The earlier Israelites, however, had no such poetical illusions. To them, their god Jahweh was simply the object--stone pillar or otherwise--preserved in the ark or chest {198}which long rested at Shiloh, and which was afterwards enshrined, “between the thighs of the building” (as a later gloss has it), in the Temple at Jerusalem. The whole of the early traditions embedded in the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings show us quite clearly that Jahweh himself was then regarded as inhabiting the ark, and as carried about with it from place to place in all its wanderings. The story of the battle with the Philistines at Eben-ezer, the fall of Dagon before the rival god, the fortunes of the ark after its return to the Israelitish people, the removal to Jerusalem by David, the final enthronement by Solomon, all distinctly show that Jahweh in person dwelt within the ark, between the guardian cherubim. “Who is able to stand before the face of Jahweh, this very sacred god?” ask the men of Bethshemesh, when they ventured to look inside that hallowed abode, and were smitten down by the “jealous god” who loved to live in the darkness of the inmost sanctuary. * * Mr. William Simpson has some excellent remarks on the analogies of the Egyptian and Hebrew arks and sanctuaries in his pamphlet on The Worship of Death. It may be well to note in this connexion two significant facts: Just such an ark was used in Egypt to contain the sacred objects or images of the gods. And further, at the period when the Sons of Israel were tributaries in Egypt, a Theban dynasty ruled the country, and the worship of the great Theban phallic deity, Khem, was widely spread throughout every part of the Egyptian dominions.