Zadok

Zadok (Hebrew Ṣādôq, from the root ṣdq, “to be righteous” or “just”) is a priest in the Hebrew Bible who serves David and Solomon and from whom the later Jerusalem priesthood traced its descent. The text introduces him as “Zadok the son of Ahitub,” listed among David’s priests alongside Ahimelech son of Abiathar (2 Samuel 8:17), and later names him with Abiathar simply as “priests” (2 Samuel 20:25). The manuscripts and the parallel list in 1 Chronicles 18:16 differ over the order and form of these two names, a long-recognized textual crux; what the narrative consistently establishes is that two priestly houses, Zadok’s and Abiathar’s, served David side by side.

The narrative shows Zadok loyal to David through Absalom’s revolt. He and Abiathar brought the ark out of Jerusalem, and David sent them back rather than have it accompany him; the text records David’s answer to Zadok that if Yahweh had no delight in him, he was ready to be dealt with as God saw fit (2 Samuel 15:26), and it files Zadok among those who remained in the city while David went up weeping (2 Samuel 15:30). He later backed Solomon’s succession: he is named among those who did not join Adonijah (1 Kings 1:8), and it is Zadok who takes the horn of oil and anoints Solomon at Gihon (1 Kings 1:39; compare 1 Kings 1:33). After Solomon’s accession the text says the king put Zadok in Abiathar’s place (1 Kings 2:35), which it presents as the end of the line of Eli (1 Kings 2:27).

From him descends the priestly house called “the sons of Zadok.” Chronicles traces the genealogy and places Zadok’s descendants in charge of the sanctuary, and in Hezekiah’s reign “Azariah the chief priest, of the house of Zadok” speaks for a priesthood that has eaten and had plenty (2 Chronicles 31:10). Ezra’s own genealogy runs back through Zadok (Ezra 7:1–5). Most strikingly, Ezekiel’s vision gives the sons of Zadok alone the right to approach Yahweh: “But the Levitical priests, the sons of Zadok, who performed the duty of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, shall come near to me to minister to me” (Ezekiel 44:15). The “Zadok the scribe” appointed over the treasuries in Nehemiah’s day (Nehemiah 13:13) is a different and later figure who shares the name.

Traditions read the Zadokite line differently. Jewish interpretation has long treated the sons of Zadok as the ancestral claim of the Jerusalem high-priestly families, and scholars have suggested, without agreement, that the name behind the Sadducees is connected with Zadok; the community of the Dead Sea Scrolls called itself “sons of Zadok,” an established historical datum. Among Christians, some read Ezekiel 44:15 as predicting a literal restored or millennial priesthood, some apply it to the ordained ministry of the church, and others read it typologically as fulfilled in Christ’s priesthood, which Hebrews argues supersedes the Levitical order (Hebrews 7:11–28). These differences track wider disagreements about whether the Mosaic priesthood continues, is abrogated, or is fulfilled.

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.