The Families That Kept the Sanctuary Serving

Hebrew Bibles number this verse 5:27, and their chapter 6 begins at the King James verse 16, so references to this chapter differ by fifteen verses between editions. Levi’s three sons stand as in Genesis 46:11, but the line followed first is the middle son’s, Kohath’s, because the priests come from him.

The four sons of Kohath repeat Exodus 6:18. Izhar is the father of Korah, who led the revolt against Aaron in Numbers 16. Hebron here is a man, sharing his name with the town that will be the first priestly city on the list at verse 55.

“Children” is the Hebrew for sons, stretched to take in a daughter, Miriam. Aaron stands before Moses because he was the elder by three years (Exodus 7:7). Nadab and Abihu died offering strange fire (Leviticus 10:1–2), and 24:2 adds that they had no children, which is why the line runs through Eleazar.

Eleazar took Aaron’s garments on Mount Hor (Numbers 20:28). Phinehas is an Egyptian name, generally explained as “the Nubian”, and his zeal at Baal-peor won “the covenant of an everlasting priesthood” (Numbers 25:13). Abishua is known only from lists like this one.

Ezra 7:1–5 gives this same run of names upward, from Ezra back to Aaron, to prove the scribe’s priestly descent. Bukki and Uzzi have nothing recorded about them but their place in the line. The same list served centuries later as a credential.

The years between Phinehas and Zadok are the whole period of the judges, and they are covered by five names. Eli, the priest at Shiloh, and his house are missing entirely. Josephus says the high priesthood passed for a time to Ithamar’s line with Eli, so this list is following descent from Eleazar, not the office.

Ahitub is also the name of Eli’s grandson (1 Samuel 14:3), and 2 Samuel 8:17 calls Zadok “the son of Ahitub”. Amariah and Ahitub both come round again in verse 11, and names repeating two generations apart were usual in priestly families, where a grandson often carried his grandfather’s name.

Zadok served beside Abiathar under David and anointed Solomon at Gihon (1 Kings 1:39); Abiathar backed Adonijah and was banished. Ahimaaz is the runner who outran the Cushite to bring David news of the battle against Absalom (2 Samuel 18:19–29), carrying the news without telling him Absalom was dead.

1 Kings 4:2 lists “Azariah the son of Zadok the priest” first among Solomon’s officers, so “son” there means grandson. Counting from Eleazar, this Azariah is the twelfth generation, and twelve generations of forty years give the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1; some scholars think the list was shaped with that in mind, an inference.

The parenthesis sits oddly. This Azariah is two generations after Solomon, and many think the note belongs to the Azariah of verse 9, Solomon’s own priest, displaced in copying. Others connect it with the Azariah who stood against King Uzziah in the temple (2 Chronicles 26:17–18), though he is not placed in this line.

Amariah was chief priest “in all matters of the LORD” under Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 19:11), probably the man named here. The pair Amariah and Ahitub is the same pair as in verse 7, repeated in the same order, whether as family naming or as a doubling in the copying.

Shallum appears as Meshullam in 9:11 and Nehemiah 11:11. Jehoiada, the priest who crowned Joash and ran the kingdom for him (2 Chronicles 23), and Urijah, who built Ahaz a copy of the Damascus altar (2 Kings 16:10–16), are both missing here. The line records descent and passes over some of the best-known holders of the office.

Hilkiah is the high priest who found “the book of the law” while the temple was being repaired under Josiah (2 Kings 22:8; 2 Chronicles 34:14). The reform that followed was the last great one before the fall. His grandson will be the one killed by Babylon.

Seraiah was the chief priest taken to Riblah after Jerusalem fell and put to death there by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:18–21). Ezra 7:1 names Ezra as “the son of Seraiah”, meaning his descendant. Jehozadak means the LORD is righteous, a name borne by the man who went into exile.

“The LORD carried away”: Nebuchadnezzar is only the hand. Jehozadak’s son Joshua, or Jeshua, came back as high priest with Zerubbabel (Ezra 3:2; Haggai 1:1), and Zechariah 3 shows him standing in filthy garments that are taken away. The line broken off here resumes in those books.

