The Forgotten Priestly Function

The priesthood in Israel performed numerous functions, all of which have some spiritual application to Christian living.

The Israelite and Judean priesthood offered sacrifices to God, prefiguring the praise and worship of believers. The priesthood performed an intercessory function, offering sacrifices to cover sins. The priesthood taught the law, just as Christians who let the word of Christ dwell in them richly are able to teach and admonish one another in all wisdom. Moreover, the priesthood judged between clean and unclean, just as the Christian must learn to avoid earthly ties and partnerships.

Priesthood by Analogy

There is more. Certain members of the priesthood in the household of Aaron also diagnosed disease, made legal decisions and discerned the will of God by sacred lot. Each of these roles has some spiritual analogy or counterpart in the lives of believers.

Further, there were functions unique to the Levitical priesthood prior to the building of the first temple in Jerusalem. Each division of the priesthood had responsibility for the maintenance, care and transportation of some portion of the tabernacle and its furnishings up to and including the Ark of the Covenant. In this respect, the priesthood was a visible testimony among the nations and within the nation to the God of Israel. To the extent that Christians live out the spiritual equivalent of Israel’s wilderness experience, we too may find ourselves engaged in similar disciplines and fulfilling similar roles.

When we speak of the biblical doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, we recognize that, with some minor limitations connected with time and place, all believers perform spiritual services analogous to the literal and physical service of the Israelite priesthood. But believers frequently overlook one of the more important functions of the “traveling priesthood”, especially today, when the spirit of the age tells us to mind our own business and to be tolerant of everyone and everything.

Partly, our blindness to priesthood in its travel mode may be because in one sense we have already entered God’s rest and are enjoying the milk and honey of our Promised Land in Christ. In another very real sense, however, we are still marching toward our spiritual Canaan, otherwise the warnings to Christians in 1 Corinthians 10 about behaving like Israel did are essentially meaningless. All the situations of which Paul speaks in that chapter took place while the priesthood was still traveling, long before it put down roots in Zion.

A Priesthood on Guard

A traveling priesthood is a priesthood on guard. We find this truth patiently spelled out in Numbers 3, where the word translated “guard” occurs ten times in the chapter, 29 times in all throughout Numbers, many more times than it occurs anywhere else in scripture.

“Wait,” you say. “That’s not in my Bible.” Perhaps it isn’t, which may go a long way to explaining why I call guarding the forgotten priestly function. If it’s not forgotten outright, it’s certainly the most readily overlooked or minimized on all the lists of priestly functions I could find.

That includes my own. Oops.

The Hebrew word translated “guard” is mišmereṯ, it’s derived from the word for “jail” or “prison”, and its primary, literal meaning is to watch, guard or protect. Probably in view of the obvious association between the Levitical priesthood and the priesthood of believers today, many translations, modern and traditional, understandably veer away from the somewhat distasteful imagery of a Bubba the Prison Guard, complete with mirrored sunglasses and flailing nightstick. They couch this particular priestly function in euphemisms more acceptable to modern sensibilities. The NIV and NASB go with “perform duties”, the KJV has “keep charge” and the NKJV “attend to needs”. Good News has “do the work required”. Everybody’s favorite Roman Catholic translation (Douay-Rheims) has the flowery “observe whatsoever appertaineth to the service of the multitude”.

Well, sure. When there aren’t any actual prisoners, guards have to do something with their time, right?

Guarding is … Guarding

All the same, notwithstanding the deft spiritualizing of the translators, the word means “guard”, and the way Numbers 3 uses it shows us the divisions of the Levitical priesthood were expected to do a whole lot more than just lift, carry, polish and store. “If any outsider comes near,” says verse 10, “he shall be put to death.” Hey, somebody had to escort the invader or usurper to his fate, right? The final two appearances of the word are in verse 38, where the role of Moses and Aaron and his sons, camped on the east of the tabernacle is described this way: “guarding [mišmereṯ] the sanctuary itself, to protect [mišmereṯ] the people of Israel. And any outsider who came near was to be put to death.” The priestly guards lifted, carried, packed, unpacked, built and unbuilt the tabernacle, but they were also given very specific responsibilities depending on their lineage in order to ensure than none of the tabernacle fixtures went missing to pilferers or became damaged in transit. They were the protectors of the tabernacle.

I don’t know about you, but that “guarding” job sounds awfully literal to me. It sounds suspiciously like the priests might have to actually lay hands on some sneak thief, prowler, tomfooling kid or would-be-defiler and hold him until the sentence prescribed in the chapter could be carried out by the congregation, as was normally the case. Protection may get physical. It certainly involves sounding the alarm when necessary.

This same role and its purpose are restated in chapter 18:

“They [the entire tribe of Levi] shall join you and keep guard over the tent of meeting for all the service of the tent, and no outsider shall come near you. And you shall keep guard over the sanctuary and over the altar, that there may never again be wrath on the people of Israel.”

So then, part of the priesthood’s mandate was to prevent an outbreak of God’s judgment in response to violation, defilement or other invasive act so that there would not be unfavorable repercussions for God’s people. They guarded the things of God from the nation and the nation from his wrath.

Who Goes There?

Naturally, in the vast majority of cases, where the problem was ignorance or unfamiliarity with the law, physical intervention to prevent an act of defilement would be unnecessary. A simple, “Halt, who goes there?” might do the job. With kids goofing off, merely the sight of an adult member of the priesthood poking his head out of his tent to see what was going on would be enough to deter foolishness or frivolous familiarity with the holy things. But this is why guards are generally posted: to keep people from becoming offenders rather than having to punish them severely for their actions after the fact. The very existence of guards is a warning sign to anyone with working brain cells.

