Tabernacle at Shiloh

The sanctuary town in the territory of Ephraim where the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant stood for roughly three hundred years between the conquest under Joshua and the early monarchy. Shiloh is where Hannah prays for a son and is granted Samuel (1 Samuel 1), where the boy Samuel hears God call him in the night (1 Samuel 3), and where the priest Eli judges Israel until the Philistines capture the ark at the battle of Aphek.

After the ark is taken Shiloh's importance fades; Jeremiah later uses it as a warning of what God can let happen to a sanctuary town that has presumed on his presence (Jeremiah 7:12). The site is tentatively identified with Khirbet Seilun, about thirty kilometers north of Jerusalem.