Numbers 4:34

"And Moses and Aaron and the princes of the congregation numbered the sons of the Kohathites by their families, and by their fathers' houses, from thirty years old and upward even unto fifty years old, every one that entered upon the service, for work in the tent of meeting: and those that were numbered of them by their families, were two thousand seven hundred and fifty."

For our purpose, it is sufficient here merely to give a summary of what is presented in the balance of the chapter by this extensive repetition: There were numbered of the Kohathites 2,750, and of the Gershonites 2,630, and of the Merarites 3,200, yielding a total of 8,580.

It is clear enough that the Levites, who were commissioned as workers charged with many responsibilities connected with the sacred tabernacle and its furnishings, were not, in any sense, priests, despite the privileged and protected status they enjoyed. The critical notion that all of this arrangement resulted from the designs of a priesthood in post-exilic times to DOWNGRADE the Levites is unacceptable. The futile efforts to bolster this opinion usually include references to situations long after Moses' time in which Levites indeed served as priests, or performed priestly duties. However, arguments based on the practice of the Israelites in subsequent centuries prove nothing, for it is written that, "Jeroboam made priests of all the people, that were not of the sons of Levi" (1 Kings 12:31). What we have revealed in this chapter is the way it was intended by God Himself from the very beginning of the priesthood of Israel. Note the recurrence of the clause, "And Jehovah spake unto Moses!" Until the critics are able to delete these words from our Bibles, they are powerless to write their own. In many ways, even in the building of the Temple itself, there were wholesale violations of God's Word by the whole nation of Israel in subsequent centuries.