Ep. 74 - The Philistines Steal the Ark (Part 2)

When we last left our story, the Israelites were in big trouble…the Ark of the Covenant had been captured by the Philistines. After years of Philistine oppression, the Israelites finally decided that enough was enough…it was time to fight the oppressive Philistines. So, the Israelites put together an army and marched off to fight them. But unlike all the past times that they’d fought off their oppressors, this time the Israelites hadn’t given up their false gods and they hadn’t asked God if they should fight in the first place. So, of course, when the Israelites went to battle, they lost. But then the Israelites came up with a not-so-bright idea…they needed God’s help to win the next battle…why not get the Ark of the Covenant and bring it into battle…then they would will win for sure! And that’s what they did. But of course, this was never going to work. And the Israelites lost the next battle too…this time badly. Not only did they lose the battle, not only did thousands of Israelites die, but the Ark of the Covenant…the most special thing in all of Israel…the center of all Israelite worship…was captured by the Philistines. It was a dark day for the Israelites. What was going to happen to the ark? What was going to happen to the tabernacle? How could the Israelites possibly come back from this? Well, let’s find out.

After the Philistines captured the Ark, they did what any other nation would have done around that time…they put the Ark in their temple next to their main national god. Which in case the of Philistines, was Dagon. If you kidzos remember from the last episode, all the surrounding pagan nations thought that when big battles were being fought, that not only were the two armies fighting…but the two main gods of each nation were fighting too. So if your army won, well it was at least in part because your nation’s god beat their god…because your god was stronger than their god. And if you happened to also capture the main idol or statue of the defeated god, well even better. And they’d carry the defeated god back to their capital and parade it through the streets and be like… our god beat their god…because look, we have their god! And then they’d take it, and put it in their main temple. And they’d usually arrange it so that the statue of the defeated god was somehow lower than the status of your god…showing that your god was the strongest. And this kinda served like a regular reminder of just how awesome your god was. And that’s exactly what the Philistines did with the Ark of the Covenant. After the battle, the Philistines carried the Ark to Ashdod (which was one of the Philistines’ main capitals). And after what was probably a long day of celebrations and parading the ark through the streets, the Philistines set the Ark in its place close to the statue of Dagon in Dagon’s temple. And then they all went to sleep…ah…feeling confident and satisfied that they had so completely defeated the Israelites and their God.

But as you kidzos know, our God, the creator of the universe, is NOT AT ALL like all those fake pagan gods…as the Philistines were about to find out. The very next morning, the Philistines woke up and the priests went into Dagon’s temple to check on things and do their usual thing. But when they went into Dagon’s special room, they couldn’t believe what they saw. Dagon, the most powerful god of the Philistines (who by the way looked like a man from the waist up, but from the waist down looked like a fish), had fallen flat on his face in front of the Ark! It was almost as if…no it couldn’t be…had the God of the Israelites knocked Dagon down onto the ground? No way…that’s impossible! Dagon and the god of the Israelites had just fought it out the day before…and Dagon had clearly won. No, something random must have happened overnight…a big wind…maybe a small earthquake. Yah that makes sense! And so, the Philistines carefully lifted their precious statue of Dagon off the ground and put him back into his place…hoping against hope that this was just some kind of fluke.

But of course, it wasn’t a fluke. The very next day, when the Philistines woke up, the same thing had happened again! There was all-powerful Dagon…again on the ground in front of the Ark. But this time, Dagon hadn’t just fallen, but he had fallen so hard that his head and hands had broken off and went flying across the room! In fact, the head and hands had rolled all the way to the doorway. So in the morning when the priests opened the door to check on Dagon, the first thing they would have seen when they looked down was the head and hands of their precious and all-powerful Dagon! As you can imagine, the priests were just beside themselves…probably scarred for life. So much so that after this happened, the Bible says that the Philistines never stepped right at the bottom of that doorway of Dagon’s special room in the temple ever again. And ya know kidzos maybe just as a fun side thing, it’s interesting that according to history, around the same time a lot of pagan religions started to have this belief that it’s bad luck to step on a line or a threshold. Something about how a threshold is a dangerous place in the spiritual world. And this idea is actually still around today. Have you kidzos ever heard someone say, ‘Step on a crack, break your mother’s back?” Yah…well that saying probably comes from this belief that stepping on a threshold is bad luck. And we don’t know for sure, but it is at least possible that this idea came from this Bible story…when Dagon’s head and hands were found broken at the doorway of the temple…all those years ago.

