Learning to Trust at the Tabernacle: Where Faith and Trust Take Root
When God set apart the priesthood and the Levites, He was also calling His people to learn one thing: to entrust their lives into the hands of a holy and faithful God.
GOD said to Aaron: You and your sons and the ancestral house under your charge shall bear any guilt connected with the sanctuary; you and your sons alone shall bear any guilt connected with your priesthood. You shall also associate with yourself your kinsmen the tribe of Levi, your ancestral tribe, to be attached to you and to minister to you, while you and your sons under your charge are before the Tent of the Pact. They shall discharge their duties to you and to the Tent as a whole, but they must not have any contact with the furnishings of the Shrine or with the altar, lest both they and you die. They shall be attached to you and discharge the duties of the Tent of Meeting, all the service of the Tent; but no outsider shall intrude upon you as you discharge the duties connected with the Shrine and the altar, that wrath may not again strike the Israelites. I hereby take your fellow Levites from among the Israelites; they are assigned to you in dedication to GOD, to do the work of the Tent of Meeting; while you and your sons shall be careful to perform your priestly duties in everything pertaining to the altar and to what is behind the curtain. I make your priesthood a service of dedication; any outsider who encroaches shall be put to death. GOD spoke further to Aaron: I hereby give you charge of My gifts, all the sacred donations of the Israelites; I grant them to you and to your sons as a perquisite, a due for all time. This shall be yours from the most holy sacrifices, the offerings by fire: uncertain; lit. “from the fire.” every such offering that they render to Me as most holy sacrifices, namely, every grain offering, purgation offering, and reparation offering of theirs, shall belong to you and your sons. You shall partake of them as most sacred donations: only males may eat them; you shall treat them as consecrated. This, too, shall be yours: the gift offerings of their contributions, all the elevation offerings of the Israelites, I give to you [and your wives], to your sons, and to the daughters that are with you, as a due for all time; everyone of your household who is pure may eat it. All the best of the new oil, wine, and grain—the choice parts that they present to GOD—I give to you. The first fruits of everything in their land, that they bring to GOD, shall be yours; everyone of your household who is pure may eat them. Everything that has been proscribed in Israel shall be yours. The first [male] issue of the womb of every being, human or animal, that is offered to GOD, shall be yours; but you shall have the first-born of human beings redeemed, and you shall also have the firstling of impure animals redeemed. Take as their redemption price, from the age of one month up, the money equivalent of five shekels by the sanctuary weight, which is twenty gerahs. But the firstlings of cattle, sheep, or goats may not be redeemed; they are consecrated. You shall dash their blood against the altar, and turn their fat into smoke as an offering by fire for a pleasing odor to GOD. But their meat shall be yours: it shall be yours like the breast of elevation offering and like the right thigh. All the sacred gifts that the Israelites set aside for GOD I give to you, to your sons, and to the daughters that are with you, as a due for all time. It shall be an everlasting covenant of salt before GOD for you and for your offspring as well. And GOD said to Aaron: You shall, however, have no territorial share among them or own any portion in their midst; I am your portion and your share among the Israelites. And to the Levites I hereby give all the tithes in Israel as their share in return for the services that they perform, the services of the Tent of Meeting. Henceforth, Israelites shall not trespass on the Tent of Meeting, and thus incur guilt and die: only Levites shall perform the services of the Tent of Meeting; others would incur guilt. It is the law for all time throughout the ages. But they shall have no territorial share among the Israelites; for it is the tithes set aside by the Israelites as a gift to GOD that I give to the Levites as their share. Therefore I have said concerning them: They shall have no territorial share among the Israelites. GOD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Levites and say to them: When you receive from the Israelites their tithes, which I have assigned to you as your share, you shall set aside from them one-tenth of the tithe as a gift to GOD. This shall be accounted to you as your gift. As with the new grain from the threshing floor or the flow from the vat, so shall you on your part set aside a gift for GOD from all the tithes that you receive from the Israelites; and from them you shall bring the gift for GOD to Aaron the priest. You shall set aside all gifts due to GOD from everything that is donated to you, from each thing its best portion, the part thereof that is to be consecrated. Say to them further: When you have removed the best part from it, you Levites may
Numbers 18 establishes the Levitical order around the Tabernacle: Aaron and his sons bear the guilt of the sanctuary and priesthood; the tribe of Levi is joined to them to serve at the Tent of Meeting; the priesthood is called 'a service of dedication,' and the holy gifts of Israel are given to the priests as a perpetual due. Faith here is not a vague feeling — it is a confident entrusting of oneself to the God who arranges His house, His servants, and His gifts.