The sons of Levi. All Levites had special title within the theocracy of Israel, but only the sons of Aaron could actually approach the altar to offer sacrifices. Other Levites were assigned to various other tasks related to keeping up the tabernacle, and later the temple.
It’s tempting to try to think of the Levites, and especially the priests, in kind of the same way people think of the Vatican or the president of the LDS church or something where these guys are in charge of the temple because they have a direct line to God. They’re listening to Him so we need to listen to them.
This doesn’t seem to be the case though through the last couple books. When priests are mentioned, they are usually referred to as so-and-so’s priest, like the king’s priests for example. Chronicles mentions that King David assigned a bunch of Levites to be in charge of music in the temple, so obviously the king is able to boss the priests around. Even Aaron back in Moses’s time was aware of (and not very happy about) the fact that he and his sons were kind of like glorified janitors, with no authority beyond doing exactly what the law and Moses told them to.
The guys with the direct line to God are the prophets, who have the authority to anoint kings themselves. So it looks like it goes God, prophets, kings, priests, other levites, and then the general public in terms of who gets to tell whom what to do. The trick is though, the kings are in charge of the day to day affairs of the country and, more importantly, the army, so there’s an enforcement issue when prophets roll in and try to tell kings what to do.
1 Chronicles 6:55 says that Hebron was made a city of refuge and given to the Levites, but back in the book of Joshua, Hebron was given to Caleb, the scout who had originally gone out with Joshua to reconnoiter Canaan for Moses and came back with a positive attitude about it, so there’s a bit of a conflict there. It turns out the city itself, and the pasture land around it, were given to the Levites, but the fields and villages in the area were given to Caleb. That must have been pretty awkward. Herders and planters didn’t get along under the best of circumstances in the ancient world. Also, I think I mentioned before how Caleb really seems to get the short end of the stick. Joshua is basically the unofficial king of Israel, while Caleb, who we’re told did most of the same stuff Joshua did, got Hebron thirty years later. Now we find out that e didn’t even get all of Hebron, just some of the leftover bits of Hebron.
I’ll bet that being right next to a city of refuge really brought down local property values too.
