I thought it was odd back in Exodus when God said that every firstborn son was His. It made sense since he sort of saved all the Israelite firstborn sons from that plague that He sent, but I don’t remember ever hearing anything about that from later in the Bible. It turns out that’s because God changed that rule shortly after he made it.
Well, He didn’t change it really, but He said that He would accept the entire tribe of Levi in liue of the firstborn sons from the rest of the camp. Another part of the census taken involved counting all the men of the tribe of Levi as well as all the newborns from all the other tribes. It turned out there was almost the same number of both of them. The Israelites just paid the difference to the Levites for the extra couple hundred infants and God called it square.
The levites were subdivided into little platoons serving under Aaron and his sons. You know, the one’s who were left after that incident with the incense back in chapter 10 of Leviticus. They are divided into the Gershonites, the Kohathites and the Merarites. Each platoon is led by one of the heads of the Levite families. I’ll bet you can’t guess what their names were. Then each of the three groups is given the responsibility to carry and care for a certain collection of the tabernacle structure and furnishings. There was a quick reminder to the sons of Aaron to make sure everything is always covered and ready to go before the Kohthites, Gershonites and Merarites start packing it up to make sure none of them accidently see something holy from the sanctuary and die from it.
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