THAT there should be two classes of priests is in harmony with the character of the institutions of the age to come. It is a mixed dispensation in which death reigns in a population ruled by immortals; and it is suitable that the mortal element should be utilized in the lower branches of the service. And it is a feature of exquisite moral beauty that the particular form in which this mortal element should appear in connection with the temple service should be the exclusion of a class from the higher grade on the ground of former faithlessness. Yet that the Levites should appear in the service is in harmony with the fact that the kingdom is a restoration. That they should have the drudgery of the service is in harmony with their past history. That the honourable part of direct communion with God should be reserved for the Sons of Righteousness is beautiful.
On the face of it, it appears a feasible contention that as the degraded Levites are the mortal descendants of a faithless order, so the sons of Zadok are the mortal descendants of a faithful order. But this apparent feasibility becomes an impossibility in view of the supercession of the Mosaic priesthood by Christ, and the testimony that the "priests unto God" in the age to come are the immortal saints. And it is out of harmony with the moral fitness of things; for whereas the degradation of descendants is a fitting retribution for the unfaithfulness of a class, the exaltation of descendants is not the revealed recompense of righteousness. Immortality is not rewarded vicariously, though sin may be appropriately visited in this way. "The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him: and the wickedness
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of the wicked shall be upon him" (Ezek. 18: 20). " The righteous hath hope in hig. death." This hope is the hope of individual resurrection to "glory, honour, and immortality". As Jesus plainly puts it, "They that have done good (shall come forth) to the resurrection of life" (John 5 : 29).
That this resurrection, at the coming of Christ to set up the kingdom, includes the faithful of the Mosaic age, we know from Christ and his revelation to John in Patmos; "Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets" is Christ's own specification (Luke 13: 28): and by his revelation to John, his words are that at "the time of the dead" (the sounding of the seventh trumpet), God will judge them and give reward to His servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear His name, small and great (Rev. 11 : 18).
These principles require that the sons of Zadok "that kept the charge of my sanctuary, when the children of Israel went astray", should be individual righteous men of previous generations, and therefore immortal. The difference in the way they are described, as distinguished from the description of the rejected Levites, would indicate this distinction. The.. degraded Levites are "the Levites that are gone away far from me"; this is a class, a tribe, a whole body of people; but the Levites that are to " come near to do the office of a priest" are " the sons of Zadok that kept the charge of my sanctuary". These are individual Levites selected from the whole body of Levites. Zadok was a faithful priest, but the sons of Zadok-in the family sense-are not distinguished for faithfulness above others in Israel's history; but individual sons of righteousness, as contrasted with the sons of Belial, there have always been. There is therefore a sparkle of beautiful analogy in the employment of a family name that should define their class, while actually specifying a prominent member of that family.
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