Up to page 174 of 314 of the Clock shavings pdf. I'm up to this part..

Strange Service: The Priesthood of the Ordo Lapsit Exillis The Curse of the Levites

In ancient Israel, the practice of priesthood was restricted to those of the tribe of Levi. Every single male Levite was required to serve in the priesthood. That was the only occupation allowed to him. This was a circumstance demanded by Jehovah himself. He had personally stipulated not only that all priests should be Levites, and all Levites priests, but that the priests should also be barred from owning property.

Their only source of income was the tithes and other offerings given to them by the people of Israel in exchange for their priestly services. The people were obliged to give ten percent of their own earnings to the priesthood, and to pay for each priestly duty performed as well. But the Levites were not allowed to own any land.

While the other eleven tribes each had their own territory within Israel, the Levites were obliged to live scattered throughout the other territories. Sometimes they stayed in publicly- owned housing, in or near the centers of religious worship. Sometimes they lived as guests at the houses of certain wealthy families who could afford to hire a personal priest.

The Old Testament is very clear about the fact that service in Jehovah's priesthood was, more than anything else, a burden. As it states in Numbers 18:

And the LORD said unto Aaron, Thou and thy sons and thy father's house with thee shall bear the iniquity of the sanctuary: and thou and thy sons with thee shall bear the iniquity of your priesthood. And I, behold, I have taken your brethren the Levites from among the children of

Israel: to you they are given as a gift for the LORD, to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation....

But the Levites shall do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they shall bear their iniquity: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations, that among the children of Israel they have no inheritance. But the tithes of the children of Israel, which they offer as an heave offering unto the LORD, I have given to the Levites to inherit: therefore I have said unto them, Among the children of Israel they shall have no inheritance.

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Thus speak unto the Levites, and say unto them, When ye take of the children of Israel the tithes which I have given you from them for your inheritance, then ye shall offer up an heave offering of it for the LORD, even a tenth part of the tithe.

The fact is that the Levites were chosen for the priesthood partially as a punishment for the behavior of their progenitor, Levi. He, along with his brother Simeon, had waged a genocidal war against the nation of Shechem. This was done contrary to the wishes of Jehovah, and of their father, Jacob. It led Jacob to pronounce a curse upon the two sons when he was on his deathbed. He stated:

Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. a my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

However, it wasn't until the Exodus that Jehovah cursed them with the iniquity of priesthood. On the night of the first Passover, the Lord slaughtered the firstborn of every house in Egypt. But He passed over the houses of the Hebrews, who had painted the doors of their houses with lamb's blood at His command. Thus did the Angel of Death know to leave those houses alone.

Yet in exchange for sparing the firstborn of the Hebrews, Jehovah demanded a substitute sacrifice. The sons of the tribe of Levi were chosen as the substitute. Although they were allowed to continue living, their inheritance was taken away from them. Moses and Aaron (both Levites) led the Hebrews out of Egypt and initiated an everlasting covenant between them and the Lord.

The Hebrews would pay homage and sacrifice to Him in exchange for His protection. The Levites were then called to the priesthood, to be the mediators of this contract.

In a sense, the Levites became the most powerful people in Israel. Yet they had no property. They were the scapegoats who took on the ultimate responsibility. If the people sinned against Jehovah, then He would punish the people in general, but would punish the Levites foremost for failing to properly mediate. If He punished the people of Israel, then the people blamed the priests for failing to secure the Lord's favor.

Thus the Levite priests endured much, and wholly earned the tithes that they received. The tithes were not considered gifts, but rather payment for services rendered. The priests used the money not only to finance religious activities, but for their own personal needs as well. This was considered not a potential corrupting influence, but as a bulwark against such things. After all, a well-paid priesthood is less likely to accept bribes to perform impious deeds.

Nevertheless, the priests of Israel often did indulge in impious deeds. Most notably, they frequently accepted money in exchange for performing rites to heathen gods. Although Jehovah may have looked down upon such behavior, it was considered quite normal in Israel, especially when times were hard financially.

In Louis Ginzberg's The Legends of the Jews, the author writes about a certain Levite priest, the grandson of Moses. Early on, the lad was told by his grandfather that if a priest cannot earn an acceptable living serving Jehovah, it is better to supplement one's income by serving heathen gods for heathen clients, rather than begging for handouts from fellow Israelites. As Ginzberg writes:

From his grandfather he had heard the rule that a man should do 'Abodah Zarah' for hire rather than be dependent upon his fellow-creatures. The meaning of 'Abodah Zarah' here naturally is 'strange,' in the sense of 'unusual' work, but he took the term in its ordinary acceptation of 'service of strange gods.'

The worship of strange gods is often referred to in the Old Testament as "whoring," This may be because heathen religious rituals often involved rites of "sacred prostitution," with the use of "temple prostitutes" who were paid for their services. In these cultures, as in the Jehovahite tradition, there was quite a significance placed on the relationship between the services of the priests and the money they were paid to perform it. Simply put, the tithes paid to the priests, along with the prayers, animal sacrifices, and other rituals, in a way provided the energy (spiritual and otherwise) upon which the priesthood operated. The money paid by the congregation to the priests was a financial sacrifice to the god's they were servicing.

This is illustrated by the fact that such strange rites often involved the worship of religious idols made out of gold and silver that had been donated to the cause. In The Book of Judges, we read about Micah, the Levite priest. Micah performed services towards a handful of religious idols that he had crafted out of silver given by his mother Delilah specifically for this purpose. By donating this silver, she was providing a seed upon which Micah's lucrative priesthood would grow. Then he was able to charge believing heathens money to perform rites on their behalf in homage to these idols.

The same principle is demonstrated in the story of the golden calf in Exodus. The story says that this item was fashioned by the high priest Aaron from the golden jewelry donated by the public. Thus it "contained," spiritually, the covenant between these people and Belial, the deity it represented.

You could say that the covenant was bought with the price of that gold. This was why, afterward, Moses had them drink the gold as a punishment. He wanted them to internalize the curse that Jehovah had placed upon them for worshipping the calf.