The tribes had suffered from want of cohesion. The attempt to found a monarchy in Manasseh had failed; it was too local and limited, and served only to arouse the jealousy of the tribes which lay outside it. It had done little more than bring to light the dissensions and differences that existed within Israel itself. The bond that connected the tribes had become continually looser, and the ‘House of Joseph’ was divided into hostile factions. Benjamin had been decimated by its brother Israelites under the leadership of Ephraim, and Ephraim had undergone the same treatment at the hands of its brethren from Gilead. The conquest of Canaan had brought with it the old Canaanitish spirit of disunion and discord; the spectacle which the Tel el-Amarna letters present to us of city arrayed against city is reproduced in the Israel of the period of the Judges. The common brotherhood, which was still felt in the age of Deborah, tended to be forgotten. The tribes no longer come to one another’s aid; they fight with one another instead. The authority of the Judges become more and more circumscribed, their jurisdiction more and more confined. The tribes on the east of the Jordan begin to lead a separate life, and hardly acknowledge that the tribes to the west are kinsmen at all. The incorporation of the Canaanite element had weakened the recollection of a common descent, and at the same time had introduced into Israel a spirit of selfish isolation. The causes which had brought about the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites were now working among its conquerors, and it seemed as if the fate of the Canaanites was to be the fate of the Israelites also. The sanctuary at Shiloh still existed, but it had lost much of its influence. It had become little more than the local sanctuary of Ephraim,[368] and as the power of Ephraim waned the influence of Shiloh declined as well. Elsewhere rival sanctuaries and rival forms of worship had arisen. The high-places, whereon the Canaanites had adored Baalim and Ashtaroth, still continued sacred, and though officially the Baal of Israel was Yahveh, the mass of the people worshipped the local Baal of the place in which they lived. Yahveh was scarcely remembered, even in name: His place was taken by the Baalim and Ashtaroth of Canaan. Manasseh went ‘a whoring’ after the golden image erected by Jerubbaal in Ophrah, or after the Canaanitish Baal-berith in Shechem; a rival priesthood to that of Shiloh served before the idols of Micah at Dan; and Jephthah sacrificed his daughter in accordance with Canaanitish beliefs. The Law of Moses was forgotten; each man did that which was right in his own eyes.