There shall no stranger eat [of] the holy thing: a sojourner of the priest, or an hired servant, shall not eat [of] the holy thing.
Ver. 10. There shall no stranger.] The equity of all this was, that ministers should have a comfortable subsistence for them and theirs; and that the things that are appointed to that purpose should not be converted to other uses. 1Co 9:13 It is certainly a sad complaint that Luther a makes: Nisi superisset spolium Aegypti quod rapuimus Papae, omnibus ministris verbi fame pereundum esset, &c. Were it not for such spoils of Egypt as we have won from the Pope, God's ministers might starve and perish. And if ever it come to that, that they must be maintained by the people's benevolence, a miserable maintenance they are like to have of it. That little that we have now, diripitur a magistratu, is got from us by the great ones who rob our churches and schools, as if they meant to make an end of us with hard hunger. Thus he. See Haggai 2:14. All the water in Jordan, and the ceremonies in Leviticus, cannot cleanse a man so long as the polluted thing remains in his hand.
a Luther, in Gen, xlvii.