When they reached Gath, they had travelled twelve sabbath-days’ journies: they now entered the tribe of Judah, and had half that distance to travel to Eleutheropolis, a small village. Their road led them through the region which lies in the middle between Maresa and Morescheth. They quickened their pace and arrived late in the evening at Ziklag, having past through Agla, which was twelve miles distant from Eleutheropolis. Ziklag had been the favourite abode of David; Achish, the king of Gath, had assigned it to him for his residence;[31] its destruction by the Amalekites had roused him to take exemplary vengeance upon them, and he had afterwards rebuilt it. When they arrived at Ziklag, they inquired for the house of the genealogist, and went directly to it. It had long been dark, and Elisama was very weary; and when the genealogist had given them a friendly reception, as his Egyptian kinsmen, and expressed high approbation of Helon’s determination to become a priest, they laid themselves down to rest. The institution of genealogists may be traced up to the earliest times of Israel’s existence as a nation. Jehovah was their true and only ruler. Under him the people lived in families, which together formed tribes, the families themselves being subdivided into _houses_. Each tribe had its own prince, chosen probably by the _heads of families_, who were themselves chosen by the _heads of houses_. The princes and the heads of families were called elders; their number was seventy-one, and besides them there were judges, and genealogists who kept the registers of the different families. Although at various times the supreme power was by turns in the hands of heroes, kings, princes and high-priests, yet the fundamental principle of the constitution was, that Jehovah was sole and absolute monarch of his people Israel, and that they obeyed him, under all intermediate magistrates, whatever their titles or offices might be. In earlier times the heads of families, the judges, and genealogists of each tribe, assembled occasionally together, under the presidence of the prince of the tribe, for the purpose of joint deliberation; sometimes these officers assembling from all the tribes formed a species of Diet. ----- Footnote 31: 1 Sam. xxvii. 5.; xxx. ----- The genealogist of each family was a very important person, and especially in the tribe of Levi, in which so many privileges were attached to purity and certainty of extraction. He who wished to serve as a priest before Jehovah, must not only descend on the father’s side from Aaron, but be of irreproachable birth on that of the mother. The series of Helon’s paternal ancestors had been very exactly carried on in Egypt, and Elisama had brought documents thence with him to establish it. But his mother was also the daughter of a priest, and as her family lived in Judah, it was necessary that the genealogy on this side should be examined into, and the descent shown to be regular.