For the Levites left their suburbs and their possession,.... The cities and the fields adjacent to them, which were given them in the several tribes, and were in all forty eight; see Jos 21:1 and came to Judah and Jerusalem; to the cities of Judah, which belonged to the Levites; and to Jerusalem, where they exercised their functions: for Jeroboam and his sons had cast them off from exercising the priest's office unto the Lord; neither suffering them to go to Jerusalem in their courses, as they used to do by turns, nor to perform their office in their own dwellings, according to the law of God, in teaching and instructing the people.