1 SAMUEL 6
Read 1 Samuel 6 through to the first verse of 1 Samuel 7.
This chapter brings to an end the ‘trilogy’ of the adventures of the Ark of the Covenant (a study in ‘arkeology’ perhaps?). The Philistines, having seen the destruction that it brought to their cities resolve to send this troublesome Ark back where it came from. Because this business is all to do with gods, the rulers of the Philistines call in the priests to decide how best to go about it. The priests tell them that it is absolutely necessary to send a financial contribution back with the Ark to acknowledge their guilt and the judgement that they have come under. The way they do that seems a bit macabre to us: making golden tumours and rats. This seems to be a way of recognising the form of judgement, some kind of plague that is borne by rats, to appease the god who has brought that judgement about in the hope that the value of the offering is sufficient for that god to stop inflicting the punishment.
Anyway, preparations are made to send the Ark back to Israel. At the same time, the Philistines conduct an experiment to determine whether this is really a judgement from a foreign god or simply bad luck. The cart with Ark and the offering of golden rats and tumours is to be pulled by cows that have recently given birth. The calves are put on the Philistine side of the road, the idea being that if the cows ignore their maternal instincts and pull the cart away from their calves and towards the Israelite side of the road, then this is God’s work. In verse 12, we read that the cows went straight towards Beth Shemesh in Israel, going against their normal instincts. The Philistines have their answer: they have been judged by the god of the Israelites.
And God’s judgement was not yet over. The Ark found its way back home to Israelite territory. The people of Beth Shemesh welcomed the Ark and worshipped the Lord appropriately by making sacrifices. But some of the villagers went too far and looked into the Ark and suffered the consequence, death. When we go back to the regulations for the Ark and the temple furniture in Numbers 4:1-20, we see that even the Kohathites, a group within the tribe of Levi who had special responsibility for taking care of them, were not permitted to look upon the sacred furniture. God is holy and it is not for anyone to either look upon him or items that are specially consecrated to him. And remember that the Ark, though not God, is symbolically representative of him. Treating the Ark without due reverence is tantamount to not giving God himself due reverence.
We learn here that God’s people are not exempt from judgement and that they must remember that God is holy. We can be over-familiar and ‘matey’. The Puritan Jonathan Edwards noted that ‘the absence of godly fear signifies a lack of knowledge of God’.