The test involved placing the ark on a new cart and selecting two cows who had never worn a yoke before. It would be normal for cows who had never worn a yoke to resist wearing it and to refuse to pull a cart. In order to get them to pull the cart back to Israel, the Lord would have to direct their steps. The second part of the test involved these cows being nursing mothers and having their calves separated from them and placed in a pen. It would go against nature for the cows to leave their offspring behind, therefore causing the Lord to have to command them to do so. The religious leaders of the Philistines stated that if the cows submitted to the yoke and were willing to pull the cart, and if they were willing to leave their young behind, and if they headed straight down the roadway toward Israelite territory and delivered the ark back to the Israelites, "Then the Lord has brought this disaster on us." If the cows struggled against wearing the yoke, refused to walk away from their young, and did not set out for Israelite territory, then, "We will know it was not His hand that struck us but that it happened to us by chance." This would allow them to keep the ark.
When we concluded the middle portion of Chapter 6 we learned that the cows immediately began pulling the cart toward the closest Israelite settlement. The God who created cows is certainly able to command them to do as He wants. The cows recognize the voice of their Creator and obey Him. Out of everything the Lord created---the entire universe and everything in it---it is only man who ever refuses His instructions.
The men of Beth Shemesh were threshing wheat when they heard the cows lowing and looked up to see the approaching cart with the ark of the covenant on it. "They rejoiced at the sight. The ark came to the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh, and there it stopped beside a large rock. The people chopped up the wood of the cart and sacrificed the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. The Levites took down the ark of the Lord, together with the chest containing the gold objects, and placed them on the large rock. On that day the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the Lord." (1 Samuel 6:13b-15)
Prior to losing the ark in a battle with the Philistines, we witnessed a spiritual decline taking place in the nation during the era of the judges, and it would appear that the people had perhaps begun to take the Lord for granted. The ark was taken into battle not upon command of the Lord, as it had been a couple of times previously in the Old Testament, but because the elders of Israel wanted to use it as a good luck charm. They did not believe the Lord would allow a battle to be lost if the ark was involved. They were essentially putting the Lord to the test in doing this because they believed He would have to defend the honor of His name by protecting the ark and refusing to allow the Israelites to be defeated. They couldn't imagine Him letting the heathen Philistines lay their unclean hands on the ark or letting them blaspheme His name by claiming that their gods had given them victory over the God of Israel. But the Lord had to teach them not to take His power and protection for granted. He let the ark be captured to remind them that the promise of blessings in the land were conditional upon their obedience to Him. To teach this lesson He allowed them to be defeated and He allowed the Philistines to capture the ark.
To use the expression "killing two birds with one stone", the Lord offered the Philistines an opportunity to accept Him as Lord while they had the ark. He destroyed their idolatrous image of Dagon and caused it to bow before the ark. But the Philistines refused to repent, instead doubling down on their idolatry. So the Lord sent a plague, displaying His power over the natural world and over mankind. But still the Philistines refused to repent and acknowledge Him as Lord. Their reluctance to part with what they considered a war trophy and their reluctance to accept that the plague was from the hand of the Lord is symbolic of their reluctance to turn away from sin. They wanted to cling to their mode of spiritual living at all costs and were only persuaded to part with the ark when their heathen spiritual advisers told them they must get rid of it before their whole nation perished.
The chief leaders of the Philistines watched from a distance as the cart made its arrival at Beth Shemesh and as the people rejoiced. "The five rulers of the Philistines saw all this and returned the same day to Ekron." (1 Samuel 6:16) They were forced to accept that they weren't going to be able to keep the ark. But they didn't change their ways. They went home to Ekron and went back to their usual way of life.
