The Tabernacle at Shiloh: 369 Years

For the first fourteen years in the Land—seven of conquest and seven of dividing the inheritance—the Tabernacle stood at Gilgal like a field camp. Once the tribes had their portions, the whole assembly gathered at Shiloh in the hills of Ephraim and set up the Tent of Meeting there. According to the sages the structure changed: the woven curtains were now stretched over stone walls—stone below, cloth above, a house that no longer travelled but was not yet a Temple.

Shiloh became the address of Jewish worship for 369 years, longer than either Temple stood. Pilgrims came three times a year; tithes and first fruits were brought there; there Hannah whispered her prayer for a son and old Eli the priest mistook her for a drunkard. Its law was gentler than Jerusalem's: lighter offerings and second tithe could be eaten anywhere Shiloh was visible on the horizon.

Still, Shiloh was provisional. The Torah had promised "the place that God will choose," and that place was still waiting on Mount Moriah. Shiloh's end came in a single day of defeat, and centuries later Jeremiah would tell the over-confident people of Jerusalem: go and see what I did to My place at Shiloh.

Excavations at Tel Shiloh revealed a destruction layer of about 1050 BCE — which agrees with the account of the Ark's capture by the Philistines and the fall of the house of Eli. The date given, however, refers to the beginning of the Tabernacle's standing at Shiloh, not to its end.