Soon, however, even the tabernacle would appear to have been removed from Shiloh, for although we have no direct mention of its removal, we seem to find it in other places. Samuel, the successor of Eli, judged the people, and on important occasions called the solemn assembly and offered sacrifices. He was accustomed to do this at three different places, which in his day were revered as sacred. One of these was Gilgal, rendered sacred by the first resting of the ark: and although the ark and tabernacle had been removed, and sanctity was to be transferred along with them, yet it is not easy to obliterate the sanctity of a place from the tradition and practice of the people. Another of these three places was Bethel, where Jacob had seen his vision of the ladder with angels ascending and descending, and had been constrained to say, “This is the house of God and the gate of Heaven.” The third place at which Samuel called assemblies and offered sacrifices was not Shiloh, as we might suppose it would be, but one of the many places called Mizpeh. We do not know where this Mizpeh was. Conder is inclined to identify it with _Neby Samwil_--the Mount of the Prophet Samuel, a conspicuous conical hill, 4 or 5 miles north of Jerusalem; and as Mizpeh means a watch-tower, there is plausibility in this suggestion. We do not know whether the tabernacle was pitched at either of these three places in Samuel’s day: we do not know why Samuel should be content to regard three different places as holy; but it is not altogether impossible that the tabernacle was carried from one meeting-place to another, and made each one holy in turn. A little later we seem to find the tabernacle nearer to Jerusalem. When David is fleeing from King Saul, and taking the road from Rama in Benjamin to Gath in the land of the Philistines, he comes to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest, and is permitted to eat the shewbread (the holy bread exhibited before the Lord in the sanctuary), and to carry off the sword of Goliath, which had been laid up as a trophy. So here we have the priests, the shewbread, and the tabernacle at Nob. As to the locality of Nob, Dean Stanley follows Mr Thrupp in fixing it on the northern summit of the Mount of Olives, and Mr Thrupp reminds us that David brought the head of Goliath to Jerusalem, before the city itself was captured (1 Sam. xvii. 54). David, in fleeing from Rama to Gath, could hardly find a shorter or more convenient route than that which took him past Jerusalem. This position for Nob is confirmed by Isaiah’s graphic and detailed description of the advance of the Assyrian invader (Isaiah x. 28):--