Levi’s sons are named a second time, now with the spelling Gershom, the name Moses gave his own son in Midian, “a stranger there” (Exodus 2:22). Having followed the priests to Babylon, the chapter starts over to follow the rest of the tribe, and Hebrew Bibles begin their chapter 6 here.

Libni and Shimei are the two sons in Exodus 6:17 and Numbers 3:18, heads of the Libnite and Shimite families. Libni means white. These two names will turn up again within Merari’s line in verse 29, the same names in a different family.

This repeats verse 2 almost to the letter. The difference is where it leads: verse 2 went on to Amram and the priests, and this time the line that follows runs through Izhar and Korah, toward the singers.

Mahli and Mushi, as in Exodus 6:19. Some scholars connect the Mushites with the name Moses, a suggestion from the sound of the name, not a claim the text makes. “Families of the Levites according to their fathers” is the grouping by father’s house that Numbers 3 uses to assign each family its load.

The Gershonite line descends one son at a time. Asaph’s pedigree in verses 42–43 runs through the same men in reverse, but there Shimei stands between Jahath and Zimmah, and here Jahath follows Libni. Two records of one family, not quite agreeing, are kept side by side without comment.

Under Hezekiah, 2 Chronicles 29:12 names “Joah the son of Zimmah” among the Gershonite Levites who cleansed the temple, the same pair of names as here, father and son, centuries later. Families reused their ancestors’ names, which is part of why these lines are so hard to separate.

Amminadab stands where Izhar should be, since verse 38 and Exodus 6:21 make Korah the son of Izhar. Korah is the rebel the earth swallowed, but Numbers 26:11 adds, “the children of Korah died not”. The rebel’s line survived to become the family of singers.

Exodus 6:24 names Assir, Elkanah and Abiasaph as the three sons of Korah, brothers. Here they appear as successive generations. Either the list has turned brothers into a line, or later men bore the same three names; the text does not settle it.

Uriel means God is my light, and a Uriel leads the Kohathites when the ark is brought up (15:5 and 11). The names from Tahath down differ from Heman’s pedigree in verses 36–37, which has Zephaniah, Azariah and Joel where this has Uriel, Uzziah and Shaul. Shaul is the Levite form of the king’s name, Saul.

Ahimoth looks like Mahath of verse 35 with its letters rearranged, and Amasai recurs there too. This is the point where the line narrows toward Samuel’s family. The two brothers mark a branch, and the next verse follows it.

The Hebrew here is broken, and the King James’s “As for Elkanah” papers over a gap. Zophai is the Zuph of verse 35, the ancestor after whom Samuel’s home district was named, “the land of Zuph” where Saul went looking for his father’s asses and found Samuel instead (1 Samuel 9:5–6).

This Elkanah is Hannah’s husband, Samuel’s father (1 Samuel 1:1–2). His father Jeroham’s father appears in three spellings: Eliab here, Eliel in verse 34, Elihu in 1 Samuel. The Hebrew never names Samuel in this verse; the King James leaves him out too, and he appears only through his sons in verse 28.

1 Samuel 8:2 names Samuel’s firstborn Joel and his second Abiah. “Vashni” is almost certainly the Hebrew for “and the second”, read as a name after Joel dropped out: “the firstborn Joel, and the second Abiah”. 1 Samuel 1:1 calls Elkanah an Ephrathite of Mount Ephraim, and Chronicles shows his line as Levites living there.

Merari’s line begins with Mahli and then gives him sons named Libni and Shimei, the names of Gershom’s two sons in verse 17. Uzza shares his name with the man struck dead for touching the ark (13:10), which in this list is only a coincidence of names.

Haggiah means feast of the LORD, perhaps a child born at a festival. Asaiah may be the Merarite chief who brought two hundred and twenty of his brethren to carry the ark up to Jerusalem (15:6). The descending line stops with him, the man in office in David’s time.

“The service of song” is literally “the hands of song”, the singers as the instruments of it. “The ark had rest” picks up Psalm 132:8, “Arise, O LORD, into thy rest; thou, and the ark of thy strength”, the words Solomon prays in 2 Chronicles 6:41. The ark’s wanderings ended in David’s tent.

