¹³ the clan of Levi, and the clan of Shimei.

⁴ Then at last you will know it was I who sent you this warning so that my covenant with the Levites can continue,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

⁵ “The purpose of my covenant with the Levites was to bring life and peace, and that is what I gave them. This required reverence from them, and they greatly revered me and stood in awe of my name. ⁶ They passed on to the people the truth of the instructions they received from me. They did not lie or cheat; they walked with me, living good and righteous lives, and they turned many from lives of sin.

⁷ “The words of a priest’s lips should preserve knowledge of God, and people should go to him for instruction, for the priest is the messenger of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. ⁸ But you priests have left God’s paths. Your instructions have caused many to stumble into sin. You have corrupted the covenant I made with the Levites,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. ⁹ “So I have made you despised and humiliated in the eyes of all the people. For you have not obeyed me but have shown favoritism in the way you carry out my instructions.”

¹⁰ Four other descendants of Shimei were Jahath, Ziza,^[a] Jeush, and Beriah.

The Gershonites

⁷ The Gershonite family units were defined by their lines of descent from Libni^[a] and Shimei, the sons of Gershon.

²⁷ Shimei had sixteen sons and six daughters, but none of his brothers had large families. So Simeon’s tribe never grew as large as the tribe of Judah.

¹⁹ The sons of Pedaiah were Zerubbabel and Shimei.

The sons of Zerubbabel were Meshullam and Hananiah. (Their sister was Shelomith.)

⁸ But Zadok the priest, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, Nathan the prophet, Shimei, Rei, and David’s personal bodyguard refused to support Adonijah.

Shimei Curses David

⁵ As King David came to Bahurim, a man came out of the village cursing them. It was Shimei son of Gera, from the same clan as Saul’s family.

Levites Appointed for Service

3 This is the family line of Aaron and Moses as it was recorded when the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai: ² The names of Aaron’s sons were Nadab (the oldest), Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. ³ These sons of Aaron were anointed and ordained to minister as priests. ⁴ But Nadab and Abihu died in the Lord’s presence in the wilderness of Sinai when they burned before the Lord the wrong kind of fire, different than he had commanded. Since they had no sons, this left only Eleazar and Ithamar to serve as priests with their father, Aaron.