But while this was shocking to the Philistines, it was only the beginning of their problems. Because not too long after poor Dagon was mangled, the Bible says that, “the hand of the LORD was heavy on the people of Ashdod, and He ravaged them and struck them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territory.” (1 Sam. 5:6) So the people who lived in the city that had the ark, and the people who lived in the country-side around the city, began to get tumors. Now, when we hear the word ‘tumors’, we usually think about cancer. But it probably wasn’t cancer. It was probably more like big, painful lumps everywhere on people’s bodies—kind of like when you get a really bad bee sting that swells up, except much worse and a lot of them. So, imagine being one of the Philistines living in Ashdod and waking up in your bed one morning, and as your eyes slowly open, you look at your arm and…ah! What happened to my arm! Where did all these lumps come from! Then you look at your other arm, and ah…that arm too! Then you pull the covers from your legs and…ah they’re all over your legs too! Then you realize, these lumps are all over your body! I look like some kind of mutant monster! What’s going on?? And because this happened to tons of people all at the same time, and right after the Ark arrived in the city, and right after the whole Dagon thing, well the Philistines living in Ashdod put two and two together…the God of the Israelites was doing this to them. People even started dying of these tumors. And it got so bad that the people who lived in Ashdod eventually said…enough of this! The Ark can’t stay in Ashdod. And they called the lords of the Philistines together to decide what to do.

And what did the lords of the Philistines decide to do? Well, since things were going so badly in Ashdod, why not try try another city. And so, they sent the Ark to Gath…another of the Philistine capital cities. But of course, when the Ark arrived in Gath, the same thing happened…but worse. More tumors and more people dying. And when the people in Gath had had enough, they sent the Ark to yet another Philistine city – Ekron – where of course the same thing happened again…but even worse! In fact, things got so bad in Ekron that the Bible says, “the cry of the city went up to heaven.” (5:12) And on top of all this, a plague of rats invaded the whole Philistine territory…not just the cities…eating all the crops and all the food. So, not only were the Philistines suffering from mutant tumors and people dying, but now they might starve! And after seven whole months of this, the Philistines finally decided that enough was enough…they couldn’t just keep moving the Ark from city to city…they needed to get rid of this cursed thing!

But how? How could the Philistines get rid of the Ark? It’s not like they could just ya know burn it or throw it off some mountain somewhere…that would just invite more disaster. They knew that they had to return the Ark to the Israelites…but they didn’t want to do it in a way that would create more problems. So, the Lords of the Philistines called their priests and diviners and asked them for advice. And the lords said to them, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it to its place.” (6:2) And the priests and diviners answered, and said, “If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty; but by all means return it to Him with a trespass offering. … Five golden tumors and five golden rats, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines. For the same plague was on all of you and on your lords.” (6:4-5) Now the Philistine priests weren’t experts on the tabernacle and all it’s services, but they’d heard of something called a trespass offering and they thought they’d give it a try…even if they didn’t know exactly what to do.

