The Golden Chest Goes to War

In those days Israel went out to fight the Philistines — and lost. Thousands of men fell, and the rest came back to the camp with their heads down. And the elders of Israel said, “Why did the Lord let us be beaten today? Let us fetch the ark of God from Shiloh and carry it out with us — then it will save us from our enemies.” They meant to use the golden chest like a lucky charm: carry the box, win the battle. As if God were a thing you could pick up and take where you wanted. So they sent to Shiloh, and Eli’s two sons came out with the ark, and it was carried into the camp. And when it came in, all Israel gave such a shout that the ground rang with it. The Philistines heard the shouting across the valley and said, “What is all this noise in the camp of the Hebrews? Their gods have come into the camp! These are the gods that struck Egypt with every kind of blow. What is going to become of us? Be strong, and be men, or we shall be their slaves the way they were ours!” And they fought — and Israel lost anyway. It was a terrible day. The men ran, and the ark of God was captured and carried off, and both of Eli’s sons died, just as the man of God had said they would, on one and the same day.

A man ran all the way from the battle to Shiloh with his clothes torn and dirt on his head. And there, beside the gate, sat old Eli on his seat, listening — because he could not see any more — with his heart shaking with fear for the ark of God. The city heard the news first, and cried out. And Eli said, ‘What is that noise?’ And the man came and stood in front of him and said, “Israel has run away from the Philistines. There has been a great slaughter among the people. Your two sons are dead. And the ark of God has been taken.” And at the words *the ark of God has been taken*, the old man fell backwards off his seat there beside the gate, and he died. He was ninety years old, and he had judged Israel for twenty years. And that same day his son’s wife had a baby, and she named him Ichabod, which means *the glory has gone*. ‘The glory has gone away from Israel,’ they said, ‘because the ark of God is taken.’

So the Philistines had the golden chest. They carried it home in triumph to the city of Ashdod and stood it up in the temple of their god Dagon, right beside the statue — the way you would set a prize you had won beside the one you thought had won it for you. In the morning they came in and found Dagon lying flat on his face on the floor in front of the ark of God. So they picked him up and stood him back in his place. And the next morning they came in — and Dagon was down on his face again, and this time his head and both his hands had broken off on the doorstep, and only the trunk of him was left. And then the people of Ashdod fell ill, with terrible sores; and mice swarmed up out of the fields all over their country. And the men of Ashdod said, “The ark of the God of Israel cannot stay here with us. His hand is too heavy on us, and on Dagon our god.” So they sent it to another city, Gath — and the same thing happened there. So they sent it on to Ekron, and the people of Ekron cried out, “Why have you brought the ark of the God of Israel round to us? Send it away, back to its own place!” Nobody wanted it. For seven months that box went from city to city, and everywhere it went there was trouble.

At last the Philistines called in their own priests and wise men and said, ‘What are we supposed to do with it?’ And the priests said: send it home — but do not send it back empty. Send a gift with it, to say we are sorry. Make five golden sores and five golden mice, one for each of our five cities, and put them in a box beside it. And they thought of a way to find out for certain whether all their trouble had really come from the God of Israel, or whether it had just been bad luck. Build a brand-new wagon, they said. Take two cows that have never pulled anything in their lives, cows with young calves still drinking their milk, and harness them to it — and then shut the calves up in the barn and let the cows go. Any cow in the world would turn around and go back to her calf. Nobody would even need to guess. But if those two cows went straight up the road toward Israel, then everybody would know. So they did it. They set the ark on the new wagon, and the box of gold beside it, and they let the cows go — and the two cows put their heads down and walked straight up the road to Israel, lowing as they went, and never turned aside to the right or the left, not once, the whole way. And the rulers of the Philistines walked along behind, all the way to the border, watching.

In a valley on the other side of the border, the people of a town called Beth-shemesh were out reaping their wheat. And somebody looked up — and there came a wagon down the road with two cows pulling it and the ark of the Lord riding on it. And they dropped their sickles and shouted for joy. But even that day had a hard lesson in it. Some of the men there treated the ark carelessly, and looked into it as though it were an ordinary box, and they died for it. And the people said, “Who can stand in front of the Lord, this holy God?” So they sent word up to the town of Kiriath-jearim, and men came down and carried the ark up to a house on the hill there, and set someone apart to look after it. And there it stayed for twenty years — home again, but not yet where it belonged.