Even the location of the Levite camp strongly implies its protective function with respect to both the people of God and the holy things of which they had charge. We may think of the location of the priestly tribes in the camp as symbolic of the intimacy between God and his servants, and that is certainly the case. But we should not overlook the fact that the four divisions of the tribe of Levi were also conveniently positioned to intercept anyone attempting unauthorized or frivolous access to the tabernacle. Moses instructed the Gershonites to camp to the west of the tabernacle, the Kohathites to the south, the sons of Merari to the north and the Aaronites to the east. The house of God was entirely surrounded by watchers. Anyone who wanted access had to wind his way through the tents of the tabernacle guards to get to where he wanted to go. And this is precisely what the text says: they were guarding the sanctuary to protect the people.

A God with Guards?

On the one hand, we may think guards and protectors unnecessary clutter, and they were. God had already demonstrated he was perfectly capable of dealing with anyone who defiled the tabernacle or broke the law personally and with great finality. Nadab and Abihu were grisly evidence of that. Later, Uzzah’s untimely death when transporting the Ark of the Covenant would provide a sobering reminder that even an accident or well-meaning error in the service of God could be fatal. God is very much capable of defending himself. He didn’t need guards then, and he doesn’t today.

The nation needed guards. Would-be defilers, potential trespassers and sloppy worshipers definitely did. But God didn’t. The priests were a buffer to prevent such incidents from occurring. YHWH did not need to be guarded, but he graciously allowed certainly Israelites to serve him, albeit invariably less competently, in that capacity.

Holy things need to be treated with respect. The priesthood served as a guard for the hallowed precincts of God’s dwelling place on earth. Which would have been preferable: Nadab and Abihu incinerated, or Nadab and Abihu cautioned and talked out of doing something stupid? I don’t know the answer to that with respect to the necessity of impressing an important lesson on subsequent generations, but I am 100% clear on it so far as Nadab and Abihu were concerned!

Guards with Spears and Swords

Probably the most famous and commended priest in the Old Testament was Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, who impaled an adulterous Israelite man and his Moabite girlfriend with a single stroke, short-circuiting a divine outbreak against the nation, for which God granted him a perpetual priesthood. He was a priestly guard, and a good one. He understood the job. But he was not a lone wolf in this respect. The Levites were a special group even before the implementation of the law laid out in Numbers 3. During the offense of the golden calf, Moses cried out, “Who is on the Lord’s side?” Who showed up? The Levites, that’s who. Members of the priestly tribe killed 3,000 of their brothers that day, and were thus set apart for the service of the Lord.

Nor did the priestly service of guarding stop when Solomon built the temple and the Levitical encampment around the holy things was not quite so comprehensive. 2 Chronicles 26 tells the story of Uzziah’s attempt to burn incense in the temple. Azariah and eighty priests withstood the king of Israel, warned him of his danger, and rushed him outside when God struck him with leprosy. They were guards, and they guarded quite literally.

The Christian Guardian Priest

As with all the better-remembered functions of priesthood, the role of priest-as-guard surely has its application to the Christian life, though probably not very often with spear in hand like Phinehas. I am not talking here about “guarding the table”, as some do, or lecturing children from running in the “sanctuary”, but about reminding our fellow believers of the dangers of frivolous, undiscerning or malicious behavior in the congregation of a holy God. He knows, he sees, he is present and sin will be punished, not just in eternity but right here and now.

When Paul told the Ephesians elders, “I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears”, he was describing his function as a member of a guardian priesthood. He does the same thing in 1 Corinthians 4, admonishing beloved children. Moreover, the apostle charges not just elders and overseers, but the ordinary believers under their care with the responsibility of keeping separate the holy and the profane: “Admonish the disorderly”, Paul writes to all members of the priesthood in Thessalonica, whatever their station in life. Jude writes, “Save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.” These are priestly functions Jude is describing. The man in the Lord’s Supper who reminds us, “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup” is performing a priestly role in that moment. We hope he is doing it accurately and well, and not simply indulging the all-too-common temptation to play Karen in front of the congregation, but either way, the words of the apostle may still guard the dull and unwary from an unpleasant fate.

Guarding the Flock

Even those for whom it is inappropriate to speak out publicly and those who could not physically restrain anyone from anything are ministers of a guardian priesthood. What was Job doing when he consecrated his children and offered burnt offerings on their behalf? He was performing a priestly function long before there was a formalized priesthood or instructions about its role, interceding on behalf of those who did not have his awareness of the holiness of God. Any mother or wife can do the same for her unsaved or immature loved ones, appealing to the Lord to draw them to himself and to forgive their frequent violations and provocations. Perhaps this is what it means that the unbelieving husband is set apart because of his wife, and vice versa. Perhaps you too were once saved by a single, impassioned intercessory prayer. I almost surely was.

The Father seeks worshipers. Christ commanded his servants to make disciples. The world needs testimony. The apostles promote discernment. All these are priestly functions, and we recognize them for what they are. Let us also recognize our responsibility as guardians of the hallowed ground on which we tread, and keep an eye out for those who have not yet learned to take off their sandals.

You don’t need to be formally named an overseer to guard the flock. That’s already your job as a living stone in a holy priesthood.