Ephraim (Judges xix.-xxi.). The
groundwork of it contains only one historical element. The
story of the Levite is considered by some critics to be of a
later date than the rest of the text.

*** He is thus characterised in the Blessing of Jacob (Gen.
xlix. 27). VOL. VI. X

The Philistines never failed to make reprisals after each raid, and the
Benjamites were no match for their heavily armed battalions; but the
labyrinth of ravines and narrow gorges into which the Philistines had
to penetrate to meet their enemy was a favourable region for guerilla
warfare, in which they were no match for their opponents. Peace was
never of long duration on this ill-defined borderland, and neither
intercourse between one village and another, alliances, nor
intermarriage between the two peoples had the effect of interrupting
hostilities; even when a truce was made at one locality, the feud would
be kept up at other points of contact. All details of this conflict have
been lost, and we merely know that it terminated in the defeat of the
house of Joseph, a number of whom were enslaved. The ancient sanctuary
of Shiloh still continued to be the sacred town of the Hebrews, as it
had been under the Canaanites, and the people of Ephraim kept there the
ark of Jahveh-Sabaoth, "the Lord of Hosts."* It was a chest of wood,
similar in shape to the shrine which surmounted the sacred barks of the
Egyptian divinities, but instead of a prophesying statue, it contained
two stones on which, according to the belief of a later age, the law had
been engraved.** Yearly festivals were celebrated before it, and it was
consulted as an oracle by all the Israelites. Eli, the priest to whose
care it was at this time consigned, had earned universal respect by
the austerity of his life and by his skill in interpreting the divine
oracles.***

* At the very opening of the _First Book of Samuel_ (i. 3),
Shiloh is mentioned as being the sanctuary of _Jahveh-
Sabaoth_, Jahveh the Lord of hosts. The tradition preserved
in Josh, xviii. 1, removes the date of its establishment as
far back as the earliest times of the Israelite conquest.

** The idea that the Tables of the Law were enclosed in the
Ark is frequently expressed in Exodus and in subsequent
books of the Hexateuch.

*** The history of Eli extends over chaps, i.-iv. of the
_First Book of Samuel_; it is incorporated with that of