3 They answered, “If you return the ark of the god of Israel, do not send it back to him without a gift; by all means send a guilt offering to him. Then you will be healed, and you will know why his hand has not been lifted from you.”
4 The Philistines asked, “What guilt offering should we send to him?”
They replied, “Five gold tumors and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. 5 Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel’s god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land. 6 Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did? When Israel’s god dealt harshly with them, did they not send the Israelites out so they could go on their way?
7 “Now then, get a new cart ready, with two cows that have calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up. 8 Take the ark of the LORD and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way, 9 but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth Shemesh, then the LORD has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us but that it happened to us by chance.”
10 So they did this. They took two such cows and hitched them to the cart and penned up their calves. 11 They placed the ark of the LORD on the cart and along with it the chest containing the gold rats and the models of the tumors. 12 Then the cows went straight up toward Beth Shemesh, keeping on the road and lowing all the way; they did not turn to the right or to the left. The rulers of the Philistines followed them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh.
Questions to consider:
- In addition to returning the ark to the people of Israel, what do they want to send with it?
- Who gives the people the idea of sending the ark back with some kind of offering?
- What other Old Testament story do the priests and diviners reference?
- In what direction do the cows, with the ark in tow, go?
- What does this mean?
Possibilities for prayer:
The fact that the priests reminded the Philistines of the way in which God had rescued the people of Israel from the hands of the Egyptians was really striking to me. The power (and perseverance) of the God of Israel is clearly rather widely known and the Philistines don’t want to “mess” with that.
We serve a God is known far and wide, both back in the time when the Bible was written and in this day and age. Let’s take some time to reflect on what that means to our lives, and to thank God for the privilege of being counted among those who are God’s servants.
Posts
