Aaronites

The Aaronites are the priestly family of Israel — the male descendants of Aaron through his four sons. They are explicitly named at 1 Chronicles 12:27, where a body of Aaronite warriors joins David at Hebron, and at 1 Chronicles 27:17, where David formally organizes the priesthood. After Aaron's two eldest sons Nadab and Abihu were consumed by fire for offering strange fire before the LORD (Leviticus 10), the priesthood ran through his younger sons Eleazar and Ithamar.

Two great branches followed: the Zadokites (from Eleazar) and the line of Ithamar. Solomon's purge in 1 Kings 2 deposed Abiathar — the last serving Ithamarite high priest — leaving the Eleazarite/Zadokite line dominant through the rest of the First Temple period. David had earlier organized the priesthood into twenty-four courses (1 Chronicles 24) that served the temple on a rotating schedule. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, served *the course of Abia*, the eighth of those twenty-four (Luke 1:5).

Only Aaronites could approach the altar; the wider tribe of Levi assisted but did not officiate (Numbers 18:1-7). The Aaronic priesthood operated continuously from Sinai to AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed. The book of Hebrews argues that Christ, *a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, fulfills and supersedes the Aaronic line — though the name kohen* (priest) still attaches to many Jewish families today as a memory of the Aaronite descent.