Aaron and his sons, like Moses, were at the outset Levites, and as such doubtless had no claim to superior sanctity and power. But circumstances had placed them at the head of their tribe; and when that tribe became the ministers of the sanctuary, Aaron and his descendants necessarily occupied the foremost place in its services. They were in a special sense the guardians of the ark, and thus alone privileged to enter the Holy of Holies, where Yahveh revealed Himself above the cherubim. As long as there was but one sanctuary, it was easy to maintain the distinction between the priest of the house of Aaron and the ordinary Levite. But with the conquest of Canaan all this was changed. Sanctuaries were multiplied all over the land; the old high-places became seats of the worship of Yahveh, and there were rival centres of religious authority, like that of Baal-berith at Shechem, or that of the graven image at Dan (Judg. xviii. 14, etc.). Local temples or tabernacles took the place of the one that was hallowed by the presence of the ark, and the line of Aaron fell into the background. In the age of national trouble and disintegration which preceded the accession of Saul, the character of the high-priestly family itself had much to do with the loss of its power and influence. Eli, its representative at Shiloh, was old and feeble, and his sons set at defiance the Mosaic law, which required that Yahveh’s portion of the sacrifice should be burned on the altar before the priests received their share, and so they made ‘the offering of the Lord’ to be ‘abhorred.’ The capture of the ark by the Philistines and the massacre of the priests at Nob by order of Saul completed the dissolution of the high-priestly authority; and when the temple at Jerusalem was built under Solomon, a new branch of the family of Aaron was appointed to minister in it, and his descendants became little more than hereditary court-chaplains. It has even been doubted whether there was any high-priest, properly so called, under the kings; if there were, he had been divested of the power and position which had been given him by the Levitical law.