servants and maid-servants), that they too might taste the friendliness of their God, and also by “the Levite that is in your gates” (i.e., your towns and hamlets; see at Exo 20:10). This frequently recurring description of the Levites (cf. Deu 12:18; Deu 14:27; Deu 16:11, Deu 16:14; Deu 18:6; Deu 26:12) does not assume that they were homeless, which would be at variance with the allotment of towns for them to dwell in (Num 35); ); but simply implies what is frequently added in explanation, that the Levites had “no part nor inheritance,” no share of the land as their hereditary property, and in this respect resembled strangers (Deu 14:21, Deu 14:29; Deu 16:11, etc.).[1]
And the repeated injunction to invite the Levites to the sacrificial meals is not at variance with Num 18:21, where the tithes are assigned to the tribe of Levi for their maintenance. For however ample this revenue may have been according to the law, it was so entirely dependent, upon the honesty and conscientiousness of the people, that the Levites might very easily be brought into a straitened condition, if indifference towards the Lord and His servants should prevail throughout the nation. - In Deu 12:13, Deu 12:14, Moses concludes by once more summing up these instructions in the admonition to beware of offering sacrifices in every place that they might choose, the burnt-offering, as the leading sacrifice, being mentioned instar omnium.
But if these instructions were really to be observed by the people in Canaan, it was necessary that the law which had been given with reference to the journey through the wilderness, viz., that no animal should be slain anywhere else than at the tabernacle in the same manner as a slain-offering (Lev 17:3-6), should be abolished. This is done in Deu 12:15, where Moses, in direct connection with what goes before, allows the people, as an exception (רק, only) to the rules laid down in Deu 12:4-14, to kill and eat flesh for their own food according to all their soul's desire. Flesh that was slaughtered for food could be eaten by both clean and unclean, such for example as the roebuck and the hart, animals which could not be offered in sacrifice, and in which, therefore, the distinction between clean and unclean on the part of the eaters did not come into consideration at all.
Verse 16
But blood was forbidden to be
- ↑ The explanation given by De Wette, and adopted by Riehm, of the expression, “the Levite that is within thy gates,” is perfectly arbitrary and unfounded: viz., that “the Levites did not live any longer in the towns assigned them by the earlier laws, but were scattered about in the different towns of the other tribes.”