In David’s time the sanctuary was split. The ark sat in the tent in Jerusalem while the old tabernacle and altar stood at Gibeon (16:37–42), and singers were posted at both. “According to their order” is mishpat, their appointed custom, a set rota, not a free arrangement.

Shemuel is Samuel, so Heman the singer is Samuel’s grandson, the prophet’s line turned to music. 25:5 calls Heman “the king’s seer” and gives him fourteen sons and three daughters, all trained to sing. The Kohathite stands at the centre, with Asaph on his right and Ethan on his left.

The same line that ran downward in verses 22–28 now runs upward, son to father, so the two versions can be laid side by side. Eliel and Toah here are Eliab and Nahath there; the different spellings show up because the list is given twice.

Zuph appears in the upward list where Zophai stood in verse 26. Mahath and Amasai both reappear under Hezekiah, among the Kohathite Levites who cleansed the temple (2 Chronicles 29:12), again showing old names handed down in the same family.

Where verse 24 has Uriel, Uzziah and Shaul, this has Zephaniah, Azariah and Joel. Azariah and Uzziah are known to be two names for one man, since King Uzziah is Azariah throughout 2 Kings 15, so at least one of the differences may be a single man under two names.

This is the line the psalm titles call “the sons of Korah”, credited with Psalms 42–49, 84–85 and 87–88. Heman is named in the title of Psalm 88. The leading singer of David’s choir descends from the man who rose against Aaron and was swallowed by the earth.

Heman’s pedigree is the only one of the three that runs past Levi to “Israel”, twenty two generations above him, the longest in the chapter. Izhar and Kohath close it as they stood in Exodus 6. The singer at the centre of the arrangement has the longest pedigree.

“His brother” means fellow Levite, since Asaph belongs to Gershom’s family. The right hand was the place of honour. Twelve psalms bear Asaph’s name, 50 and 73–83, and 2 Chronicles 29:30 speaks of praising “with the words of David, and of Asaph the seer”.

Michael, Baaseiah and Malchiah: two of the three carry the divine name, and Malchiah means my king is Yah. Baaseiah occurs nowhere else. The pedigree moves up through men known only by their place in the line, with no deed attached to any of them.

Set against verse 21, Ethni and Jeaterai look like two forms of one name, and Adaiah and Iddo like two forms of another. Zerah is spelled the same in both. The Gershonite line appears twice, in different forms, and neither form is corrected to match the other.

This Ethan is a Gershonite ancestor of Asaph, not the Merarite singer Ethan of verse 44. Here Zimmah is the son of Shimei and grandson of Jahath, whereas verse 20 made Zimmah the son of Jahath. The two records of the family disagree by one generation.

Asaph’s line reaches Levi in fifteen names, against Heman’s twenty three, although the two men sang together in one generation. Pedigrees of such different length for contemporaries show the lines are selective, keeping the names that mattered and skipping others, an inference from the numbers.

Ethan appears to be the singer called Jeduthun elsewhere (16:41; 25:1), and Jeduthun stands in the titles of Psalms 39, 62 and 77. Kishi is the Kushaiah of 15:17. The left hand completes the arrangement, with the three Levite families standing together in one line of singers.

Hashabiah, “the LORD has taken account”, is one of the commonest Levite names in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. Hilkiah is the high priest’s name from verse 13, but this Hilkiah is a Merarite. Amaziah shares a name with a king of Judah. All three names carry Yah.

Numbers 4:31–32 gave the Merarites the heaviest load in the wilderness, the tabernacle’s boards, bars, pillars and sockets. Their descendant now carries a tune. Bani means built, and Shamer means keeper or guard.

Exodus 6:19 and verse 19 above make Mahli and Mushi brothers, sons of Merari. Here Mahli is Mushi’s son, so either a nephew carried his uncle’s name or the list has telescoped. Ethan’s pedigree reaches Levi in fourteen names.

