The destruction of the temple at Shiloh must have been one of the first results of the victory. The Israelites had no longer an army, and the Philistine conquerors could march in safety through the passes of Mount Ephraim. A fort was built by them to command the pass at Michmash, and the old sanctuary of Israel was levelled to the ground. No record of its destruction, indeed, was known to the compiler of the books of Samuel; it would have been strange, if in that hour of distress and national disaster, when the storehouse of Hebrew literature was itself destroyed, a chronicler should have been found to describe the event. But the memory of it was never forgotten, and it is alluded to both by the prophet Jeremiah and by the Psalmist (Jer. vii. 12, xxvi. 6; Ps. lxxviii. 60). Such of the priests of Shiloh as survived the catastrophe were scattered through Israel. In the time of Saul we find eighty-five of them at Nob, which is accordingly called ‘the city of the priests.’ Samuel himself fled to the home of his fathers at Ramah. There as a seer and prophet, as the representative of the fallen sanctuary of Israel, and as one of the few literary men of the age, he became the centre of all that was left of patriotism and national feeling in Israel. Gradually his influence grew. Ahitub, the grandson of Eli, was young like himself, and the destruction of Shiloh had deprived him of such authority as his service before the ark of the covenant would have conferred. The ark itself was once more within the confines of Israel. It had been carried to Ashdod, and there placed in triumph in the temple of Dagon. But the triumph was short-lived. In the night, the image of Dagon twice fell from its pedestal and lay on its face before the ark of the mightier God. On the second occasion, it was broken in pieces by its fall; when the priests entered the sanctuary in the morning, they found the head and hands of their god rolled upon the threshold. ‘Therefore,’ we are told, ‘neither the priests of Dagon nor any that come into Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day.’[395]