Joshua 18:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The whole congregation of the children of Israel Not only their elders, and heads of their tribes, who represented the people of Israel, and are sometimes meant by the whole congregation; but, as the expression may here very well signify, the whole body of the people, who, it is probable, accompanied the ark, in order to fix it in a new situation. Assembled together at Shiloh A place in the tribe of Ephraim, about fifteen miles from Jerusalem, situate upon a hill in the heart of the country. And set up the tabernacle there Which had now remained seven years with the camp at Gilgal. No doubt if was by God's order that it was removed hither, for he was to choose the place of its residence, Deuteronomy 12:5; Deuteronomy 12:11; Deuteronomy 12:14. And, it is probable, he made known his will in this respect by the oracle of Urim and Thummim, and by giving some extraordinary token of his accepting their sacrifices there. For when he made choice of mount Zion, an angel ordered the Prophet Gad to direct David to set up an altar in the threshing-floor of Ornan, and there God answered by fire, 1 Chronicles 21:18; 1 Chronicles 21:26. It would have been too far, after the division of the land, for all the tribes to go up to Gilgal to transact all that the law required to be done at the tabernacle, and now indispensably necessary to be performed there, although, while they sojourned in the wilderness, they did not observe these rules. This place was very convenient for all the tribes to resort to, being in the centre of them, and likewise very safe, being guarded by the two powerful tribes of Judah and Ephraim. And being in the lot of the latter tribe, to which Joshua belonged, and in which he probably fixed his stated abode, it was both for his honour and convenience that it was placed here; that he might have the opportunity of consulting God by Urim as often as he needed, and might more easily finish what remained to be done in the division of the land. Here, it is thought, the tabernacle remained for the space of three hundred and fifty years, even till the days of Samuel, 1 Samuel 1:3. Archbishop Usher, however, only reckons the time to be three hundred and twenty- eight years. Shiloh was the name given to the Messiah in dying Jacob's prophecy. So the pitching the tabernacle in Shiloh, says Henry, intimated to the Jews, that “in that Shiloh whom Jacob spoke of all the ordinances of this worldly sanctuary should have their accomplishment in a greater and more perfect tabernacle.”