1 Samuel 6:1-13 ▼

1 The Ark of the LORD remained in Philistine territory for seven months.

2 The Philistines summoned the priests and diviners and asked, |What should we do about the Ark of the LORD? Tell us how we should send it back to its place.|

3 They said, |If you send the Ark of the God of Israel back, don't send it empty, but rather be sure to send back to him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed and will know why his oppression has not been removed from you.|

4 They asked, |What is the guilt offering that we should send back to him?| |Five gold tumors and five gold mice,| they answered, |according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, since the same plague was on all of you and on your lords.

5 Make images of your tumors and images of the mice that are destroying your land, and you are to give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will remove his pressure from you, your gods, and your land.

6 Why should you harden your hearts just as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? Isn't it true that after God toyed with them, they let Israel go, and off they went?

7 |So make a new cart, and take two milk cows that have never had a yoke on them. Hitch the cows to the cart and take their calves away from them and back to the house.

8 Take the Ark of the LORD, put it on the cart, and put the gold objects that you are returning to him as a guilt offering in a box beside it. Then send it away and let it go.

9 Keep watching it. If it goes up along the road to its own territory to Beth-shemesh, it's the LORD who has done this great evil to us. But if it does not, then we will know that he wasn't pressuring us. It happened to us as a natural event.|

10 The men did this. They took two milk cows, hitched them to the cart, and penned up their calves in the house.

11 They put the Ark of the LORD, the box, the gold mice, and the images of their tumors on the cart.

12 The cows took a straight path along the road to Beth-shemesh. They stayed on the highway, lowing as they went, and did not turn to the right or the left. The Philistine lords followed them as far as the border of Beth-shemesh.

13 Now the people of Beth-shemesh were gathering their wheat harvest in the valley. They looked up, saw the Ark, and rejoiced to see it.