UST 1SA Chapter 6

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6 The people of Philistia kept Yahweh’s sacred chest in their area for seven months. 2 Then they summoned their priests and their fortunetellers. They asked them, “We want to know how we should treat the sacred chest of Yahweh. Tell us what gift we should send with it back to its own land.” 3 Those men replied, “Since you are going to return the sacred chest of Israel’s God, you must send a gift with it to show him that you are sorry for taking it. If you do that and your unhealthy skin growths go away, you will know for sure that it was Israel’s God who was making you suffer, because you took his sacred chest.” 4 The people of Philistia asked, “What kind of gift should we send?” Those men replied, “Since you people and your five rulers have suffered in the same ways, send the same number of gifts as the number of your rulers. Make five gold models of the unhealthy growths on your skin and five gold models of mice. 5 Make models that represent the unhealthy skin growths and the mice that have been devouring your crops. Make them in order to honor the God of the Israelite people. If you do that, perhaps he will stop punishing you, your gods, and your land. 6 Do not be stubborn as Pharaoh and the Egyptians were. Remember that Yahweh finally made them suffer more than they could bear, and that they then allowed the Israelites to leave their land. 7 So this is what we advise you to do. Build a brand-new cart. Then get two cows that have very recently given birth to calves. They must be cows on which no one has ever put a yoke. Hitch those cows to the new cart. But keep their calves from following them by putting them securely in their pens. 8 Put their God’s sacred chest on the cart along with the gold models you are sending to him. Put them in a small box alongside the sacred chest. These gold objects will be an offering to acknowledge to the God of the Israelites that he was right to punish you for taking his sacred chest. Then send the cows down the road and let them go wherever they want. 9 Then watch the cart as the cows pull it. If they pull it back into the territory of the Israelites, to the town of Beth Shemesh, then we will know that it was their God who caused these terrible plagues to afflict us. But if the cows do not pull the cart there, then we will know that the God of the Israelites has not been punishing us for taking his sacred chest. We will know that it was just a coincidence that we got unhealthy skin growths and mice ate our crops at the same time.” 10 So the people did what the priests and diviners told them to do. They got two cows that had just had calves and were nursing them. They hitched them to a new cart that they made. But they put those calves securely in their pens. 11 Then they put Yahweh’s sacred chest in the cart along with a box containing the gold models they had made of the mice and the skin growths. 12 Then the cows started walking, and they went straight down the road that led to Beth Shemesh. Even though no one had ever yoked them before, they did not pull in different directions. They were mooing the whole time because they were distressed about their calves, but they kept going forward down the road. The five rulers of the Philistine cities followed the cows until they reached the outskirts of Beth Shemesh. 13 At that time, the people of Beth Shemesh were harvesting wheat in the valley outside their city. When the cows came along the road, they looked up and saw the sacred chest on the cart the cows were pulling. They were extremely happy when they saw it. 14-15 14-15The cows pulled the cart into the field of a man whose name was Joshua who lived in Beth Shemesh. They stopped alongside a large rock. Several men from the tribe of Levi lifted from the cart the sacred chest and the box next to it that contained the gold models. They put all those things on the large rock. Then the people smashed the cart and kindled a fire with the wood from it. They slaughtered the cows and burned their bodies on the fire completely as an offering to Yahweh. That day the people of Beth Shemesh offered to Yahweh many sacrifices that they completely burned and many other sacrifices. 16 The five rulers of the Philistines watched the Israelites do these things. Then they returned to Ekron on that same day. 17 The Philistines had sent five gold models of skin growths as an offering to Yahweh to acknowledge that he was right to punish them for taking his sacred chest. The five gold models represented the people of their five cities: Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. 18 The five gold models of mice were gifts from the people of the five cities that the five Philistine leaders rule. This included the people who lived in those cities and those who lived in the surrounding towns, all the way to the border between Philistia and Israel that the large rock at Beth Shemesh marked. People would later give that rock the name Abel. Men from the tribe of Levi placed the sacred chest on top of that rock. It is still there in the field that belonged to the man whose name was Joshua who lived in Beth Shemesh. 19 But some of the people who lived in Beth Shemesh looked into Yahweh’s sacred chest. Because of that, Yahweh caused 50,070 of them to die. The others who lived there mourned greatly because Yahweh had killed so many of those people. 20 Then the people who lived in Beth Shemesh said, “Since Yahweh is such a holy God, he will eventually kill all of us to punish us for being sinful if his sacred chest remains here! We must send his sacred chest to the people who live in some other place!” 21 They sent messengers to the people who lived in the city of Kiriath Jearim. They told them, “The people of Philistia have sent Yahweh’s sacred chest back to us. Come here and take it to your city.”

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