Thanks…But weren’t only priests selected from the Levi tribe and thus was Samuel actually a priest? Or were people ipso facto priests from the mere fact of being born into the tribe of Levi?
All the men of the levite tribe were priests, they took turns officially fulfilling the function of priest but they all had the rights of a priest such as the power to offer sacrifice as I understand it.
1 Samuel 1:1
Elkanah is Samuel’s father and lives at Ramah (1 Sam. 1:19; 2:11; comp. 28:3), in the district of Zuph. His genealogy is also found in a pedigree of the Kohathites (1 Chron. 6:3-15) and in that of Heman, his great-grandson (ib. vi. 18-22). According to the genealogical tables, Elkanah was, a Levite, a fact otherwise not mentioned in the books of Samuel. The fact that Elkanah, a Levite, was denominated an Ephraimite is analogous to the designation of a Levite belonging to Judah (Judges 17:7, for example).
Thanks, I missed that.
:tiphat:
The system of governance established for the Israelites was prophetic, not monarchical. In the ancient near east, the king was responsible for overseeing worship, but this was not the case for the Israelites. (See for example 1Samuel 1-2.)
You know why the Israelites never got around to explicitly depicting God sitting on a throne (the cherubim on the Ark and on Solomon’s temple only vaguely suggests it)? There’s the commandment against depicting God in visible form, of course (which on the popular level wasn’t always followed, as can be seen from examples of Israelite art we have), but another possible reason is that it was Israelite reaction against the institution of human monarchy which they found among their neighbors, back when they were still a league of tribes. In the Ancient Near East, depicting a god sitting on a throne (like this) was one means through which royal authority was legitimated. But even in Solomon’s temple and the Ark, all you have are two winged creatures (cherubim) flanking an empty space. God is not explicitly depicted, and the throne is only implied. (Not to mention that these cherubs are hidden from public view.) On the folk level, when Yhwh is depicted, He is symbolically represented by the sun (or by another solar symbol, say the Egyptian scarab) or as a rider/warrior riding a bull or a horse (sometimes there is no rider: the animal only implies His presence.) But no Israelite AFAIK ever put Yhwh on a chair.
