▼Of these twenty-four classes, each one had to perform the service during a week in order, and, as may be gathered with certainty from 2Ki 11:9 and 2Ch 23:9, from Sabbath to Sabbath. Josephus bears witness to this division in Antt. vii. 14. 7: διέμεινεν οὗτος ὁ μερισμὸς ἄχρι τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας. Herzfeld, on the contrary (Geschichte des Volks Israel von der Zerstörung des ersten Tempels, Bd. i. S. 381ff.), following de Wette and Bramb., has declared the reference of this organization of the priests to David to be an invention of the chronicler, and maintains that the twenty-four classes of priests were formed only after the exile, from the twenty-two families of priests who returned out of exile with Zerubbabel. But this baseless hypothesis is sufficiently refuted by the evidence adduced by Movers, die bibl. Chron. S. 279ff., for the historical character of the arrangements attributed to David, and described in our chapters; but the remarks of Oehler in Herzog’s Realenc. xii. S. 185f. may also be compared. An unimpeachable witness for the prae-exilic origin of the division of the priests into twenty-four orders is the vision of Ezekiel (Eze 8:16-18), where the twenty-five men who worship the sun in the priests’ court represent the twenty-four classes of priests, with the high priest at their head. In Neh 12:1-7 and Neh 12:12-21 also unimpeachable evidence for the Davidic origin of the division of the priests into twenty-four classes is to be found, as we shall show in treating of these passages.