It need not be said that the sacrificial seats (even when the improvised ones are left out of account) were not all alike in the regard in which they were held, or in the frequency with which they were resorted to.  Besides purely local ones, there were others to which pilgrimages were made from far and near.  Towards the close of the period of the judges, Shiloh appears to have acquired an importance that perhaps extended even beyond the limits of the tribe of Joseph.  By a later age the temple there was even regarded as the prototype of the temple of Solomon, that is, as the one legitimate place of worship to which Jehovah had made a grant of all the burnt-offerings of the children of Israel (Jer. vii.12; 1Samuel ii. 27-36).  But, in point-of fact, if a prosperous man of Ephraim or Benjamin made a pilgrimage to the joyful festival at Shiloh at the turn of the year, the reason for his doing so was not that he could have had no opportunity at his home in Ramah or Gibeah for eating and drinking before the Lord.  Any strict centralisation is for that period inconceivable, alike in the religious as in every other sphere.  This is seen even in the circumstance that the destruction of the temple of Shiloh, the priesthood of which we find officiating at Nob a little later, did not exercise the smallest modifying influence upon the character and position of the cultus; Shiloh disappears quietly from the scene, and is not mentioned again until we learn from Jeremiah that at least from the time when Solomon’s temple was founded its temple lay in ruins.

For the period during which the temple of Jerusalem was not yet in existence, even the latest redaction of the historical books (which perhaps does not everywhere proceed from the same hand, but all dates from the same period—­that of the Babylonian exile—­and has its origin in the same spirit) leaves untouched the multiplicity of altars and of holy places.  No king after Solomon is left uncensured for having tolerated the high places, but Samuel is permitted in his proper person to preside over a sacrificial feast at the Bamah of his native town, and Solomon at the beginning of his reign to institute a similar one at the great Bamah of Gibeon, without being blamed.  The offensive name is again and again employed in the most innocent manner in 1Samuel ix., x., and the later editors allow it to pass unchallenged.  The principle which guides this apparently unequal distribution of censure becomes clear from 1Kings iii. 2:  “The people sacrificed upon the high places, for as yet no house to the name of Jehovah had been built.”  Not until the house had been built to the name of Jehovah—­such is the idea—­did the law come into force which forbade having other places of worship besides./1/

********************************** 1.  Compare 1Kings viii. 16.  According to Deut. xii.10 seq., the local unity of worship becomes law from the time when the Israelites have found rest (menuha).  Comparing 2Samuel vii.11 and 1Kings v. 18 (A.V., v.4), we find that “menuha” first came in with David and Solomon.  The period of the judges must at that time have been regarded as much shorter than appears in the present chronology. ***********************************