Levi in the Heavens Becomes a Priest

The dying words of Jacob's sons are among the oldest Jewish texts outside the Torah itself. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which scholars date to the second or third century BCE, records what each son said to his children on his deathbed. Levi's testament is the strangest of the twelve. He did not speak mainly about ethics or the future. He spoke about what he had seen.

He said: when we were pasturing the flocks in Abel-Meholah, the spirit of understanding of God came upon me. I saw all of humanity corrupting its ways. I saw injustice building walls and impiety sitting on towers. I fell into grief. I prayed. Then sleep came over me, and I saw a tall mountain, and the heavens opened.

The Testament of Levi, preserved in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and corroborated by fragments found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Aramaic Levi Document, describes what he found inside those heavens. The first heaven held a great sea, hanging in the air. The second heaven was brighter and more radiant than the first. The third heaven contained the holy Temple, and God sat upon the Throne of Glory.

God spoke to him: Levi, upon you I have bestowed the blessing of the priesthood, until I come and dwell in the midst of Israel. An angel carried him back to earth and placed in his hands a shield and a sword. The angel's message was specific: execute vengeance on Shechem for Dinah. I will be with you. The Lord has sent me. Levi asked the angel his name. The angel answered: I am the angel that intercedes for the people of Israel, that it may not be destroyed utterly, for every evil spirit attacks it. Then he woke.

On the way back to his father, near Gebal, he found a brass shield in the road. It was the same shield he had seen in his dream. He understood then that the dream was not merely a dream. When he reached home, he counseled his brother Reuben that the men of Shechem should be made to circumcise themselves, because Levi was still shaking with rage over what had been done to Dinah. They did what he urged. Simeon killed Hamor. Levi killed Shechem first. Their brothers destroyed the city. Jacob rebuked them bitterly.

Levi argued back: be not wroth. God will exterminate the Canaanites through this. He will give the land to you and to your seed. Henceforth Shechem will be called the city of fools. Jacob did not accept this answer, and in his final blessing he would remember what Levi and Simeon had done.

A second vision came when the family had been dwelling at Beth-lehem for seventy days. Seven men in white came to Levi. Each brought a garment and invested him with it, speaking as they dressed him: the ephod of understanding, the robe of truth, the mitre of dignity, the shoulderpieces of prophecy. Then they said: henceforth be the priest of the Lord, you and your seed unto eternity.

Two days after this vision, Levi and Judah went to their grandfather Isaac, who blessed Levi in exactly the words the angels had spoken. Then Jacob had his own vision and also saw that Levi had been appointed. Through Jacob, a tenth of all his possessions was set apart for God, with Levi as the instrument of that dedication. The Aramaic Levi Document, dated by scholars to the third century BCE and found in Cave 4 at Qumran, adds that Isaac then taught Levi the full laws of the priesthood: the correct wood for the altar, the proper measurements of salt, the exact sequence of sacrificial rites, details more technical and complete than anything preserved in Leviticus.

On his deathbed, Levi told his children all of this. Then he quoted what he had learned from the writings of Enoch: that his descendants would sin against God in future times, and would suffer for it, and that afterward God would raise up a new priest, to whom all the words of the Lord would be revealed. His final instruction was simple. Light or darkness. The law of the Lord or the works of the adversary. His sons answered: before the Lord we will walk according to His law. Levi said: the Lord is witness and the angels are witnesses. I am witness and you are witnesses. Then he stretched out his feet and was gathered to his fathers at the age of a hundred and thirty-seven, the longest-lived of the twelve brothers.

What makes the apocryphal tradition surrounding Levi so remarkable is that it insists the priesthood was not a human institution. It was not assigned by Moses. It was not invented at Sinai. It was decreed in heaven, before Levi was old enough to know what a priest was, and confirmed by angels who brought the garments themselves.