Texts in Conversation
Deuteronomy calls the entire tribe of Levi priests and lets any Levite serve at the central sanctuary. Ezekiel uses the same language but now restricts the priesthood to the descendants of Zadok and bans the rest from the altar.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Deuteronomy 18:1
Hebrew Bible
1 The Levitical priests—indeed, the entire tribe of Levi—will have no allotment or inheritance with Israel; they may eat the burnt offerings of the Lord and of his inheritance. 2 They will have no inheritance in the midst of their fellow Israelites; the Lord alone is their inheritance, just as he had told them. 3 This shall be the priests’ fair allotment from the people who offer sacrifices, whether bull or sheep—they must give to the priest the shoulder, the jowls, and the stomach. 4 You must give them the best of your grain, new wine, and olive oil, as well as the best of your wool when you shear your flocks. 5 For the Lord your God has chosen them and their sons from all your tribes to stand and serve in his name permanently. 6 Suppose a Levite comes by his own free will from one of your villages, from any part of Israel where he is living, to the place the Lord chooses 7 and serves in the name of the Lord his God like his fellow Levites who stand there before the Lord.
Ezekiel 44:15
Hebrew Bible
14 Yet I will appoint them to keep charge of the temple, all its service, and all that will be done in it. 15 “‘But the Levitical priests, the descendants of Zadok who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, will approach me to minister to me; they will stand before me to offer me the fat and the blood, declares the Sovereign Lord. 16 They will enter my sanctuary and approach my table to minister to me; they will keep my charge.
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Notes and References
... The consistent manner in which Deuteronomy speaks about ‘the Levitical priests’ is an effort to defend the sacerdotal rights of the Levites; the rule that every Levite who joins the Jerusalem priesthood shall have an income equal to that of the other priests is quite explicit on this score (Deuteronomy 18:6–8). Not all priests were on the side of Deuteronomy. As a spokesman of the priestly elite from Jerusalem who was deported to Babylonia in 597, Ezekiel took a very different position toward the Levites. In his visionary design of the new temple (Ezekiel 40–48), Ezekiel distinguishes between ‘the Levitical priests descended from Zadok’ (Ezekiel 44:15) and the other Levites. In the view of Ezekiel, the Zadokite priests were the ones who maintained the service of the temple at the time Israel went astray from Yahweh (Ezekiel 44:15). They had thereby earned the right to act as sole priests. ...
van der Toorn, Karel
Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible
(p. 93) Harvard University Press, 2007
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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