were for the priests; the
other ten were for the other branches of the Kohathites. At first the
priests, strictly so called, could not occupy them all. But, as the
history advances, the priests become more and more prominent, while
the Levites as such seem to hold a less and less conspicuous place. In
the Psalms, for example, we sometimes find the house of Levi left out
when all classes of worshippers are called on to praise the Lord. In
the 135th Psalm all are included:--
"O house of Israel, bless ye the Lord:
O house of Aaron, bless ye the Lord:
O house of Levi, bless ye the Lord:
Ye that fear the Lord, bless ye the Lord."
But in the 115th the Levites are left out:--
"O Israel, trust thou in the Lord:
He is their help and their shield.
O house of Aaron, trust ye in the Lord:
He is their help and their shield.
Ye that fear the Lord, trust in the Lord:
He is their help and their shield."
And in the 118th:--
"Let Israel now say
That His mercy endureth for ever.
Let the house of Aaron now say
That His mercy endureth for ever.
Let them now that fear the Lord say
That His mercy endureth for ever."
There is this to be said for the region where the priests, the house
of Aaron, had their cities, viz., the tribe of Judah, that it
maintained its integrity longest of any; nor did it thoroughly succumb
to idolatry till the dark days of Manasseh, one of its later kings.
But, on the other hand, in New Testament times, Judæa was the most
bigoted part of the country, and the most bitterly opposed to our
Lord. And the explanation is, that the true spirit of Divine service
had utterly evaporated from among the priesthood, and the miserable
spirit of formalism had come in. The living sap of the institution had
been turned into stone, and the plant of renown of early days had
become a stony fossil. So true is it that the best institutions, when
perverted from their true end, become the sources of greatest evil,
and the highest gifts of heaven, when seized by the devil and turned
to his purposes, become the most efficient instruments of hell.
The other portions of the family of Kohath were distributed in ten
cities over the central part of Western Palestine. Some of them were
important centres of influence, such as Bethhoron, Shechem, and
Taanach. But the influence of the Levites for good seems to have been
feeble in this region, for it was here that Jeroboam reigned, and here
that Ahab and Jezebel all but obliterated the worship of Jehovah. It
is commonly believed that Samuel was a member of the tribe of Levi,
although there is some confusion in the genealogy as given in 1 Chron.
vi. 28, 34; yet Ramathaim Zophim, his father's place of abode, was not
one of the Levitical cities. And Samuel's influence was exerted more
on the southern than the central district; for, after the destruction
of Shiloh, Mizpeh appears to have been his ordinary residence (1 Sam.
vii. 6), and afterwards Ramah[28] (vii. 17). It would indeed be a
pleasant thought that the inefficiency of the Kohathites as a whole
was in some measure redeemed by the incomparable service of Samuel. If
Samuel was a Levite, he was a noble instance of what may be done by
one zealous and consecrated man, amid the all but universal defection
of his official brethren.
[28] Ramathaim and Ramah are used interchangeably (1 Sam. i. 1 and
19, ii. 11).
The Gershonites were placed in cities in eastern Manasseh, Issachar,
Asher, and Naphtali; while the Merarites were in Zebulun, and in the
transjordanic tribes of Gad and Reuben. They thus garrisoned the
northern and eastern districts. Those placed in the north ought to
have been barriers against the gross idolatry of Tyre and Sidon, and
those in the east, besides resisting the idolatry of the desert
tribes, should have held back that of Damascus and Syria. But there is
very little to show that the Levites as a whole rose to the dignity of
their mission in these regions, or that they formed a very efficient
barrier against the idolatry and corruption which they were designed
to meet. No doubt they did much to train the people to the outward
observance of the law. They would call them to the celebration of the
great annual festivals, and of the new moons and other observances
that had to be locally celebrated. They would look after cases of
ceremonial defilement, and no doubt they would be careful to enjoin
payment of the tithes to which they had a claim. They would do their
best to maintain the external distinctions in religion, by which the
nation was separated from its neighbours. But, except in rare cases,
they do not appear to have been spiritually earnest, nor to have done
much of that service which Samuel did in the southern part of the
country. Externalism and formalism seem to have been their most
frequent characteristics; and externalism and formalism are poor
weapons when the enemy cometh in like a food.
And, whatever may have been the usual life and work of the Levites
over the country, they never seem to have realized the glory of the
distinction divinely accorded to them--"The Lord is their
inheritance." Few, indeed, in any age or country have come to know
what is meant by having God for their portion. Unbelief can never
grasp that there is a life in God--a real life, so full of enjoyment
that all other happiness may be dispensed with; a real property, so
rich in every blessing, that the goods and chattels of this world are
mere shadows in comparison. Yet that there have been men profoundly
impressed by these convictions, in all ages and in many lands, amid
prevailing ungodliness, cannot be denied. How otherwise is such a life
as that of St. Bernard or that of St. Francis to be accounted for? Or
that of St. Columba and the missionaries of Iona? Or, to go farther
back, that of St. Paul? There is a magic virtue, or rather a Divine
power, in real consecration. "Them that honour Me, I will honour." It
is the want of such men that makes our churches feeble. It is our
mixing up our own interests with the interests of God's kingdom and
refusing to leave self out of view while we profess to give ourselves
wholly to God, that explains the slowness of our progress. If the
Levites had all been consecrated men, idolatry and its great brood of
corruptions would never have spread over the land of Israel. If all
Christian ministers were like their Master, Christianity would spread
like wildfire, and in a very little time the light of salvation would
brighten the globe.
NOTE.--In this chapter we have accepted the statements of the
Pentateuch regarding the Levites as they stand. We readily own
that there are difficulties not a few connected with the received
view. The modern critical theory that maintains that the
Levitical order was a much later institution would no doubt
remove many of these difficulties, but only by creating other
difficulties far more serious. Besides, the hypothesis of
Wellhausen that the tribe of Levi was destroyed with Simeon at
the invasion of Canaan--having no foundation to rest on, except
the assumption that the prophecy ascribed to Jacob was written at
a later date--is ludicrously inadequate to sustain the structure
made to rest on it. Nor is it conceivable that, after the
captivity, the priests should have been able to make the people
believe a totally different account of the history of one of the
tribes from that which had previously been received. It is
likewise incredible that the Levites should have been
"annihilated" or "extinguished" in the days of Joshua, without a
single allusion in the history to so terrible a fact. How
inconsistent with the concern expressed when the tribe of
Benjamin was in danger of extinction (Judg. xxi. 17). The loss of
a tribe was like the loss of a limb; it would have marred
essentially the symmetry of the nation.