Exodus 32:29

The Levites are invited to qualify themselves to receive the priesthood as a reward for their zeal.

Fill your hand to-day to Jehovah] i.e. (see on Exodus 28:41), Provide yourselves with sacrifices, that you may be installed into the priesthood.

for every man(is) against, &c. That is the spirit which you have shewn to-day, and which is demanded for the priesthood (Di.). Cf. Deuteronomy 33:9 (written under the monarchy), where the priestly tribe is eulogized for its abnegation of natural relationships, though it is uncertain whether the present incident is specifically alluded to.

that he may, &c. The -blessing" is the privilege of officiating as priests. Cf. Kennedy, DB.i. 341 b.

In view of Deuteronomy 10:8 (-At that time Jehovah separated the tribe of Levi to bear the ark" &c.), where the fragment of an itinerary in vv.6 f. must be either parenthetic, or misplaced (so that At that timewill refer to the period of the stay at Horeb, the subject of Deuteronomy 9:8 to Deuteronomy 10:5), Di. and others can hardly be wrong in holding that JE's narrative here was followed originally by an account of the consecration of the tribe of Levi as a reward, presumably, for the display of zeal on Jehovah's behalf described in vv.26 29, which the compiler of Ex. did not deem it necessary to retain by the side of the more detailed particulars of P. In P, it will be remembered, the consecration of the priesthood is narrated in Leviticus 8, and that of the -Levites" (in P the inferior members of the tribe, as distinguished from the priests) in Numbers 8:5 ff.; but down to the time when Dt. was written, any member of the tribe had the right to exercise priestly functions (Deuteronomy 18:1; Deuteronomy 18:6-8); and it would be during this stage in the history of the tribe that J or E like the writer of Deuteronomy 10:8 f. would speak of the wholetribe being set apart or consecrated For priestly functions.