Prolegomena to the History of Israel

by Julius Wellhausen

— Footnote 2 M#RT M#H, more precisely m'' (T YY PNY M#H HKHN, 1Samuel. ii. 11. — Footnote

(Exodus xxxiii. 11), who does not quit the tent of Jehovah; so also Eli has Samuel, who sleeps at night in the inner portion of the temple beside the ark of the covenant; even if perhaps the narrative of Samuel's early years is not quite in accordance with the actual circumstances as they existed at Shiloh, it is still in any case a perfectly good witness to a custom of the existence of which we are apprised from other sources. Compare now with this simple state of affairs the fact that in the Priestly Code the sons of Aaron have something like the half of a total of 22,000 Levites to assist them as watchers and ministers of the sanctuary.

Any one may slaughter and offer sacrifice (1Samuel xiv. 34 seq.); and, even in cases where priests are present, there is not a single trace of a systematic setting apart of what is holy, or of shrinking from touching it. When David "entered into the house of God and did eat the shew-bread, which it is not lawful to eat save for the priests, and gave also to them that were with him" (Mark ii. 26), this is not represented in 1Sam. xxi. as illegitimate when those who eat are sanctified, that is, have abstained on the previous day from women. Hunted fugitives lay hold of the horns of the altar without being held guilty of profanation. A woman, such as Hannah, comes before Jehovah, that is, before the altar, to pray; the words WTTYCB LPNY YY (1Samuel i. 9) supplied by the LXX, are necessary for the connection, and have been omitted from the Massoretic text as offensive. In doing so she is observed by the priest, who sits quietly, as is his wont, on his seat at the temple door. The history of the ark particularly, as Vatke justly remarks (pp. 317, 332), affords more than one proof of the fact that the notion of the unapproachableness of the holy was quite unknown; I shall content myself with the most striking of these. Samuel the Ephraimite sleeps by virtue of his office every night beside the ark of Jehovah, a place whither, according to Leviticus xvi., the high priest may come only once in the year, and even he only after the strictest preparation and with the most elaborate atoning rites. The contrast in the TONE OF FEELING is so great that no one as yet has even ventured to realise it clearly to himself.

IV.II.2. With the commencement of the monarchical period the priests forthwith begin to come into greater prominence along with the kings; the advance in centralisation and in publicity of life makes itself noticeable also in the department of worship. At the beginning of Saul's reign we find the distinguished Ephraimitic priesthood, the house of Eli, no longer at Shiloh, but at Nob, in the vicinity of the king, and to a certain degree in league with him; for their head, Ahijah the priest, is in immediate attendance on him when arms are first raised against the Phiiistines, shares the danger with him, and consults the ephod on his behalf. Subsequently the entente cordiale was disturbed, Ahijah and his brethren fell a sacrifice to the king's jealousy, and thus the solitary instance of an independent and considerable priesthood to be met with in the old history of Israel came for ever to an end. Abiathar, who alone escaped the massacre of Nob (1Samuel xxii.), fled with the ephod to David, for which he was rewarded afterwards with high honours, but all that he became he became as servant of David. Under David the regius priesthood began to grow towards the importance which it from that time forward had. This king exercised unfettered control over the sanctuary of the ark which stood in his citadel, as also over the appointment of the priests, who were merely his officials. Alongside of Abiathar he placed Zadok (and subsequently Ira also), as well as some of his own sons. For when it is stated in 2Sam. viii. 18 that the sons of David were priests, the words must not out of regard to the Pentateuch be twisted so as to mean something different from what they say. We also (1Kings iv. 5) find the son of the prophet Nathan figuring as a priest, and on the other hand the son of Zadok holding a high secular office (ver. 2); even at this date the line of demarcation afterwards drawn between holy and non-holy persons has no existence. What under David was still wanting to the institution of the royal worship and the regius priests—a fixed centre—was added by the erection of the temple under his successor. At the beginning of Solomon's reign there was still no ISRAELITE place of sacrifice such as sufficed for the greater contingencies; he was compelled to celebrate his accession at the great Bamah at Gibeon, a town in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, which, although it had been subjugated for a considerable time, was still entirely Canaanite. He now took care to make it possible that his colossal festivals should be celebrated at his own sanctuary. And next he made Zadok its priest after having previously deposed and relegated to his patrimonial property at Anathoth, a village adjoining Jerusalem, the aged Abiathar, a man of pure and honourable priestly descent, on account of the support he had given to the legitimate heir to the crown, thereby bringing to pass the fate with which the once so proud and powerful family of Eli had in 1Samuel ii. been threatened. Doubtless other priests also by degrees attached themselves to the family of Zadok, and ultimately came even to call themselves his sons, just as the Rechabites regarded Jonathan ben Rechab, or the "children of the prophets" one or other of the great prophets, as their father.

