Joshua 21:3

A SUMMARY OF THE CITIES ASSIGNED

"And the children of Israel gave unto the Levites out of their inheritance, according to the commandment of Jehovah, these cities with their suburbs.

"And the lot came out for the families of the Kohathites: and the children of Aaron the priest, who were of the Levites, and by lot out of the tribe of Judah, and out of the tribe of the Simeonites, and out of the tribe of Benjamin, thirteen cities.

"And the rest of the children of Kohath had by lot out of the families of the tribe of Ephraim, and out of the tribe of Dan, and out of the half-tribe of Manasseh, ten cities.

"And the children of Gershon had by lot out of the families of the tribe of Issachar, and out of the tribe of Asher, and out of the tribe of Naphtali, and out of the tribe of Manasseh in Bashan, thirteen cities.

"The children of Merari according to their families had out of the tribe of Reuben, and out of the tribe of Gad, and out of the tribe of Zebulun, twelve cities.

"And the Children of Israel gave by lot unto the Levites these cities with their suburbs, as Jehovah commanded by Moses."

"Thirteen cities ..." (Joshua 21:4) The simple fact that the children of Aaron at that time could have numbered only a few families shows this assignment of `thirteen cities' to them to be purely imaginary."[6] Again, this is due to a failure of the critic to read the Bible. "It appears (1 Chronicles 24) that the two surviving sons of Aaron, Eleazar and Ithamar, had twenty-four sons!"[7] The same author declared that, "Their number by this time might well have been several thousand."[8] Besides that, as Plummer noted: (1) the cities, at first, were probably not inhabited exclusively by priests; (2) all of these cities had not yet been taken from the Canaanites; and (3) the cities themselves, in some cases, were very small.[9]

The Aaronic priests are all located within the area of Judah and Benjamin. The working of providence is seen in this, because all of the priests drew cities in that area which, in time, would become the center of Israel's worship in Jerusalem. Cook thought this was because God "chose Jerusalem beforetime as the site of His Temple."[10] We partially disagree with this, because it appears from 2 Samuel 7 that a Temple was never in God's purpose at all. God no doubt intended that the Tabernacle should continue to be the location of God's altar after the entry into Canaan. The Temple was David's idea, and, although God accommodated to it, we believe the purpose of the providential placement of these priests in the Jerusalem area was to have them near the Tabernacle, not the Temple.