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the ark of the Lord had been in the land of the Philistines for seven months, 2 the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and asked, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it back to its place.”
3 They answered, “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 guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why His hand is not removed from you.”
4 Then they said, “What is the guilt offering that we should return to Him?” And they answered, “Five gold tumours and five gold mice, corresponding with the number of the Philistine lords, since the same plague was on both you and on your lords. 5 So you shall make images of your tumours and images of your mice that are ravaging the land. You need to also give glory to Israel’s God. Perhaps then 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 hardened their hearts? After He had brought disasters on them, did they not let the people go, and they departed?
7 “Now then, get a new cart ready, with two milking cows that 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 place the articles of gold you are sending back to Him as a guilt offering in a chest beside it. Send it off and then let it go on its way, 9 but keep watching it: for if it goes up the road to His own territory, toward Beth-shemesh, then it is the Lord who has brought this great evil upon us. But if it doesn’t, then we will know that it is not His hand that struck us; it happened to us by chance.”
10 And the men did this. They took two milking cows and hitched them to the cart, and penned up their calves elsewhere. 11 They placed the ark of the Lord on the cart, along with the chest with the gold mice and images of their tumours. 12 Then the cows went straight toward the road to Beth-shemesh, staying on the road and lowing as they went, and they did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. The lords of the Philistines went after them as far as the border of Beth-shemesh.
13 Now the people of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and when they looked up and saw the ark, they rejoiced to see it. 14 The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh and stopped there beside a large rock. So they split up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. 15 The Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the chest that was beside it, in which were the articles of gold, and placed them on the large rock. Then the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and presented sacrifices on that day to the Lord. 16 The five lords of the Philistines saw all this and they returned to Ekron that same day.
17 These are the gold tumours, which the Philistines returned as a guilt offering for the Lord: one for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, and one for Ekron; 18 and the gold mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, the fortified cities with their surrounding villages. The large rock on which they placed the ark of the Lord remains in the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh to this day.
19 God struck down some of the men of Beth-shemesh because they had looked inside the ark of the Lord. He struck down seventy men from the fifty thousand men there. The people wept because the Lord had struck many of them down with a great slaughter. 20 Then the men of Beth-shemesh said, “Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? To whom should the ark go to from here?”
21 So they sent messengers to the people of Kiriath-jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down and take it back with you.”