The priests were organised quite differently. The small number of Levites necessitated careful arrangements for using them to the best advantage; of priests there were enough and to spare. The four thousand two hundred and eighty-nine priests who returned with Zerubbabel were an extravagant and impossible allowance for a single temple, and we are told that the numbers increased largely as time went on. The problem was to devise some means by which all the priests should have some share in the honours and emoluments of the Temple, and its solution was found in the “courses.” The priests who returned with Zerubbabel are registered in four families: “the children of Jedaiah, of the house of Jeshua; ... the children of Immer; ... the children of Pashhur; ... the children of Harim.”(117) But the organisation of the chronicler’s time is, as usual, to be found among the arrangements ascribed to David, who is said to have divided the priests into their twenty-four courses.(118) Amongst the heads of the courses we find Jedaiah, Jeshua, Harim, and Immer, but not Pashhur. Post-Biblical authorities mention twenty-four courses in connection with the second Temple. Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, belonged to the course of Abijah(119); and Josephus mentions a course “Eniakim.”(120) Abijah was the head of one of David’s courses; and Eniakim is almost certainly a corruption of Eliakim, of which name Jakim in Chronicles is a contraction. These twenty-four courses discharged the priestly duties each in its turn. One was busy at the temple while the other twenty-three were at home, some perhaps living on the profits of their office, others at work on their farms. The high-priest, of course, was always at the Temple; and the continuity of the ritual would necessitate the appointment of other priests as a permanent staff. The high-priest and the staff, being always on the spot, would have great opportunities for improving their own position at the expense of the other members of the courses, who were only there occasionally for a short time. Accordingly we are told later on that a few families had appropriated nearly all the priestly emoluments.