Kohath

Kohath is a Levite, the second of the three sons of Levi and therefore a grandson of Jacob, whose descendants form the Kohathite clan of Levites set apart in the wilderness for carrying the holy furnishings of the tabernacle. Scripture's first notice of him is purely genealogical: "The sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari" (Genesis 46:11), in the list of those who went down to Egypt. The text records nothing Kohath himself did; everything else it says concerns his line.

The genealogies supply his descent and lifespan. According to Exodus 6:16, Levi lived one hundred thirty-seven years, and "the years of the life of Kohath were one hundred thirty-three" (Exodus 6:18). His four sons are named as Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel (Exodus 6:18; 1 Chronicles 23:12), and 1 Chronicles 6:1 repeats the same threefold division of Levi's sons. Through Amram, Scripture makes Kohath the grandfather of Aaron, Moses, and Miriam: Jochebed, "the daughter of Levi," bore "to Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister" (Numbers 26:59). The clan is counted as "the family of the Kohathites" in the wilderness census (Numbers 26:57), and 1 Chronicles 6:33 traces the singer Heman back through "the sons of the Kohathites."

The Kohathites' assigned service was the most sacred and the most dangerous of the Levite duties. They carried the sanctuary and its furniture, but only after Aaron and his sons had covered everything: "the sons of Kohath shall come to carry it; but they shall not touch the sanctuary, lest they die" (Numbers 4:15). Because the service of the sanctuary "belonged to them," no carts or oxen were given to them — "they carried it on their shoulders" (Numbers 7:9). The best-known member of the line in narrative is Korah, "the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi," who led the rebellion against Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16:1). Linguistically, the Hebrew name Qehath is of uncertain etymology, and lexicographers offer no consensus on its meaning.

Christian traditions read this material differently. Some treat the Kohathites' shoulder-borne carrying and the prohibition on touching the holy things as a typological pattern of reverence and of mediation through the priesthood; others read the genealogies mainly as clan eponyms preserving the memory of a priestly and temple-singing guild, and differ over how literally to take the ages in Exodus 6 for chronology. The text itself, in all readings, presents Kohath chiefly as the ancestor whose descendants were entrusted with the sanctuary.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.