Now when the Philistines heard this from the priests, they probably couldn’t believe what they were hearing. The priests of Dagon were saying that they had to give lavish gifts to the God of the Israelites…the god that Dagon had apparently defeated so decisively just seven months ago. Why in the world would they do that? And besides, couldn’t all these things just be a coincidence? Maybe it could all be explained. I mean…we know that rats bring disease…maybe we just had a regular infestation of rats and they infected us with these tumors…ya…that’s definitely what happened…the God of the Israelites didn’t have anything to do with it. But seeing that the Philistines weren’t taking their advice very well, the priests went on to say, “Why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When He (that is God) did mighty things among them, did they not let the people go, that they might depart?” (6:6) The Philistine priests really seemed to know their Israelite history, eh kidzos? They remembered that when the Israelites were in Egypt and when the plagues started to fall, that the Egyptians tried to explain away all the things that were happening to them…which caused them to suffer even more. The priests were basically saying to the Philistines…hey let’s not make the same mistake as the Egyptians…let’s just let the Ark go. (Interesting that the Philistines…the enemies of the Israelites…seemed to understand more about God than the Israelites themselves did.)

But understanding that they were skating on thin ice, the Philistine priests suggested an interesting way of returning the Ark…a way that would put to rest all doubts about what the God of the Israelites was and was not doing. The priests told the Philistines to build a new cart (like the kind of cart that gets pulled behind an ox or a cow), put the ark in it, and put the golden tumors and golden rats in it too. Then take two cows who had just had their calves, hitch them to the cart, and then see what happens. Now, if you know anything about cows, when a cow has a baby, the mother cow and the baby cow are basically inseparable. They stick together like peanut butter and jelly. And if somehow they get separated, the mother cow gets super upset…and starts mooing like crazy…and pushing and pushing…and will do just about anything to get back to her baby. And the priests wanted two of these mother cows attached to the cart…knowing that they would not want to go anywhere but to their calves. And then the priests told them what the test would be, and said, “watch: if it goes up the road to its own territory, to Beth Shemesh (that is to say…the closets Israelite city), then He (He meaning God) has done us this great evil. But if not, then we shall know that it is not His hand that struck us—it happened to us by chance.” (6:9)

That sounded reasonable to the Philistines…and so that’s exactly what they did – they made the cart, put the ark in it, put the trespass offering in it, hitched the mother cows to the cart, and set it free on the road. Of course, most of the Philistines watching this probably thought that the mother cows were just going to running right back to their calves…I mean it was just nature, right? But instead, the Bible says that, “the cows headed straight for the road to Beth Shemesh, and went along the highway, lowing as they went, and did not turn aside to the right hand or the left.” (6:12) So right away the mother cows began walking to the closest Israelite city…mooing like crazy the whole way. The mother cows obviously wanted to go back their calves…but despite this they just kept heading down the road…exactly as the Philistine priests predicted.

Over in Beth Shemesh, it was harvest season, and the Israelites were busy with the wheat harvest. And as they were going about their work, they noticed something off in the distance…it looked like a cart…but it was all by itself…nobody was driving it. And as they headed towards the apparently lost cart, they began to vaguely make out the shape of the golden two cherubim that sat on the top of the ark. Wait…could it be…that’s not…wait it is…it was the ark of the covenant! The most special thing in all Israel, the center of Israel’s worship, had come back to them on this random cart…apparently on its own! With the Israelites watching closely, the cows continued on the road until they arrived at the field of a man named Joshua…and then finally came to a stop. Knowing a bit more about the ark than the Philistines and knowing that not just anyone could touch it, the Israelites immediately found some Levites living in town and brought them out to Joshua’s field. The Levites joyfully but carefully unloaded the ark onto a nearby rock, and immediately restarted the tabernacle services with some sacrifices.

No doubt the great news about the return of the Ark spread quickly throughout all of Israel, and no doubt the Israelites were beyond happy. The Philistine defeat had been devastating. And now the Philistine oppression was even worse than it had been before. But worse than that, the tabernacle was gone, the high priest was dead, and the tabernacle services had stopped… God had seemingly left them. But now the ark was back. And God had somehow found a way to deliver it back to the Israelites in such a strange and unexpected way. Maybe God hadn’t left them. Maybe God was still with the Israelites. Maybe there would be hope for the future.