Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] The cause of the transferral of Israel's high priesthoodfrom Eleazar?

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The cause of the transferral of Israel's high priesthoodfrom Eleazar?
  • Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 09:46:38 -0500

Dear Jonathan,

Chronicles "doctors" the genealogies. The Chronist makes Samuel a Levite,
instead of an Ephraimite as in 1 Samuel 1:1, because in his time, with the
Torah already out and operative, a non-Levite couldn't have assumed priestly
functions.

HH: It may be more complicated than that. Hannah may have surrendered ownershp of the child in some sense:

1Sam. 1:11 And she made a vow, saying, "O LORD Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head."

HH: Even people, just as possessions, could be dedicated to the Lord to become His property:

Lev. 27:28 ¶ "'But nothing that a man owns and devotes to the LORD - whether man or animal or family land - may be sold or redeemed; everything so devoted is most holy to the LORD.

HH: And such dedicated people and things consequently came into the possession of the priests:

Num. 18:14 ¶ "Everything in Israel that is devoted to the LORD is yours.

Lev. 27:21 When the field is released in the Jubilee, it will become holy, like a field devoted to the LORD; it will become the property of the priests.

HH: This is not a new idea. Albright suggested that Samuel, though born in the tribe of Ephraim, was attached to the tabernacle as a Nazirite and was therefore drawn by Levitical tradition into family attachment to the tribe of Levi.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard









Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page