The Shiloh. V. One final effect of this epoch must be noticed, the establishment of the first national sanctuary and the first national capital in Palestine. Bethel-which by its sacred Capitals. name and associations would have been naturally chosen-was, at this early stage of the Conquest, still in the hands of the Canaanites. Shiloh, therefore, became and remained the seat of the Ark till the establishment of the monarchy; and thus was, as long as it lasted, a memorial of the peculiar accidents of the Conquest in which it first originated. The general appearance of the sanctuary and its ultimate fate belong to the ensuing period of the history. But the selection of the site belongs to this period, and could belong to no other. The place of the sanctuary was naturally fixed by the place of the Ark. This, as we have seen, was, in the first instance, Gilgal. But, as the conquerors advanced into the interior, a more central situation became necessary. This was found in a spot unmarked by any natural features of strength or beauty, or by any ancient recollections; recommended only by its comparative seclusion, near the central thoroughfare of Palestine, yet not actually upon it. Its ancient Canaanite name seems to have been Taanath. The title of 'Shiloh' was probably given to it in token of the 'rest' which the weary conquerors found in its quiet valley. 1 But Shiloh-although it succeeded to Gilgal as the Holy Place of the Holy Land, and although from thence was made the survey and apportionment of the territory-was intended only as a temporary halt. It was still not the city, but the 'camp of Shiloh.' 2 The spot which the conquerors fixed as the capital was Shechem, the ancient city before which Jacob had first encamped, and now the centre of the great tribe of Ephraim, the tribe of Joshua himself. When he first arrived at this, his future home, is uncertain. In the variations 3 of the Hebrew and Septuagint texts, we may be Shechem. 1 1 Josh. xvi. 6; xviii. 1. This is the view of Kurtz (ii. 70). * Judg. xxi. 12. 3 In the Received Text he arrives imme diately after the fall of Jericho; in the LXX. after the fall of Ai; in Josephus (Ant. v. 1, § 19, 20), at the close of his life. allowed to follow the guidance of Josephus, and connect the celebration of this marked event in his life with its closing scenes, which unquestionably took place in that most beautiful of all the sites of Western Palestine. In that central valley of the hills of Ephraim, which commands the view of the Jordan valley on the east, and the sea on the west—a complete draught through the heart of the country—was the fit seat of the house of Joseph, the ancient portion of their ancestor, given by Jacob himself. Here were the two sacred mountains, Ebal and Gerizim, marked out for the curses and blessings of the Law. From the rocky sides formed by the natural stratification in the recesses of the two hills,1 all but meeting across the narrowest part of the valley, those curses and blessings were first chanted, and the loud Amen from the vast multitudes below echoed back by the natural amphitheatre which is formed by the close conjunction of the two opposing mountains. Ebal, stretched along the northern side of the valley, became, as its many rock-hewn tombs still indicate, the necropolis of the new settlement. Gerizim, the oldest sanctuary in Palestine, reaching back even to the days of Abraham and Melchizedek, became the natural shelter of the capital. From its steep sides and slopes burst forth the thirty-two springs which have filled the valley with a mass of living verdure. Here the two tribes of the house of Joseph deposited, at last, the sacred burden they had borne with them through the wilderness—the Egyptian coffin containing the embalmed body of Joseph himself, to be buried in the rich cornfields which his father had given to the favourite sons of his favourite Rachel.2 This was 'the border of the sanctuary, the mountain 3 which 'the right hand of God had purchased,' for the tribe which now through its victorious leader stood foremost amongst them all, and which henceforth retained its supremacy till it fell in the fall, though but for a time, of the nation itself. How closely the 26. 1 Williams' Lecture at Dublin, 1868, p. 2 For Shechem (now Nablûs) see Sinai and Palestine, ch. v.; Dr. Rosen (Zeitschrift Deutsch. Morg. Gesellschaft, xiv. 634); Mr. Grove, 'Nablûs and the Samari- * See Lecture XVII. His farewell. grandeur of Ephraim and the selection of the seat of their power are connected with the career of Joshua, may be seen from the fact that he alone, of all the Jewish heroes after the Joshua. time of Moses, is enshrined in the traditions of the Samaritans. He is 'King Joshua :' he takes up his abode on the 'Blessed Mountain,' as Gerizim is always called; on its summit are still pointed out the twelve stones which he lays in order he builds a citadel on the adjacent site of Samaria: he confers once a week with the high priest Eleazar: he leaves his power to his son Phinehas, and in this confusion the history of Israel abruptly terminates.1 But the connexion of Joshua with Shechem and with Ephraim, though more soberly, is not less clearly marked in the sacred narrative. He appears there as the representative of his tribe: yet, as we have seen, checking that overbearing pride which at last caused their ruin. Beneath the old consecrated oak of Abraham and Jacob,2 of which the memory still lingers in a secluded corner of the valley under the north-eastern flank of Gerizim, he made his farewell address, and set up there the pillar which long remained as his memorial.3 In and around Shechem rose the first national burial-place, a counterpoise to the patriarchal sepulchres of Hebron. Joseph's tomb was already fixed: its reputed site is visible to this day. A tradition,* current at the time of the Christian era, ascribed the purchase of this tomb to Abraham, and included within it the remains, not only of Joseph, but of the twelve Fathers of the Jewish tribes, and of Jacob himself. Eleazar 5 was buried in the rocky sides of a hill which bore the name of his more famous son, Phinehas, who was himself, doubtless, interred in the same sepulchre. It is described as being in the mountains His grave. of Ephraim, and is pointed out by Samaritan tradition on a height immediately east of Gerizim. The grave of Joshua has been by the Mussulmans claimed for a far-distant spot. On the summit of the Giant's Hill, overlooking the Bosphorus and the Black Sea, his vast tomb is shown, with the gigantic proportions in which Orientals delight. But the reverence of his own countrymen cherished the remembrance of it with a more accurate knowledge, in the inheritance which had been given to him -as though he were a sole tribe in himself- -in Timnath-serah, or Heres,' 'on the north side of the hill of Gaash ;' and in the same grave (according to a very ancient tradition) were buried the stone knives 2 used in the ceremony of circumcision at Gilgal, which were long sought out as relics by those who came in after years to visit the tomb of their mighty Deliverer. 1 Josh. xix. 49, 50; xxiv. 30. A Rabbinical tradition supposes it to be called Heres, from an image of the sun to commemorate the battle of Bethhoron. But it is probably only the transposition of the letters of Serah. 2 Josh. xxiv. 29 (LXX.). The spot is not known with certainty, but is probably in the hills southward of Shechem. (See Ritter's Palestine, iii. 563, 564.) A sepulchral cavern answering to the description, and filled with flint knives, is said to have been recently discovered. (See the Travels of the Abbé Guérin.) 1. (a) The Book of Judges; the Book of Ruth; 1 Sam. i-vii. (Hebrew and LXX.). (b) Ps. lxxviii. 56–66; lxxxiii. 9-12; Isa. ix. 4; x. 26; xxviii. 21; Jer. vii. 12; xxvi. 6; Ecclus. xlvi. 11-20; Heb. xi. 32-34. 2. The Jewish Traditions preserved in Josephus (Ant. v. 2-vi. 1), and the Jewish Chronicle Seder Olam (c. II, 12, 13). 3. The Heathen Traditions (Sanchoniathon? in Eus. Præp. Ev. i. 9). |