“Appointed” is netunim, “given”, the word of Numbers 3:9: the Levites “are wholly given unto him” out of Israel. In the wilderness that service meant carrying: the Gershonites the curtains, the Kohathites the holy vessels, the Merarites the frame. The singers were drawn from the same body.

The altar of burnt offering stood in the court, open to the sky; the altar of incense stood inside before the veil. When King Uzziah took a censer to burn incense himself, the priests withstood him and leprosy rose on his forehead (2 Chronicles 26:16–19). “Moses the servant of God” is a title Chronicles gives him repeatedly.

The priestly line is given again, now in the “his son” pattern rather than the “begat” pattern of verses 4–8. It adds nothing new in names. The same men who began the chapter are listed again after the singers, next to the priests’ duties.

These priests served through the period of the Book of Judges, while the tabernacle stood at Shiloh, yet Judges names none of them. It mentions only Phinehas, at the war with Benjamin (Judges 20:28). Zerahiah means the LORD has shone forth.

Nehemiah 11:11 and 1 Chronicles 9:11 give “Meraioth, the son of Ahitub”, reversing the order of this verse, where Ahitub descends from Meraioth. The difference stands between the records, with no attempt to reconcile it.

The second list stops at Ahimaaz, David’s contemporary. The first ran to the exile. The priests named beside David’s arrangements are the priests of David’s own day, as if the list were cut off at the moment the organisation was set up.

“Castles” is tirot, walled encampments, the word Genesis 25:16 uses for the camps of Ishmael’s sons, and “coasts” means borders. “Theirs was the lot”: Joshua 21:10 says the first lot came up for Aaron’s sons, so the priests chose first.

Hebron was the city where David was anointed king over Judah and reigned seven and a half years (2 Samuel 2:1–4 and 5:5). Near it was the cave of Machpelah, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried. The first priestly city on the list was also David’s first royal city.

Caleb had asked for this hill country at eighty five, while the Anakim still held it: “give me this mountain” (Joshua 14:10–12). Joshua 21:11–12 records the same division, the town to the priests and the land around it to Caleb.

The Hebrew has “the cities of refuge”, plural, though only Hebron follows, and the other lists name several; a line may have been lost. Libnah later revolted from Judah under Jehoram (2 Kings 8:22). Jattir and Eshtemoa are both on the list of towns to which David sent spoil from Ziklag (1 Samuel 30:27–28).

Hilen is Holon in Joshua 21:15. Debir had once been called Kirjath-sepher, “city of the book” (Joshua 15:15). Debir is also the word for the inner room of Solomon’s temple, which the King James calls “the oracle” (1 Kings 6:5).

At Beth-shemesh the ark came back from the Philistines on a new cart pulled by two milch kine, and the Levites lifted it down (1 Samuel 6:13–15). Men of the town then looked into it and were struck. Joshua 21:16 also lists Juttah among these priestly towns, a name missing here.

Joshua 21:17 names four towns of Benjamin, beginning with Gibeon; Chronicles lists three but still totals thirteen, which needs Gibeon. Gibeon is where the tabernacle stood in David’s day (16:39). Anathoth is where Solomon sent Abiathar (1 Kings 2:26) and where the prophet Jeremiah was born into a priestly family (Jeremiah 1:1).

Joshua 21:5 gives these ten cities out of Ephraim, Dan and the half tribe of Manasseh. Here Ephraim and Dan have dropped out, and the King James’s “namely” is filling the gap. The Kohathites “left” are the ones who were not priests.

All of the Gershonites’ thirteen towns lie in the north, from Issachar’s valley to the Galilee hills and Bashan beyond the Jordan. This is the family descended from Libni and Shimei, living on the northern edge of the land.

Merari’s twelve towns are divided by the Jordan: Reuben and Gad to the east, Zebulun to the west in lower Galilee. The family that had carried the tabernacle’s frame now lived on both sides of the river.

“Gave” matters here: the cities came out of the other tribes’ land, and Numbers 35:8 required each tribe to give in proportion to what it had. The total there is forty eight cities (Numbers 35:7). Levi had no territory of its own.

“These cities, which are called by their names” points back to the list in verses 57–60. In Joshua 21:9 this sentence introduces the list; here it follows it, because Chronicles has moved the priests’ towns to the front, directly after the priests.

