The compiler of the books of Samuel treated his materials in the same way. The result is that the picture of the Hebrew prophet which is presented to us is not always uniform in its colours. Sometimes he is a priest, sometimes the judge of all Israel, sometimes a mere local seer whose very name appears to be unknown to Saul.[372] Throughout the greater part of the narrative the Philistines are represented as the irresistible masters of the country; once, however, we hear that the cities they had captured were restored to Israel.[373] But it does not follow that because the colours of the picture are not uniform, a fuller knowledge of the history would not show that they are in harmony with one another. European critics are apt to forget that in the East, and more especially in the ancient East, conditions of life and society which are incompatible in Europe may exist side by side. John, the hermit of Lykopolis in Upper Egypt, was nevertheless on more than one occasion the arbiter of the destinies of the Roman Empire. And in the border warfare of Canaan cities passed backwards and forwards from one side to the other with a rapidity which it is difficult for the modern historian to realise. Whether Samuel was a Levite or an Ephraimite by descent has been disputed. His father came from the village of Ramathaim-zophim in Mount Ephraim, and was descended from a certain Zuph, who is called ‘an Ephrathite.’[374] ‘Ephrathite’ signifies ‘a man of Ephraim’ (as in 1 Kings xi. 26). But it also signifies a native of Ephratah or Bethlehem in Judah (Ruth i. 2, 1 Sam. xvii. 12), and could therefore signify any other place of the same name. That there were other places of the name, the very name of Ephraim, ‘the two Ephras,’ is a witness,[375] and we might therefore see in the ‘Ephrathite’ merely a native of one of them. The Chronicler (1 Chron. vi. 26, 27, 33-38) definitely makes Samuel a Levite, and traces his genealogy back to Kohath. It is true that in the age of Samuel the priests, in spite of the Mosaic law, were not always of the family of Levi—the fact that David’s sons were ‘priests’ is a sufficient proof of this,[376]—but it seems hard to believe that such an infringement of the Levitical tradition would have been permitted at Shiloh. Nor is it likely that the genealogy given by the Chronicler was an invention. Samuel had been in a special manner the gift of Yahveh. His mother Hannah had borne no children to her husband Elkanah, and was accordingly exposed to the taunts of a second and more fortunate wife. Once each year did the whole family ‘go up’ to Shiloh, ‘to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of Hosts.’ On one of these occasions Hannah besought Yahveh with tears that He would grant her a son, promising to dedicate him to the service of the sanctuary should he be born. A Babylonian tablet, dated in the fifth year of Kambyses, records a similar dedication by a Babylonian mother of her three sons to the