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This article is about the patriarch. For other uses, see Levi (disambiguation).

Tribal symbol of Levi.

[edit] Biblical account

In the Torah:

Jacob had twelve sons and one daughter: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, daughter Dinah, Joseph, and Benjamin.
Levi was the third child of Jacob and Leah, born in Paddan Aram after Jacob had been working for his uncle and father-in-law Laban for more than seven years of a 20-year employment.
The name "Levi" ("attached", "joining") refers to Leah's hope for Jacob "at last [to] become attached to" her.
Levi's name is derived from לוה, lavah, "to unite, to remain", and related to לויה, livyah, "something attached"^[1].
Levi traveled with his family when Jacob left Paddan Aram suddenly, and was blessed by his grandfather Laban, who departed in peace.
Levi's family then traveled through Mahanaim, Peniel, Succoth, and Shechem.
Speaking for Jacob, Levi and his older brother Simeon misled the people of Shechem, promising to become one people with them if they would become circumcised, and consenting, on that condition, to Shechem marrying their sister Dinah after he had raped her; Levi and Simeon killed all the male Shechemites on the third day after the circumcision surgeries, when the painful and crippling effect was the greatest on the townsmen.^[2]
Levi was castigated by Jacob, but replied without answer, "Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?" (Genesis 34:30-31).
At this time Levi and Simeon also rescued their sister Dinah, who had been kidnapped by Shechem; their brothers plundered the city and seized its wealth (Genesis 34).
Levi's family then traveled through Bethel, Ephrath (now Bethlehem), Migdal Eder, and Mamre, where he met his other grandfather, Isaac.
Because Joseph was the favorite of his father, the ten older brothers sold Joseph into slavery and convinced their father he had been killed by a wild beast.
Joseph became viceroy of Egypt at age 30; after 7 years a famine struck, and Jacob sent his ten oldest sons to Egypt for food during the first year of famine, where they met but did not recognize Joseph.
Levi returned to Jacob with his brothers, who were sent back to Egypt during the second year of famine; Joseph revealed himself and asked them to bring Jacob's entire family to settle in Egypt.
After Levi returned to Jacob the second time, all Jacob's family, including 66 direct descendants, moved to Goshen in Egypt; Levi brings his three sons, Gershon, Kohath, and Merari (Genesis 46:11).
Seventeen years later, Jacob blessed his twelve sons individually from his deathbed; Levi's portion was to be scattered and dispersed, and his anger and fury were cursed, in punishment for his killing men and hamstringing oxen in anger (Genesis 49:5-7).
When Reuben lost the firstborn right ( kingship, priesthood, and the double-portion ), Levi received the priesthood instead.
In a state funeral arranged by Joseph, the sons carried Jacob's body back to Canaan to be buried at Machpelah; Joseph's brothers submitted to him, and he pledged to provide for them.
Levi's grandson Amram married Jochebed, Amram's father's sister (Masoretic) or one of his father's sisters (Septuagint), implying that Jochebed was Levi's daughter or one of them, or that she was otherwise closely related to Levi^[3].
Levi's family grew rapidly into one of the twelve tribes of Israel (Jacob); Levi died at the age of 137.
The tribe of Levi was the only tribe in Egypt to be free of slavery since when the Egyptians asked the Hebrews to work for them ( before the labor was forced on them) the Levites said that they were to busy judging the rest of the tribes, and as a result, were ignored by the Egyptians.
In the later kingdom of Israel, Levi's tribe, the Levites, were set aside for tabernacle and temple service, an office they fulfilled for millennia.
In the Blessing of Moses, Levi and his tribe are referred to as being particularly pious, with some events of the life of Moses (a Levite) given as examples (Deuteronomy 33:8-11).
God told the later prophet Malachi that he had made a covenant to give life and peace to Levi, and that Levi revered Yahweh, was in awe of the Tetragrammaton, instructed truly, upheld peace and morality, and turned many people from sin (Malachi 2:4-6).

[edit] Children

Gershon
Kohath
Merari
Jochebed

[edit] Other accounts

James Kugel posits two sources of the apocryphal Aramaic Levi Document, based on Malachi 2:4-7; Levi is a sage, inducted into the priesthood by angels.^[4]

In the apocryphal Book of Jubilees, Isaac told Levi of the future of his descendants, again predicting priesthood, prophets, and political power,^[5] and Jacob entrusted Levi with "the secrets of the ancients", so that they would be known only to the Levites.^[6] The same Milkah appeared.^[7] Jubilees is also regarded as a Maccabean document by scholars.^[who?]^[8]

In the Aramaic Levi Document, which Kugel dates to the Hasmoneans 133-100 BCE, Levi's descendents will be kings.^[9]

