Priests and prophets
The priesthood in ancient Israel was not a perfect institution (as in other ages) and the Bible is often as critical of it as it is of the monarchy in Israel.
The principal critics, whether of priests or rulers, were the prophets. It is noticeable that while Samuel is called both a priest and a prophet, and was trained in the shrine at Shiloh, he does not, in adulthood, exercise his priestly ministry.
Priests could be criticised for neglecting the poor, as they were by the prophet Amos. But there was a deeper criticism; the system of sacrifices, practised by the priests, could easily seem to be ‘sufficient’, a mechanical duty fulfilment, which avoided the challenge of accepting the depth of God’s mercy and compassion, and also the depth of his judgement. This was one of the criticisms levelled by the first of the three prophets known as ‘Isaiah’ in the book of that name.
This Isaiah prophesied that Jerusalem would go the same way as Samaria in the north, victim of the Assyrians. But when this did not happen, the priestly party in Jerusalem were able to gloat; for them, God’s “abiding presence” [shekinah] hovering in the Temple made the city impregnable.
This counter-argument made things much more difficult for the prophet Jeremiah some 150 years later, when the Babylonians threatened. Jeremiah saw Temple worship as totally corrupt, a “den of robbers” [Jeremiah 7: 1-11 & 21-23].
During the exile in Babylon, the sacrificial system broke down; there was no Temple there. For Second-Isaiah, this was the sign that true fidelity resided in the people; his ‘songs of the suffering servant’, which we read in Holy Week as referring to Christ, very possibly referred originally to the endurance of the people in exile – without priestly support.
While some prophets had high hopes of the restored Temple [Haggai 2:7-9; Zechariah 6: 11-14], for Third-Isaiah it just led to a return to the old complacency [Isaiah 58]; the only solution was a totally fresh start, the making of “new heavens and a new earth” [Isaiah 65:17]