Question VII. At what time [was] the tabernacle transferred to Shiloh?

After the wars, and after — as I was saying in the previous question — the tranquility and welfare [were] obtained, the tabernacle was moved from Gilgal and fixed at Shiloh. For this [is what] these words of the first verse signify: “and the land was subject [subdued] to them [before them].” But of these [words there] is a twofold interpretation among the Latins. One, as it were negative, of Abulensis himself: “the land did not resist them” — no one was now preparing force and arms against them. But the other, affirmative: “the land was subdued to the Israelites” — synecdochically, namely, [subdued] as to a great part. And so the 70: “ἡ γῆ ἐκρατήθη ὑπ’ αὐτῶν [hē gē ekratēthē hyp’ autōn]” [“the land was mastered by them”]. But Ralbag and other Jews, and Arias Montanus — because in the Hebrew, word for word, [it] is “and the land subdued before them,” or “to their faces” — interpret [it] thus: the land which they had vanquished, and subdued by wars, was now before the Israelites’ eyes, nearer than at Gilgal; [they] beheld it more, because [they] now held and inhabited its interior [parts]. And from this exposition Cajetan does not shrink — although, because [it] does not suit the Latin text, he does not dare to approve it. “Whether [it] be signified also,” he says, “that the land acquired was in the sight of those dwelling at Shiloh, I do not dare to affirm.” But I, for my part, confess [that] the subdued land was in the sight of the Shilonites; yet [that] this is not signified by the cited words, I dare to affirm — relying on our [version] and on the cited version of the 70 themselves; relying also on the Hebrew words, which admit that version and sense very well; relying, finally, on this asseveration of Masius: “I would say, doubting nothing, [that] this [is] plainly that which has now once and again been mentioned: ‘But the land was resting from war.’” But because Cajetan, in that exposition, renders “the land acquired,” I have a great suspicion [that] the Jew whose help he used confused “nik besah” — which is in the text — with “nik nesah,” which is “acquired.” But into what year from the crossing of the Jordan did this so-great rest, and this transfer, fall? The fourteenth is reckoned by the Rabbis; and Masius almost assents to them — not on account of their reasoning (which, as I said at ch. 13, q. 13, is null), but because the rebuke of Joshua the leader, in this place (v. 3), “How long will you be slack with indolence?”, indicates [that] several years [had] now elapsed since the prior Gilgal division. And those words, indeed, show a rather long cessation and delay; yet [it] is not precisely gathered from them whether there were more years than seven, or fewer. Let us grant this, therefore, to the almost-unanimous authority and opinion of all: that we should think the Shilonian transfer of the tabernacle was made in the fourteenth year from the crossing of the Jordan.