Question VIII. How long did the tabernacle remain at Shiloh?

[That it] remained three hundred sixty-nine years, the Jews say in the “Seder,” ch. 11; a little fewer, Masius. Yet a distinction [is] to be applied. If [the question is] what was in the tabernacle — [if] the ark be regarded — [it] can be answered [that] precisely this [ark] remained at Shiloh in the tabernacle up to those times of Heli [Eli] the Pontiff, in which, [being] carried out thence by the Israelites, and captured by the Philistines, and foully carried off into Philistia, [it] was taken away (1 Sam. ch. 4). But if the tabernacle itself — which, like a shrine, contained that [ark] and many other [things] — be inspected, that indeed remained at Shiloh a little longer than the ark, but so that, after Heli’s death (Samuel being still alive), [it] was transported to Nobe [Nob]. For Heli, dying, left the tabernacle at Shiloh (1 Sam. 4); and afterward, in the time of Saul and David, when Samuel was still among the living (1 Sam. 27, v. 3), the same tabernacle is found in the city Nobe, [in] the same book, 1 Sam. ch. 21. Nor is Samuel ever read to have sacrificed at Shiloh, but at Maspha, Ramatha, [and] Bethleem (1 Sam. 7, 8, 16). But in what year [it] was carried thither, [it] is nowhere said definitely. But how many years from the first placing of it at Shiloh, up to the said exportation of the ark and the transportation of the tabernacle itself, [are] to be reckoned, depends on various years, partly of Joshua, partly of the Judges, which [are] explained in another place. Let it now be enough [to grant] that those 369 years which the Rabbis number are not fewer.