Elisama entered the hall attended by Helon. He announced the name of the young man and of his father, and produced extracts from the registers, which ascertained the legitimacy of his birth. The tribe of Levi, when numbered in the wilderness, contained 22,000 males above a month old,[53] and 8580 males between thirty and fifty;[54] they were all devoted to the service of Jehovah; but only a single family, that of Aaron, had the privilege of furnishing priests for the altar; the rest of the Levites were only the servants of the priests.[55] In David’s time the number of the Levites from twenty years and upwards was 38,000;[56] that of the priests perhaps not 6000. Aaron had four sons, two of whom were punished with an early death in the wilderness, for their presumption: the other two, Eleazar and Ithamar, had such a numerous posterity, that these were divided into sixteen and eight, or twenty-four courses or families.[57] As only four were found among those who returned from the captivity, these were divided into the original number of twenty-four, which bore the name of the ancestor of each family.[58] Helon, by his father’s side, belonged to the course of Malchia, which was the fifth; and by the mother’s to that of Abia, which was the eighth. ----- Footnote 53: Numb. iii. 39. Footnote 54: Numb. iv. 48. Footnote 55: Numb. iii. 5-10. Footnote 56: 1 Chron. xxiii. 3. Footnote 57: 1 Chron. xxiv. 4. Footnote 58: Ezra ii. 36-39. ----- Next, the passage of the law was read, in which Jehovah commands that no descendent of Aaron should ever be admitted to the priesthood, who had any natural imperfection or deformity of body, although he might still claim a subsistence from the provisions of the temple.[59] Helon was examined and found free from any of those imperfections which the law enumerates. Had he proved otherwise, he would have been clad in black, and dismissed, being only allowed in future to discharge menial offices about the temple. The outward worship of Jehovah was to be a mirror and emblem of the inward dispositions demanded from the worshipper; and therefore he required, that both his sacrifices and those who offered them should be without blemish. ----- Footnote 59: Lev. xxi. 17. -----