Question I. Why [were] cities given to the Levites?

The Levites were without share of inheritance, as [was] said above (ch. 13, q. 6), and therefore had received no part of the region. Yet [it] was necessary [for] them to remain in the same region with the other tribes. [It] was necessary, therefore, [that] either they should dwell perpetually under the open sky and in tents, or [that they] should inhabit roofed [buildings] and houses. That [first] did not seem consonant [fitting] to God; because [it] is [the way] of men either traveling [as sojourners] — as [was] done hitherto in the wilderness and [at] the departure from Egypt — or of [men] wandering, and leading a rustic and uncultivated life, such as [are] shepherds, Arabs, and Scythians roaming about, and often brigandaging. But to the Levites neither [of these] was suitable. For both the journey and the sojourning in the promised land [had] now [reached its] end; and they [were] the most polished and most learned of all, since [they] were the ministers of God, and the Interpreters of all sacred [things], acolytes, and prelates. Nor indeed, while the other Israelites [were] resting and inhabiting houses, did [it] befit these [Levites] to hold [only] tents, [and] to have no houses, as a rule — because, forsooth, [they] would have seemed unlike the others, and, among them, as [if] strangers, and more contemptible. I said “as a rule,” because if some should embrace — of their own accord, not from necessity — that very kind of dwelling and life (such as the “Cinaeans” [Kenites] & “Rechabites,” concerning whom [see] Judg. 4, Jer. 35, & in my Triharesium), their piety, modesty, and virtue would indeed be praiseworthy — but [it is] not to be imposed on all, straightway from the beginning. For God is wont to deal more humanely with men: nor to command all difficult and arduous [things], although [they] be sometimes good and useful; but [he] leaves those [things] to the choice of those who are more excellent in [their] spirits, and greater followers of virtue. For just as Masters who have very many servants commit not all [duties] to all, but the more-eminent and more-refined duties to the more-eminent and more-cultivated [servants]. But if to inhabit houses was, in general, more becoming for the Levites, [then] they ought therefore either to build new [ones] themselves, or to receive old [ones] and [ones] already built — and that, either by purchase or by gift. New [ones] they could not build, because [there] was for them no place, no estate, no mountain or valley, where [they] might build. But to buy old houses, already built, from the other Israelites, would have been base: for since God was giving them [the other tribes] so great a dominion — so many and so great houses and cities — was [it] fitting [that] none [of these] be given by these [tribes] to the ministers and priests of God himself? Or would [it] not have been most avaricious and most ungrateful [for] those [tribes] — out of so many [possessions], and [ones] so liberally and munificently given by God — to bestow nothing on those who should administer his sacred [rites] and ceremonies? Nay, God too — who was so kind toward the rest of the Israelites, and, so to speak, lavish — could not forget his [own] Ministers. And this same care of God for his Ministers, and [his] love of them, brought [it] about that [he] commanded cities — not huts, hamlets, and villages — to be given to them. But [it] is established [that] this manner [arrangement], for [one] dwelling, [is], first, safer; and then also (in men’s opinion, indeed) more honorable and more splendid.