Are You Sure You Want That Ark?

The Philistines worshiped at least three gods: Ashtoreth, Dagon, and Baal-Zebub. They carried images of Dagon (who had a man-head and a fish body - weird) into battle with them.

As we mentioned last time, the Philistines won the battle against the Israelites. The Israelites decided that the ark would win the battle for them if the carried it along for the fight.  It didn’t, and it was captured by the Philistines.

You might say that the Israelites had lost this battle long before it began, because they had adopted the false thinking of their opponents, the Philistines. Remember that the Israelites had stupidly carried the ark of the covenant into battle as though it would magically bring them victory. In doing this, they were just mimicking the false religious views of the Philistines.

So here is another one of those general lessons we Christians can learn from the O.T. - don’t lose the battle with the culture around us by uncritically adopting the thought of that culture and trying to fight it on its own terms. That is a good way to lose a lot of things, including yourself!

So the Philistines added the ark to their collection of gods.

The Philistines seemed to be a confederation of five major cities and their surrounding territory. One of these five cities was Ashdod, which is where the temple of Dagon was located. The Ashdodians got to keep the ark, and they placed it in Dagon’s temple.

As mentioned in the last study, God wreaked a bit of havoc on this temple. They kept finding the Dagon image face down before the ark of the Lord. This is significant. (Notice, 5:1, how the Philistines persist in their superstition about all this in refusing to step on the threshold of Dagon’s temple - "Step on a crack, break your Mother’s back!")

Even though the Israelites were stupid and superstitious in taking the ark into battle, the Philistines were not supposed to have it. So God begins to wreak some general havoc on the while city of Ashdod. Notice 5:7 where they seem to think Dagon can be "trumped" - reflects their thinking.

You can imaging how, when the Philistines first captured the ark, they all wanted to take it home. But the Ashdodians got to keep it. Now the ark becomes a "hot potato" to the Philistines. No one wants it because wherever it is in the five cities serious problems follow. So they send it first to Gath, and then to Ekron.

Let the Nazis have it?

I’m reading between the lines here a bit, but I can picture the rulers of Ashdod coming to the Philistines governing council and saying, "We don’t want to be stingy, so we are going to graciously pass that ark all of you wanted so badly around a bit."

Then the rulers of Gath pipe up, "We’ll take it, we’ll take it!" At the next meeting, the rulers of Gath do the same thing, and the Ekronian leaders say, "We’ll take it, we’ll take it." But as the ark is entering Ekron, word of how bad things get when it is around has leaked out, and the ordinary people of Ekron start to object vociferously. (Which, if you don’t know, means "with a loud, persistent voice.") altogether.

One of the "problems" is "tumors." Because what is said in 5:12 is literally "boils in their hinter parts" it was probably hemorrhoids. And this was before anybody had Preparation H! But I suppose hemorrhoids weren’t as bad as the alternative - you got these only if you didn’t die!

The next chapter implies that part of the problem for the Philistines was also a plague of rats.

The Ekronians just give up on trying to pass the ark off to another city. After seven months of playing "hot potato" with the ark, the Philistine rulers decided they need to get it out of Philistia

How to Get Rid of An Unwanted Ark

That "trophy" the Philistines thought they wanted turned out to be much more than they had bargained for. So now they need a plan to get rid of the ark. They consult their "priests and diviners" - their supposed religious experts. These "experts" offered this ark-return plan:

Send back an offering with the ark. They decided five gold models - one for each Philistine city - of the two things that plagued them: rats and tumors. (I can picture a model of a rat, but what does a model of a tumor look like??)

Notice that these Philistine religious experts were aware of the plagues God had brought upon Egypt, and saw their situation as a kind of parallel: just as the Egyptians should have sent the Israelites out of Egypt, so should the Philistines send the ark out of Philistia.

The Philistine religious experts also recommend that a test be built into the way the ark is sent back. They want to put it on a cart pulled by cows that have never pulled a cart, and that also have newborn young. The reason is that cows with calf would not naturally leave their calves. If they did leave and pull the ark back toward Israel, the Philistines would assume that God was directing the movement, and that all these problems weren’t just "chance."

I have to pause here to say that it is amazing how stupid people can be about "chance" - both then and now. They have taken this ark - which they already know has important religious significance - to three different cities. Each time, specific plagues come upon that city. This is done three times. But it might just be "chance."

If you think these people were stupid just because they lived long ago, don’t be so sure. How many very educated people today are desperate to show that all the information in human DNA came into being "by chance"?

Associated Press, August 15, 2005 - Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began. The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained. "My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard.

There is nothing like beginning your "research" with an open mind!

Once back in Israel, it is interesting that we find the Israelites being less respectful, in a way, of the ark than were the Philistines. Seventy die for looking into the ark: they were not even supposed to touch it! Note: there is a fine line between familiarity with God and irreverence.

So "here comes the ark!"

The ark comes back to Israelite territory, and the Philistines watch it carefully until it gets there. You can picture them seeing it go, breathing a sigh of relief and saying, "Good riddance!"

The Israelites have a big celebration. But even in the midst of this celebration, the Israelites continue to behave stupidly, a little Philistine-like. God had made it very clear to the Israelites that they were not to touch the ark - it was to be carried by priests on poles. But at the celebration, some of the Israelites decided to have a peek inside the ark. God struck these seventy men dead. I don’t know if white ghosts shot into their eyeballs and blew them apart as in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" - but God did strike them dead.

The Israelites now adopt some of the Philistine superstition. They take the ark to the top of a nearby hill, appoint a fellow to guard it, and leave it there for twenty years instead of taking it back to the "holy of holies" inside the tabernacle where it belonged.

At this point Samuel leads Israel has one of their many "renewals" back to the Lord. They admit they have taken the wrong way, and they turn back to God.

Here it becomes clear that Samuel is the new leader of Israel. The Philistines attack again, Samuel prays, God intervenes, and the Philistines are defeated this time.

Samuel then does something that is somewhat common in O.T. Israel. He puts up a little stone monument and gives it a name to remind everyone of what God had done at that spot.

While Samuel was in his prime, Israel held the Philistines in check, and Samuel rode a kind of circuit in Israel as judge, chief prophet of the time, and leader.

You might read 7:15-17 as saying that, during the golden age of Samuel’s leadership, God was in his heaven and all was right with Israel. If only things could stay that way, though they seldom do.