Regarding their sanctuaries as their own private property, precisely as Micah does in the classical instance recorded in Judges xvii., xviii., and proceeding quite untrammelled in the appointment and removal of the officials employed, neither do these early kings hesitate in the least to exercise personally the rights which had emanated from themselves, and been delegated to others. Of Saul, who indeed was in the habit of delegating but seldom, and of doing with his own hand all that required to be done, it is several times mentioned that he sacrificed in person; and it is clear that this is not brought as a charge against him in 1Samuel xiv. and xv. David sacrificed on the occasion of his having successfully brought the ark to Jerusalem; that it was he himself who officiated appears from the fact that he wore the priestly ephod—the ephod bad—and at the close of the offering pronounced the benediction (2Samuel vi. 14, 18). In the same way was the consecration of the temple conducted by Solomon; it was he who went before the altar, and after praying there upon his knees with outstretched arms, rose and blessed the people (1Kings viii. 22, 54, 53),—doubtless also it was he who with his own hands offered the first sacrifice. The priests' technical skill is necessary only for inquiring of the oracle before the ephod (1Samuel xiv. 18).

IV.II.3. These beginnings are continued in the history of the priesthood after the division of the kingdom. Jeroboam I., the founder of the kingdom of Israel, is treated by the historian as the founder also of Israel's worship in so far as the latter differed from the Judaean ideal: "he made the two calves of gold, and set them up at Bethel and at Dan; he made the Bamoth-houses and made priests from the mass of the people, who were not of the sons of Levi, and ordained a feast in the eighth month and ascended to the altar to burn incense" (1Kings xii. 28 seq., xiii. 33). Here indeed after the well-known manner of pious pragmatism retrospective validity is given to the Deuteronomic law which did not come into force until three centuries afterwards, and judgment is thus passed in accordance with a historically inadmissable standard; moreover, the facts on which the judgment is based are on the one hand too much generalised, and on the other hand laid too exclusively to the charge of Jeroboam. The first king bears the weight of all the sins in worship of all his successors and of the whole body of the people. But the recognition of the sovereign priesthood of the ruler, of the formative influence which he exercised over the worship, is just. The most important temples were royal ones, and the priests who attended at them were the king's priests (Amos vii. 10 seq.). When therefore Jehu overthrew the house of Ahab, he did not extirpate all its members merely, and its officials and courtiers, but also its priests as well; they too were servants of the crown and in positions of trust (2Kings x. 11I; comp. 1Kings iv. 5). The statement that they were chosen at the pleasure of the king is therefore to be taken as implying that, as in David's and Solomon's time, so also later they could and might be chosen at pleasure; on the other hand, in point of fact the sacred office, in Dan at least, continued from the period of the Judges down to the Assyrian deportation hereditary in the family of Jonathan. One must, moreover, avoid imagining that all the "houses of the high places" and all the priestly posts /1/ belonged to the king; it was impossible that the

— Footnote 1. The parallelism between "Bamoth-houses" and a priestly appointment in 1Kings xii. 31 seems not to be casual merely. Whilst a Bamah may be a simple altar, a "Bamoth-house" presupposes a divine image, and renders an aedituus necessary. — Footnote

government should be so all-pervading in such matters. At this period most of the sanctuaries were public, but not therefore as yet on that account royal, and so also doubtless there were numerous priests who were not servants of the king. The preponderance of official cultus and of an official personnel to carry it on was counteracted in the northern kingdom by the frequent dynastic changes and the unattached particularism of the separate tribes; the conditions may be presumed to have developed themselves with great variety and freedom, hereditary and unhereditary priests, priests with independent benefices and others in complete poverty, subsisting side by side; the variety and the equality of rights enjoyed by all is the distinguishing mark of the time.

Speaking generally, however, the priesthood has distinctly consolidated itself as compared with its former condition, and gained not a little alike in number and in influence; it has become an important power in public life, without which the nation cannot be imagined. It would perhaps be somewhat bold to assert this on the strength merely of the brief and inadequate indications in the Book of Kings, which is chiefly interested in the extraordinary interventions of the prophets in the course of Israel's history, but other and more authentic testimonies justify us in doing so. First of these is the Blessing of Moses, an independent document of northern Israel which speaks for itself. Here we read:

"Thy Thummim and thy Urim belong to the man of thy friendship, whom thou didst prove at Massah, for whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah; who saith of father and mother, I have never seen them, and acknowledgeth not his brethren nor knoweth his own children— for they observe thy word and keep thy covenant, they teach Jacob thy judgments and Israel thy law; they bring savour of fat before thee and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar; bless, O Lord, his strength, 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" (Deuteronomy xxxiii. 8-11).