Ezekiel 44:15-27

The Priests. (Their duties.) The only officials qualified to bear the name or discharge the duties of priests especially the duty of sacrifice are the Zadokites, i.e. the descendants of the Zadok who had been appointed head of the Jerusalem priesthood by Solomon, when Abiathar, who had sided with Adonijah, was deposed (1 Kings 2:35). Doubtless the Jerusalem priests were, in point of morality and religion, superior, broadly speaking, to the country priests (cf. Ezekiel 44:15), though the revelations in ch. 8 show that the Temple worship could be depraved enough; but the high prerogatives are here conferred upon them, just because of their connexion with Jerusalem. Their officiating dress, which was to be of linen, they had to change, before going out to the people in the outer court: otherwise the sanctity of the dress would have been transferred to the people with whom they came in contact, and rendered them unfit for secular occupations (Genesis 35:2 *). Other restrictions follow touching the hair, drink, and marriage of the priests. It is significant that wine must not be drunk by a priest who is about to officiate, nor must he incur defilement by touching a dead body, except in the case of very near blood-relations. The wife, however, is excluded, as she is not a blood-relation, and the married daughter, as, by her marriage, she has passed into another family. In the suggestion of uncleanness involved by contact with the dead, we have probably an implicit protest against the worship of the dead (Leviticus 5:2, Numbers 19*). The duties of the priests (Ezekiel 44:23 f.), in addition to the offering of sacrifice, are to teach the people the distinction between that which is ritually clean and un clean, holy and unholy, to decide controversies, and to arrange for the festivals and the hallowing of the Sabbath. (In Ezekiel 44:26, for is cleansed read, with Syr., has incurred defilement.)