The Philistines' spiritual advisers had directed them to send a guilt offering to appease the Lord which consisted of a chest with five gold tumors inside it (to represent the symptoms of the plague) and five gold rats inside it (to represent the rats that showed up at the same time as the plague). The Israelites open the chest to see what's inside it. "These are the gold tumors the Philistines sent as a guilt offering to the Lord---one each for Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath and Ekron. And the number of gold rats was according to the number of Philistine towns belonging to the five rulers---the fortified towns with their country villages. The large rock on which the Levites set the ark of the covenant is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh." (1 Samuel 6:16-18)
There were Levites living at Beth Shemesh. You'll recall that the Levites weren't given swaths of territory in the promised land like the other tribes but were given cities to live in along with the surrounding pasturelands. The Israelites do the correct thing by having the Levites take the ark down from the cart; no one else was ever to handle the ark and even then it could only be carried by its poles. But something goes horribly wrong next. It appears as if not everyone has taken the lesson of losing the ark to heart. It would seem that not everyone regards the Lord (and the ark by extension) as holy. Some of the men of Beth Shemesh disobey the Lord by having physical contact with the ark. Not only do they touch it, but they irreverently look inside it. "But God struck down some of the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they looked into the ark of the Lord. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the Lord had dealt them." (1 Samuel 6:19)
We find the Lord holding the Israelites to a higher standard than the Philistines, and rightly so. No doubt some of the Philistines handled the ark all over and looked inside it. We know for a fact they transported it by cart which the Lord forbade the Israelites to ever do. But the Philistines didn't know the rules regarding the ark. The Lord had not personally spoken to them through Moses, as He did to the Israelites, giving them all the laws and all the commandments and all the regulations regarding the ark and the tabernacle in which it was to be kept. The Lord had not made a covenant with the Philistines as He did with the Israelites. The Philistines are guilty for not honoring God as Lord, for they know about Him and have had many opportunities to turn to Him over the centuries, but they aren't held accountable for keeping rules they aren't aware of where the ark is concerned. The Israelites, however, do know that no one but a specific family line of the Levites is ever to have contact with the ark, and even those men are only allowed to carry it by its poles. When some of the men touch the ark and look inside it they are displaying hearts that don't consider the Lord as holy. If they had considered the Lord as holy, they would have considered the object holy that symbolizes His presence among them. This infraction was so severe that the Lord put to death the seventy men who participated in this irreverent act.
Some of the citizens of Beth Shemesh seem to blame the Lord for these deaths. "And the people of Beth Shemesh asked, 'Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?'" (1 Samuel 6:20) They say something like, "This God can't be dealt with. Who can understand what He wants? Who can understand what He does? We need to rid our town of the ark before more bad things happen. Let's send it on to another town." It's not the presence of the ark that brought the trouble into their midst. It's the way some of the men treated the ark. It's sin that caused the Lord's hand of correction to fall heavily on those who didn't revere Him as holy. But instead of using this as an opportunity for repentance and for spiritual revival, they want to pass the ark along to someone else, in essence putting distance between themselves and the Lord.
The ark will be welcome at the next city where it resides. It will be treated with honor there and will remain there for twenty years. "Then they sent messengers to the people of Kiriath Jearim, saying, 'The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to your town.' So the men of Kiriath Jearim came and took up the ark of the Lord. They brought it to Abinadab's house on the hill and consecrated Eleazar his son to guard the ark of the Lord. The ark remained at Kiriath Jearim a long time---twenty years in all." (1 Samuel 6:21-1 Samuel 7:1-2) Did the people of Beth Shemesh expect tragedy to befall the men of Kiriath Jearim? Some scholars think so, suggesting they may have had some sort of conflict going with these neighbors. But we can safely assume that the ark was transported to Kiriath Jearim in the proper way, for no misfortune befalls anyone involved in the transport. It is clear that the people of that town welcome the arrival of the ark and that they take great care to treat it with reverence. They regard its presence as a blessing, and indeed this is how anyone who respects the Lord would regard it. They know the Lord doesn't literally live inside the ark but since the ark represents His beautiful covenant with Israel, to treat the ark with respect reflects a heart that is grateful to the Lord for choosing Israel as His covenant people.
To present ourselves with a modern day example, would a person who loves the Lord Jesus Christ go into a church and vandalize it? Would a person who is thankful for salvation take down the cross hanging behind the altar and break it into pieces and burn it in a fire? Would someone who believes the holy word of God take a Bible and pull the pages out and tear them into pieces? No, because we love the Lord whom these objects represent. So we see that, although the people understood that the Lord didn't live inside the ark just as you and I understand that Jesus Christ doesn't live inside a church building, to treat with scorn anything that symbolizes the Lord's love and power and protection is to display a heart that regards the Lord with scorn.
In our text today we found a percentage of people not giving the Lord the reverence that is due Him. By and large, though, the majority of the people of Israel will experience a spiritual revival as we'll be informed in tomorrow's passage. The loss of the battle to the Philistines was difficult to accept. The seventh-month absence of the ark was difficult to accept. The death of seventy men who disrespected the Lord was difficult to accept. But all these things will accomplish something good for the nation as a whole: most of the people will renew their commitment to the Lord.
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