The history of the rise of the priesthood in Israel is exceedingly obscure. In the nomadic period and during the earlier years of the settlement of Israel in Canaan the head of every family could offer sacrifices. In the primitive codes, Ex. xx. 22-xxiii. 19 (E), xxxiv. 10-28 (J), we have Priesthood. no allusion to any separate order of men who were qualified to offer sacrifices. In Ex. xxiv. 5 (E) we read that Moses simply commissioned young men to offer sacrifices. On the other hand the addendum to the book of Judges, chaps. xvii., xviii. (which Budde, Moore and other critics consider to belong to the two sources of the narratives in Judges, viz. J[1] as well as E), makes reference to a Levite of Bethlehem-Judah, expressly stated in xvii. 7 as belonging to a clan of Judah. This man Micah took into his household as priest. This narrative has all the marks of primitive simplicity. There can be no reasonable doubt that the Levite here was member of a priestly tribe or order, and this view is confirmed by the discovery of what is really the same word in south Arabian inscriptions.[2] The narrative is of some value as it shows that while it was possible to appoint any one as a priest, since Micah, like David, appointed one of his own sons (xvii. 5), yet a special priest-tribe or order also existed, and Micah considered that the acquisition of one of its members was for his household a very exceptional advantage: “Now I know that Yahweh will befriend me because I have the Levite as priest.”[3] In other words a priest who was a Levite possessed a superior professional qualification. He is paid ten shekels per annum, together with his food and clothing, and is dignified by the appellation “father” (cf. the like epithet of “mother” applied to the prophetess Deborah, Judges v. 7; see also 2 Kings ii. 12, vi. 21, xiii. 14). This same narrative dwells upon the graven images, ephod and terāphīm, as forming the apparatus of religious ceremonial in Micah’s household. Now the ephod and teraphim are constantly mentioned together (cf. Hos. iii. 4) and were used in divination. The former was the plated image of Yahweh (cf. Judges viii. 26, 27) and the latter were ancestral images (see Marti, op. cit. pp. 27, 29; Harper, Int. Comm. “Amos and Hosea,” p. 222). In other words the function of the priest was not merely sacrificial (a duty which Kautzsch unnecessarily detaches from the services which he originally rendered), nor did he merely bear the ark of the covenant and take charge of God’s house; but he was also and mainly (as the Arabic name kāhin shows) the soothsayer who consulted the ephod and gave the answers required on the field of battle (see 1 Sam. and 2 Sam. passim) and on other occasions. This is clearly shown in the “blessing of Moses” (Deut. xxxiii. 8), where the Levite is specially associated with another apparatus of inquiry, viz. the sacred lots, Urīm and Thummīm. The true character of Urīm (as expressing “aye”) and Thummīm (as expressing “nay”) is shown by the reconstructed text of 1 Sam. xiv. 41 on the basis of the Septuagint. See Driver ad loc.
The chief and most salient characteristic of the worship of the high places was geniality. The sacrifice was a feast of social communion between the deity and his worshippers, and knit both deity and clan-members together in the bonds of a close fellowship. This genial aspect Geniality of Worship. of Hebrew worship is nowhere depicted more graphically than in the old narrative (a J section = Budde’s G) 1 Sam. ix. 19-24, where a day of sacrifice in the high place is described. Saul and his attendant are invited by the seer-priest Samuel into the banqueting chamber (lishkah) where thirty persons partake of the sacrificial meal. It was the ’āsīph or festival of ingathering, when the agricultural operations were brought to a close, which exhibited these genial features of Canaanite-Hebrew life most vividly. References to them abound in pre-exilian literature: Judges xxi. 21 (cf. ix. 27); Amos viii. 1 foll.; Hos. ix. 1 foll., Jer. xxxi. 4; Isa. xvi. 10 (Jer. xlviii. 33). These festivals formed the veins and arteries of ancient Hebrew clan and tribal life.[4] Wellhausen’s characterization of the Arabian hajj[5] applies with equal force to the Hebrew hagg (festival): “They formed the rendezvous of ancient life. Here came under the protection of the peace of God the tribes and clans which otherwise lived apart from one another and only knew peace and security within their own frontiers.” 1 Sam. xx. 28 foll. indicates the strong claims on personal attendance exercised on each individual member by the local clan festival at Bethlehem-Judah.
