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Context No. 346 of 4322 · 1 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

1 Chronicles 6:47-60: in context

47the son of Mahli, the son of Mushi, the son of Merari, the son of Levi. 48Their brothers the Levites were appointed for all the service of the tabernacle of God’s house. 49But Aaron and his sons offered on the altar of burnt offering, and on the altar of incense, for all the work of the most holy place, and to make atonement for Israel, according to all that Moses the servant of God had commanded. 50These are the sons of Aaron: Eleazar his son, Phinehas his son, Abishua his son, 51Bukki his son, Uzzi his son, Zerahiah his son, 52Meraioth his son, Amariah his son, Ahitub his son, 53Zadok his son, and Ahimaaz his son. 54Now these are their dwelling places according to their encampments in their borders: to the sons of Aaron, of the families of the Kohathites (for theirs was the first lot), 55to them they gave Hebron in the land of Judah, and its pasture lands around it; 56but the fields of the city and its villages, they gave to Caleb the son of Jephunneh. 57To the sons of Aaron they gave the cities of refuge, Hebron, Libnah also with its pasture lands, Jattir, Eshtemoa with its pasture lands, 58Hilen with its pasture lands, Debir with its pasture lands, 59Ashan with its pasture lands, and Beth Shemesh with its pasture lands; 60and out of the tribe of Benjamin, Geba with its pasture lands, Allemeth with its pasture lands, and Anathoth with its pasture lands. All their cities throughout their families were thirteen cities.

This is a genealogy of the priests and Levites, followed by a list of the towns they were given, and it looks like pure record-keeping: the line of Aaron down to Zadok, then Hebron and Libnah and Anathoth and the rest, each with its surrounding pasture land. But there is a structural fact buried in the list that is easy to miss and worth pulling out.

The Levites, alone among the tribes of Israel, received no territory of their own. Where every other tribe got a contiguous block of the promised land as its inheritance, the tribe set apart for God got scattered towns distributed among all the other tribes, thirteen cities here for the priests, spread across Judah and Benjamin and beyond. The reason, given elsewhere, is that the LORD himself was their inheritance; they had no land because they had God. And the effect of the scattering was that God's priests and teachers were woven all through the nation rather than gathered into one region, present in everyone's neighborhood. Notice, too, what kinds of towns they were given, the cities of refuge among them, so that the places of mercy and asylum were entrusted to the landless tribe. Even Anathoth is here, the town that would later produce the prophet Jeremiah.

There is a vocation in this that runs against the grain of how most of us think about security. The Levites' calling came with no plot of ground to call their own, no territory to defend or pass down, only a dispersed life of service with God himself as their portion. Could I accept a calling like that, one that gives me no territory of my own to possess, that spreads me thin in service to others rather than settling me into ownership, and asks me to find my inheritance in God rather than in a place?

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