These were the sons of Levi according to their fathers’ houses, the heads of the fathers’ houses as they were registered by the number of their names according to their head count, those doing the work for the service of the house of the Lord, from twenty years old and up.
and that they should keep charge of the tent of meeting and the sanctuary and attend to the sons of Aaron, their brothers, for the service of the house of the Lord.
So they divided them by lots, the one as the other, for there were officers of the sanctuary and officers of God among both the sons of Eleazar and Ithamar.
Shallum the son of Kore, the son of Ebiasaph, the son of Korah, and his brothers from his father’s house, the Korahites, were over the work of the service, gatekeepers of the tabernacle. Their fathers had been over the camp of the Lord, guards at the entrance.
Now these are the singers, heads of the fathers’ houses of the Levites, who stayed in the temple chambers, free from other service, because they were occupied with the work day and night.
In the tent of meeting, outside the veil which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall arrange it from evening to morning before the Lord. It shall be a perpetual statute for the Israelites for generations to come.
Therefore thus says the Lord of Hosts concerning the prophets: “Behold, I will feed them with wormwood and make them drink the water of gall, for from the prophets of Jerusalem profaneness has gone out into all the land.”
But the Levitical priests, the sons of Zadok, who kept the charge of My sanctuary when the Israelites went astray from Me, they shall come near to Me to minister to Me, and they shall stand before Me to offer to Me the fat and the blood, says the Lord God.
Moses said to Aaron, and to Eleazar and Ithamar his sons, “Do not let your hair be loosely disheveled, nor rend your clothes, lest you die, and lest wrath come upon all the people. Instead, let your brothers, the whole house of Israel, mourn the burning which the Lord has caused.
Outside the veil of the sanctuary, in the tent of meeting, Aaron shall arrange it continually, from the evening until the morning before the Lord. It shall be a perpetual statute in your generations.
My anger burns against the shepherds, and I will visit judgment on the male goats. For the Lord of Hosts will visit His flock, the house of Judah, and will make them like His majestic horse in battle.
but you will appoint the Levites over the tent of the testimony, and over all its vessels, and over all things that belong to it. They will carry the tabernacle, and all its vessels, and they will minister to it, and will camp around the tabernacle.
But the Levites will camp around the tabernacle of the testimony, so there will be no wrath on the congregation of the Israelites. And the Levites will keep the charge of the tabernacle of the testimony.
Moses said to Aaron, “Take a censer and put fire in it from off the altar, and put in incense, and go quickly to the assembly, and make an atonement for them, because wrath has gone out from the Lord. The plague has begun.”
I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and to his sons from among the Israelites, to serve the service of the Israelites in the tent of meeting and to make an atonement for the Israelites, so there will be no plague among the Israelites when the Israelites approach the sanctuary.
This command I commit to you, my son Timothy, according to the prophecies that were previously given to you, that by them you might fight a good fight,
but if I am delayed, you might know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.