Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Priestly Courses by Lot
1 Chronicles 24:1-31
1 These were the divisions of the sons of Aaron. The sons of Aaron: Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. · WEB
Twenty-four priestly courses are assigned by lot before witnesses, and the arrangement claims no originality at all.
The priestly register opens on a loss. Aaron had four sons; Nadab and Abihu died before their father, and had no children 1 Chronicles 24:2. The whole priesthood of Israel descends from the two who were left. A list of privileges begins by recording what happened to the men who took the office lightly.
The two surviving houses are unequal — sixteen chief men from one, eight from the other 1 Chronicles 24:4 — and the method of assignment is chosen with that in mind. They are divided impartially by drawing lots 1 Chronicles 24:5.
The lot is doing specific work here. Twenty-four turns of duty at the sanctuary are the most desirable appointments in the country, and the larger house has twice the claim of the smaller. Casting lots takes the distribution out of the hands of everyone in the room, including the king. The last verse says so plainly: the same procedure applied to the chief's household even as those of his younger brother 1 Chronicles 24:31.
The process is also minuted. A scribe wrote them in the presence of the king, the princes, the two senior priests, and the heads of the households 1 Chronicles 24:6, alternating between the two lines as the lots came out. This is a document produced under witness, and the witnesses are named.
The result is a rota that fixed the shape of Israel's worship for centuries. Twenty-four courses, each serving in turn, is what put a particular priest at a particular altar on a particular week for as long as a temple stood.
And the chapter disclaims its own originality. The ordering was according to the ordinance given to them by Aaron their father, as Yahweh, the God of Israel, had commanded him 1 Chronicles 24:19. Nothing is presented as new. A king and a scribe and two high priests spend a chapter organizing something, and the finished arrangement is credited to a command given generations earlier.
The remaining Levites are then divided the same way, casting lots alongside the sons of Aaron 1 Chronicles 24:31. What governs the sanctuary governs the men who assist in it, and the same method reaches both.
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