********************************************* 1.  The Chronicle has good reason for making him a Levite.  But Gath without any qualifying epithet, and particularly in connection with David, is the Philistine Gath, and Obed-Edom belongs to the bodyquard, which consisted chiefly of foreigners and Philistines.  His name, moreover, is hardly Israelite. **********************************************

the king is thereby encouraged to persevere after all with his original proposal, and establish it upon his citadel.  And this he does in a tent he had caused to be made for it (2Samuel vi.17), which tent of David in Zion continued to be its lodging until the temple was built.  Some mention of the tabernacle, had it existed, would have been inevitable when the temple took its place.  That it did not serve as the model of the temple has already been said; but it might have been expected at least that in the account of the building of the new sanctuary some word might have escaped about the whereabouts of the old.  And this expectation seems to be realised in 1Kings viii.4, which says that when the temple was finished there were brought into it, besides the ark, the Ohel Moed and all the sacred vessels that were therein.  Interpreters hesitate as to whether they ought to understand by the Ohel Moed the tent of the ark upon Zion, to which alone reference has been made in the preceding narrative (1Kings i.39, ii.28-30), or whether it is the Mosaic tent, which, according to Chronicles, was standing at Gibeon, but of which the Book of Kings tells nothing, and also knows nothing (iii.2-4).  It is probable that the author of viii.4 mixed up both together; but we have to face the following alternative.  Either the statement belongs to the original context of the narrative in which it occurs, and in that case the Ohel Moed can only be the tent on Mount Zion, or the Ohel Moed of 1Kings viii.4 is the Mosaic tabernacle which was removed from Gibeon into Solomon’s temple, and in that case the allegation has no connection with its context, and does not hang together with the premisses which that furnishes; in other words, it is the interpolation of a later hand.  The former alternative, though possible, is improbable, for the name Ohel Moed occurs absolutely nowhere in the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings (apart from the interpolation in 1Samuel ii.22b), and particularly it is not used to denote David’s tent upon Mount Zion; and, moreover, that tent had received too little of the consecration of antiquity, and according to 2Samuel vii. was too insignificant and provisional to be thought worthy of preservation in the temple.  But if the Ohel Moed is here (what it everywhere else is) the tabernacle, as is indicated also by the sacred vessels, then the verse is, as has been said, an interpolation.  The motive for such a thing is easily understood; the same difficulty as that with which we set out must have made it natural for any Jew who started from