Priests on duty: the twenty-four courses

The twenty-four divisions go back to 1 Chronicles 24, where Abijah's is the eighth (24:10). Keener says each division served two separate weeks a year, besides the three great festivals. The ESV Study Bible says a week twice a year, with every division on duty at Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. Some estimate eighteen thousand priests and Levites, far more than were needed. So special duties were assigned by lot, and Jews believed God directed the lot. The incense was offered before the morning sacrifice and after the evening one. With so many priests a man might burn it once in his life, and he was expected to come straight back out. Priests often married the daughters of priests. Wright describes the ordinary priest's year. Apart from the chief priests, who lived in Jerusalem, priests lived away from the city. They lodged in the temple precincts while their division served, then went home to work as teachers and leaders in their own communities. They were meant to live on tithes, but high taxes and the ways of the priestly aristocracy pushed poorer priests to farm. Many priests lived at Jericho. Bailey reports a stone fragment from Caesarea recording that after Jerusalem fell, one of the twenty-four courses settled in Nazareth. Josephus writes that David "found of these priests twenty-four courses" and ordained that "one course should minister to God eight days, from sabbath to sabbath", a division that "hath remained to this day" (Antiquities 7.14.7). Keener thinks the twenty-four elders of Revelation 4 almost certainly allude to these orders, which later rabbis and inscriptions still discussed.

The courses explain how an ordinary country priest could stand alone at the incense altar, as in Luke 1:8-9, while the people waited outside for him to come out. In Acts 6:7 a large number of priests become believers; Acts does not say which priests, but most priests were men of modest means, not the Jerusalem aristocracy.