Ophrah would have been the first home and gathering-place of the tribe. The treaty with Shechem, which united that city with Ophrah, may have been the beginning of Manasseh’s rise to power. But Ephraim could ill brook the growing ascendency of the younger tribe. Manasseh had become wealthy from the tribute levied on its Canaanitish subjects; it had united itself with the older inhabitants of the land, and had borrowed their habits and their culture, and therewith their idolatries as well. The mountaineers of Ephraim, on the other hand, had retained much of the roughness and the virtues of the first invaders of Palestine. They were still warlike and hardy; they held the fortress of the Israelitish possessions in Canaan; and Shiloh, with its Aaronic priesthood, its traditions of the Mosaic law, and its purer worship of Yahveh was in their midst. Jerubbaal was forced to temporise with them. He pointed out that the destruction of the main body of the Midianites at the fords of the Jordan was a greater achievement than his own successful pursuit of the remaining bands. He had slain Zebah and Zalmunna in revenge for the death of his brothers; the slaughter of Oreb and Zeeb had been for the sake of all Israel. ‘Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abi-ezer?’ Jerubbaal was fitted to rule, for he possessed statecraft as well as military ability. His statecraft was shown not only in his answer to the Ephraimites, but also in his refusal to accept the title of king. It was pressed upon him, we are told, by ‘the men of Israel’—that is to say, by the northern tribes. Whether his father had actually borne the title we cannot say, though it would seem from the subsequent history of Abimelech, as well as from the words of Zebah and Zalmunna (viii. 18), that he must have done so. But at any rate he had exercised the authority of a king, like his son Jerubbaal, at the outset of the Midianite war, and it may be that among the Canaanites of Shechem he had also the name of king. Jerubbaal, however, if we are to regard the passage as historical, rejected the crown offered him by the Israelites, declaring that their king was Yahveh alone.