1 Samuel 6

The Philistines send the ark back

¹The ark of the LORD was in the land of the Philistines for seven months. ²Then the Philistines summoned the priests and the diviners and said, “What should we do with the ark of the LORD? Tell us what we should send with it when we send it back to its place.” ³They answered, “If you are sending the ark of the God of Israel away, you must not send it empty. Be sure to return a guilt offering to him. Then you will be healed, and you will know why his hand has not been taken away from you.”^{a 4}They asked, “What guilt offering should we return to him?” They answered, “Five gold tumors and five gold rats, one for each of the rulers of the Philistines, because the same plague struck all the people and your rulers.^{bc 5}So make images of your tumors and images of your rats that are destroying the land, and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand on you, on your gods and on your land. ⁶Why harden your hearts the way the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened theirs? Once he had dealt harshly with them, did they not let the Israelites go, and they left? ⁷Now then, get a new cart ready, and two cows that are nursing calves and have never been yoked. Harness the cows to the cart, but take their calves away from them and back home. ⁸Take the ark of the LORD and set it on the cart, and put the gold objects that you are returning to him as a guilt offering in a box beside it. Then send it off and let it go its way. ⁹Then watch. If it goes up the road to its own territory, toward Beth-shemesh, then it is he who has brought this great disaster on us. But if not, we will know that it was not his hand that struck us. It just happened to us by chance.” ¹⁰The men did this. They took two cows that were nursing calves and harnessed them to the cart, and they penned up their calves at home. ¹¹They set the ark of the LORD on the cart, along with the box, the gold rats and the images of their tumors. ¹²The cows went straight along the road toward Beth-shemesh. They kept to the one highway, lowing as they went, and did not turn to the right or the left. The rulers of the Philistines walked behind them as far as the border of Beth-shemesh. ¹³Now the people of Beth-shemesh were out in the valley reaping the wheat harvest. When they looked up and saw the ark, they were glad at the sight. ¹⁴The cart reached the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh and stopped there, where there was a large stone. The people split up the cart’s wood and sacrificed the cows to the LORD as a burnt offering.

¹⁵The Levites had taken down the ark of the LORD and the box with it that held the gold objects, and had set them on the large stone. On that day the men of Beth-shemesh brought burnt offerings and other sacrifices to the LORD. ¹⁶When the five rulers of the Philistines had seen this, they went back to Ekron that same day.

¹⁷These are the gold tumors that the Philistines returned as a guilt offering to the LORD: one for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath and one for Ekron.

¹⁸The gold rats matched the number of all the Philistine cities belonging to the five rulers, from fortified cities to country villages, as far as the large stone on which they set the ark of the LORD. That stone is still there to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh.^{d 19}But he struck down some of the men of Beth-shemesh for looking into the ark of the LORD. He struck down seventy men among the people, 50,000 men. The people mourned because the LORD had struck them with such a heavy blow.^{ef 20}Then the men of Beth-shemesh asked, “Who is able to stand before the LORD, this holy God? And to whom should he go up from here, away from us?”

The ark comes to Kiriath-jearim

²¹So they sent messengers to the people of Kiriath-jearim to say, “The Philistines have brought back the ark of the LORD. Come down and carry it up to your town.”