9). Ezekiel, a thorough
Jerusalemite, finds a moral way of putting this departure from
the law, a way of putting it which does not explain the fact, but
is merely a periphrastic statement of it. With Deuteronomy as a
basis it is quite easy to understand Ezekiel's ordinance, but it
is absolutely impossible if one starts from the Priestly Code.
What he regards as the original right of the Levites, the
performance of priestly services, is treated in the latter
document as an unfounded and highly wicked pretension which once
in the olden times brought destruction upon Korah and his company;
what he considers to be a subsequent withdrawal of their right, as
a degradation in consequence of a fault, the other holds to have
been their hereditary and natural destination. The distinction
between priest and Levite which Ezekiel introduces and justifies
as an innovation, according to the Priestly Code has always
existed; what in the former appears as a beginning, in the latter
has been in force ever since Moses,--an original datum, not a thing
that has become or been made./1/ That the prophet should know
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