The ark was certainly bound up with the idea of war, and would seem to have been kept in a soldier's tent. It was transferred to the dark inner temple till 586 B.C., and from that date all trace of it is lost. The Priest's Code ("P") makes provision for it in the second temple, but we have unimpeachable Jewish testimony that the shrine of the inner temple was absolutely empty (Josephus, _War of the Jews_, v. v. § 5). Jeremiah may have been aware of the original significance of the ark as tending towards idolatry, and hence his words in Jer. iii. 16. (2) _Ordinances of Worship._ It remains for us to enquire into the character of the religion founded by Moses by an examination of some of the outstanding ordinances that regulated the idea of worship. Here the traditional ascription of the fully developed ritual of the Book of Leviticus to Moses has to be set aside, on the consideration that we have no record of its observance until late in the period of the monarchy, and from then it can be traced as a gradual growth of custom and ideal until its complete observance after the Exile. There does not seem to have been any priesthood of the exclusive Levitical order founded by Moses. The story of the Levites in Exod. xxxii. can only be a late story, for there is no record of their monopoly of the ritual service until the Reform under Josiah: Joshua, an Ephraimite, is the "servant of the tent"; Samuel, also an Ephraimite, sleeps beside the ark (1 Sam. iii. 3); David and Solomon assume a kind of chief priesthood (2 Sam. vi. 13; 1 Kings viii. 5, 62 ff.), and of course neither of them were Levites. The story in Judges xvii. gives what is perhaps the true position of the Levites: anyone could be consecrated as a family priest, but the presence of a Levite was reckoned propitious. Down to a very late age sacrifice seems to have remained largely a tribal or family act, and although a descendant of Moses' tribe (Levi) was regarded as possessing special advantage, there was no law by which Levites alone were reckoned capable of discharging priestly functions.