It is easy to discern from varied allusions in the Old Testament that the Canaanite impress of sensuous life clung to the autumnal vintage festivals. They became orgiastic in character and scenes of drunkenness, cf. Judges ix. 27; 1 Sam. 14-16; Isa. xxviii. 7, 8. Against this tendency the Nazirite order and tradition was a protest. Cf. Amos ii. 11 foll.; Judges xiii. 7, 14. As certain sanctuaries, Shiloh, Shechem, Bethel, &c., grew in importance, the priesthoods that officiated at them would acquire special prestige. Eli, the head priest at Shiloh in the early youth of Samuel, held an important position in what was then the chief religious and political centre of Ephraim; and the office passed by inheritance to the sons in ordinary cases. In the regal period the royal residence gave the priesthood of that place an exceptional position. Thus Zadok, who obtained the priestly office at Jerusalem in the reign of Solomon and was succeeded by his sons, was regarded in later days as the founder of the true and legitimate succession of the priesthood descended from Levi (Ezek. xl. 46, xliii. 19, xliv. 15; cf. 1 Kings ii. 27, 35). His descent, however, from Eleazar, the elder brother of Aaron, can only be regarded as the later artificial construction of the post-exilian chronicler (1 Chron. vi. 4-15, 50-53, xxiv. 1 foll.), who was controlled by the traditions which prevailed in the 4th century B.C. and after.
6. The Prophets.—The rise of the order of prophets, who gradually emerged out of and became distinct from the old Hebrew “seer” or augur (1 Sam. ix. 9),[6] marks a new epoch in the religious development of the Hebrews. Over the successive stages of this growth we pass lightly (see Prophet). The life-and-death struggle between Israel and the Philistines in the reign of Saul called forth under Samuel’s leadership a new order of “men of God,” who were called “prophets” or divinely inspired speakers.[7] These men were distributed in various settlements, and their exercises were usually of an ecstatic character. The closest modern analogy would be the orders of dervishes in Islām. Probably there was little externally to distinguish the prophet of Yahweh in the days of Samuel from the Canaanite-Phoenician prophets of Baal and Ashērah (1 Kings xviii. 19, 26, 28), for the practices of both were ecstatic and orgiastic (cf. 1 Sam. x. 5 foll., xviii. 10, xix. 23 foll.). The special quality which distinguished these prophetic gilds or companies was an intense patriotism combined with enthusiastic devotion to the cause of Yahweh. This necessarily involved in that primitive age an extreme jealousy of foreign importations or innovations in ritual. It is obvious from numerous passages that these prophetic gilds recognized the superior position and leadership of Samuel, or of any other distinguished prophet such as Elijah or Elisha. Thus 1 Sam. xix. 20, 23 et seq. show that Samuel was regarded as head of the prophetic settlement at Naiōth. With reference to Elijah and Elisha, see 2 Kings ii. 3, 5, 15, iv. 1, 38 et seq., vi. 1 et seq. There cannot be any doubt that
- ↑ Internat. Crit. Commentary, Judges, Introd. p. xxx., also p. 367 foll.
- ↑ לוא “priest,” לואת “priestess”; see Hommel, Süd-arabische Chrestomathie, p. 127; Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 278 foll.
- ↑ Moore regards this verse as belonging to the J or older document, op. cit. p. 367.
- ↑ Similarly in ancient Greece. See the instructive passage in Aristotle, Nic. Eth. viii. 9 (4, 5), on the relation of Greek sacrifices and festivals to κοινωνίαι and politics: αἱ γὰρ ἀρχαῖαι θυσίαι καὶ σύνοδοι φαίνονται γίγνεσθαι μετὰ τὰς τῶν καρπῶν συγκομιδὰς οἷον ἀπαρχαί; cf. Grote on Pan-Hellenic festivals, History of Greece, vol. iii., ch. 28.
- ↑ Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums (2nd ed.), p. 89.
- ↑ Though this be an interpolated gloss (Thenius, Budde), it states a significant truth as Kautzsch clearly shows, op. cit. p. 672. In Micah iii. 7 the ḥōzeh is mentioned in a sense analogous to the rō’ēh or “seer,” and coupled with the qōsēm or “soothsayer,” viz. as spurious; cf. Deut. xviii. 10.
- ↑ No better derivation is forthcoming of the word nabhi’, “prophet,” than that it is a Kāṭīl form of the root nābā = Assyr. nabū, “speak.”