In the apocryphal Testament of Levi, Levi's wife and the mother of his children was Melcha or Milkah, a daughter of Aram.^[10] In the Testament, Levi had two visions: one of eschatological issues, the seven heavens, the Jewish Messiah, and Judgment Day; and one of seven angels bringing him seven insignia of priesthood, prophecy, and judgement. In the latter vision, angels anoint Levi, initiate him as a priest, and tell him of the future of his descendants, mentioning Moses, the Aaronic priesthood, and a future time of priest-kings. Scholars^[who?] date the Testament toward the end of the period of Maccabean priest-kings (153 to 107 BC). The apocryphal Prayer of Asenath, which scholars^[who?] believe dates from within the first to fifth centuries AD,^[11] describes Levi as a prophet and saint, able to forecast the future and to understand "heavenly writings", and someone who admonishes the people to forgive, and to be in awe of God.^[12]

Hagaddah takes the Blessing of Moses as characterizing Levi and Levites as being by far the greatest of their brothers in respect to piety.^[13]

In classical rabbinical literature, the names of Gershon, Kohath, Merari, and Jochebed are interpreted as being reflections on their future destiny.^[14]

[edit] Literal interpreters

Reading the text literally, Henry M. Morris characterizes Levi, after the rape of Dinah, as "bursting into the room ... grieved and bitterly angry", and infuriated beyond limit at Shechem's matter-of-fact, businesslike attitude. He considers Levi's vengeance to involve blasphemy and cruelty, yet to be justified by Shechem's intolerable sins, stating that Levi correctly believed Shechem's entire city deserved judgment. Reuben and Judah, who showed themselves in Joseph's case as being less disposed to bloodshed than Levi and the other brothers, did not take part in Levi's negotiations.^[2]

Literal reading of Jacob's blessing suggests that Simeon and Levi were the closest-knit companions among all the brothers; that their violent natures had apparently resulted in other incidents besides the attack on Shechem, and that they had wantonly destroyed property; that Jacob dissociated himself from their motives and actions, and that he was forbidding them from banding together for their own good. The prophecy of scattering was taken as fulfilled by the tribe of Levi receiving scattered cities rather than their own land inheritance (Joshua 21:1-3).^[15]

[edit] Form critics

Advocates of Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis believe the Torah was compiled in the fifth century BC from several independent, contradictory, hypothetical (nonextant) documents, including the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomic, and Priestly sources and the book of generations.

Advocates^[who?] attribute Levi's genealogy to the "book of generations"^[16]. Scholars^[who?] attribute Moses's birth narrative, which also mentions Amram and Jochebed, to the earlier "Elohist source". According to these scholars,^[who?] the genealogy is an aetiological myth reflecting there being four different groups among the Levites, the Gershonites, Kohathites, Merarites, and Aaronids,^[17] and Aaron, the eponymous ancestor of the Aaronids, could not consistently be portrayed as a brother to Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.^{[citation needed]} Their hypothetical reconstruction of the "Elohist source" mentions only that both parents were Levites (without identifying their names; Exodus 2:1-2). Some scholars^[who?] suspect that the "Elohist source" accounts to Moses both matrilineal and patrilineal descent from Levites in order to magnify his religious credentials^[17].

Scholars^[who?] date the Blessing of Jacob to a period between one and two centuries prior to the Babylonian captivity^[13]^[16]. Some scholars^[who?] regard Jacob's "curse" and Dinah as an aetiological postdiction to explain the fates of the tribe of Simeon and the Levites; they propose, without textual support, as a simpler explanation of the Levites' scattered nature, that the priesthood was originally open to any tribe, but gradually became seen as a distinct tribe itself (the Levites).^[13]^[17] levi is the coolest 1(559)841-3725

Scholars^[who?] attribute the Blessing of Moses to the period just before the "Deuteronomist source".^[16]

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] See also

[edit] Citations

^ Strong's Concordance, 3867, 3878-3880.
^ ^a ^b Morris, Henry M. (1976). The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House. pp. 511-517. "Dinah had been the only and beloved sister in a large family of boys, and they had all been taught the sacredness of the marriage relation."
^ New American Bible, footnote to Exodus 6:20.
^ James L. Kugel, The Ladder of Jacob (Princeton University Press: 2006), 164
^ Jubilees 31:12-17.
^ Jubilees 45:16.
^ Jubilees 34:20.
^ Jewish Encyclopedia, "Book of Jubilees".
^ Kugel, 167
^ Testament of Levi 11.
^ Jewish Encyclopedia, "Asenath".
^ Jewish Encyclopedia, "Levi".
^ ^a ^b ^c Jewish Encyclopedia.
^ Numbers Rabbah 3:12.
^ Morris, Henry M. (1976). The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House. p. 653.
^ ^a ^b ^c Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote The Bible?.
^ ^a ^b ^c Peake's Commentary on the Bible.