After a day's march they found themselves in the neighborhood of
Gath, at the place where the shepherds employed by the residents
of the city gathered with the flocks. the Ephraimites asked them to
sell them some sheep, which they expected to slaughter in order to
satisfy their hunger with them, but the shepherds refused to have
business dealings with them, saying, "Are the sheep ours, or does
the cattle belong to us, that we could part with them for money?"
Seeing that they could not gain their point by kindness, the
Ephraimites used force. The outcries of the shepherds brought the
people of Gath to their aid. A violent encounter, lasting a whole
day, took place between the Israelites and the Philistines. The
people of Gath realized that alone they would not be able to offer
successful resistance to the Ephraimites, and they summoned the
people of the other Philistine cities to join them. The following
day an army of forty thousand stood ready to oppose the
Ephraimites. Reduced in strength, as they were, by their three days'
fast, they were exterminated root and branch. Only ten of them
escaped with their bare life, and returned to Egypt, to bring
Ephraim word of the disaster that had overtaken his posterity, and
he mourned many days.

This abortive attempt of the Ephraimites to leave Egypt was the
first occasion for oppressing Israel. Thereafter the Egyptians
exercised force and vigilance to keep them in their land. As for the
disaster of the Ephraimites, it was well-merited punishment,
because they had paid no heed to the wish of the father Joseph,
who had adjured his descendants solemnly on his deathbed not to
think of quitting the land until the redeemer should appear. Their
death was followed by disgrace, for their bodies lay unburied for