Joshua 18:4
Give out from among you three men for each tribe: and I will send them, and they shall rise, and go through the land, and describe it according to the inheritance of them; and they shall come again to me. Give out from among you three men for each tribe: and I will send them, and they shall rise, and go through the land, and describe it according to the inheritance of them; and they shall come again to me.
The instruction to appoint three men from each tribe to survey the land was given at the great gathering at Shiloh when the national headquarters and the tabernacle were removed from Gilgal to the place selected for their permanent location. Shiloh was a little town in the lot of Ephraim, situated near the center of the land and easy of access to all the tribes. It lay in a district that had been thoroughly subdued, so that worshipers coming up to it would not be molested.
There the whole congregation of Israel assembled and set up the tabernacle. The tribes that were still without their inheritance followed it from Gilgal, pitched their camps near Shiloh, and remained there until they dispersed to take possession of their own portions. The ark continued at Shiloh for three hundred years, until because of the sins of Eli's house it fell into the hands of the Philistines and Shiloh was ruined, after which the ark never returned there and the sanctuary service was finally transferred to the temple at Jerusalem, while Shiloh itself sank into insignificance until only ruins marked the spot where it had stood.