² Let your brothers, the family of Levi, come near with you, so that they may be joined with you and be your servants: but you and your sons with you are to go in before the ark of witness.

⁴ They are to be joined with you in the care of the Tent of meeting, doing whatever is needed for the Tent: and no one of any other family may come near you.

³⁴ And she was with child again, and gave birth to a son; and said, Now at last my husband will be united to me, because I have given him three sons: so he was named Levi.

¹⁵ But as for the priests, the sons of Zadok, who took care of my holy place when the children of Israel were turned away from me, they are to come near me to do my work, they will take their places before me, offering to me the fat and the blood, says the Lord;

¹⁶ And they took their places in their right order, as it was ordered in the law of Moses, the man of God: the priests draining out on the altar the blood given them by the Levites.

³⁹ And Zadok the priest, with his brothers the priests, before the House of the Lord in the high place at Gibeon;

⁴⁰ To give burned offerings to the Lord on the altar of burned offerings morning and evening, every day, as it is ordered in the law of the Lord which he gave to Israel;

⁷ And Moses put the rods before the Lord in the Tent of witness.

⁴⁰ To be a sign, kept in memory for ever by the children of Israel, that no man who is not of the seed of Aaron has the right of burning spices before the Lord, so that he may not be like Korah and his band: as the Lord said to him by the mouth of Moses.

²² And then the Levites went in to do their work in the Tent of meeting before Aaron and his sons: all the orders which the Lord had given Moses about the Levites were put into effect.

¹⁹ And I have given them to Aaron and to his sons, from among the children of Israel, to undertake for them all the work of the Tent of meeting, and to take away sin from the children of Israel so that no evil may come on them when they come near the holy place.

¹⁵ And after the holy place and all its vessels have been covered up by Aaron and his sons, when the tents of the people go forward, the sons of Kohath are to come and take it up; but the holy things may not be touched by them for fear of death.

⁶ Make the tribe of Levi come near, and put them before Aaron the priest, to be his helpers,

⁷ In order that they may be responsible to him and to all Israel for the care of the Tent of meeting, and to do the work of the House;

⁸ And they will have the care of all the vessels of the Tent of meeting, and will do for the children of Israel all the necessary work of the House.

⁹ Give the Levites to Aaron and his sons; so that they may be his without question from among the children of Israel.

¹⁰ And give orders that Aaron and his sons are to keep their place as priests; any strange person who comes near is to be put to death.

¹¹ And the Lord said to Moses,

¹² See, I have taken the Levites out of the children of Israel to be mine in place of the first sons of the children of Israel;

¹³ For all the first sons are mine; on the day when I put to death all the first sons in the land of Egypt, I took for myself every first male birth of man and beast. They are mine; I am the Lord.