“The residue” of Kohath means the Kohathites who were not priests, Moses’ own family among them. Their towns lie in Ephraim, in the central hill country, the heart of what became the northern kingdom.

The plural “cities of refuge” appears again with a single name, Shechem, where Joshua renewed the covenant and Joseph’s bones were buried (Joshua 24:1 and 32). Gezer stayed Canaanite until a Pharaoh burned it and gave it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife (1 Kings 9:16).

Joshua 21:22 has Kibzaim where this has Jokmeam. Beth-horon is the pass where Joshua chased the Amorite kings while hailstones fell on them (Joshua 10:10–11). Solomon later fortified both the upper and nether towns (2 Chronicles 8:5).

Aijalon is the valley of Joshua 10:12: “Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.” Joshua 21:23–24 counts Aijalon and Gath-rimmon among Dan’s towns, not Ephraim’s. Dan is never named in this chapter, and its genealogy is missing from these chapters as well.

Joshua 21:25 names Tanach and Gath-rimmon here. Bileam is Ibleam, near which Jehu’s men shot King Ahaziah of Judah as he fled (2 Kings 9:27). The towns of the western half of Manasseh close the Kohathite list.

Golan in Bashan was one of the three refuge cities Moses set apart east of the Jordan (Deuteronomy 4:43), and it gives its name to the Golan. Ashtaroth, named for the goddess Ashtoreth, was a royal city of Og, king of Bashan (Deuteronomy 1:4).

Kedesh means holy place, a common town name; Joshua 21:28 has Kishon here. Daberath lay at the foot of Mount Tabor on the border of Zebulun and Issachar. Issachar’s territory held the rich valley of Jezreel.

This Ramoth is not Ramoth-gilead, which comes in verse 80; Joshua 21:29 calls it Jarmuth. Anem is En-gannim there, “spring of gardens”. Two lists of the same towns, with the names worn differently.

Asher held the coastal plain north of Carmel toward Tyre. Mashal is the Mishal of Joshua 21:30. This Abdon is a town, not the judge Abdon, who was an Ephraimite from Pirathon (Judges 12:13–15).

Hukok is Helkath in Joshua 21:31. Rehob is one of the towns whose inhabitants Asher never drove out (Judges 1:31), so a Levite town on the list may not have been fully in Israelite hands at every period.

Kedesh in Galilee was a city of refuge (Joshua 20:7) and the home of Barak, whom Deborah summoned to fight Sisera (Judges 4:6). Galilee is ha-galil, “the circuit” or district. Kirjathaim means double town, and Joshua 21:32 has Kartan here.

Joshua 21:34–35 gives Merari four towns in Zebulun, and none of the four names matches these two. Tabor is the mountain where Barak gathered ten thousand men before coming down against Sisera (Judges 4:6 and 14). Rimmon means pomegranate.

“On the other side Jordan by Jericho” is the phrase Numbers uses for the plains of Moab where Israel camped before crossing (Numbers 22:1). Bezer in the wilderness was a city of refuge (Deuteronomy 4:43). Jahzah is Jahaz, where Israel fought and defeated Sihon, king of the Amorites (Numbers 21:23–24).

From the wilderness of Kedemoth, “eastern places”, Moses sent messengers to Sihon asking for passage (Deuteronomy 2:26). Jeremiah 48:21 lists Mephaath among the towns of Moab under judgment, so this Levite town in Reuben’s land was later Moabite.

Ramoth-gilead was a refuge city (Deuteronomy 4:43), the town where Ahab was killed by an arrow shot at a venture (2 Chronicles 18:33) and where Jehu was anointed. Mahanaim, “two camps”, is where Jacob met the angels (Genesis 32:2) and where David fled from Absalom (2 Samuel 17:24).

Heshbon was Sihon’s capital (Numbers 21:26). Jazer reappears in 26:31, where in David’s fortieth year “mighty men of valour” of Hebron’s family were found there. Counted up, the chapter names forty two Levite towns against the forty eight of Numbers 35:7, a list that has lost some names in copying.