1 Samuel 6
6
1And the ark of Jehovah is in the field of the Philistines seven months,
2and the Philistines call for priests and for diviners, saying, ‘What do we do to the ark of Jehovah? let us know wherewith we send it to its place?’
3And they say, ‘If ye are sending away the ark of the God of Israel, ye do not send it away empty; for ye do certainly send back to Him a guilt-offering; then ye are healed, and it hath been known to you why His hand doth not turn aside from you.’
4And they say, ‘What [is] the guilt-offering which we send back to Him?’ and they say, ‘The number of the princes of the Philistines — five golden emerods, and five golden mice — for one plague [is] to you all, and to your princes,
5and ye have made images of your emerods, and images of your mice that are corrupting the land, and have given honour to the God of Israel; it may be He doth lighten His hand from off you, and from off your gods, and from off your land;
6and why do ye harden your heart as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their heart? do they not — when He hath rolled Himself upon them — send them away, and they go?
7‘And now, take and make one new cart, and two suckling kine, on which a yoke hath not gone up, and ye have bound the kine in the cart, and caused their young ones to turn back from after them to the house,
8and ye have taken the ark of Jehovah, and put it on the cart, and the vessels of gold which ye have returned to Him — a guilt-offering — ye put in a coffer on its side, and have sent it away, and it hath gone;
9and ye have seen, if the way of its own border it goeth up to Beth-Shemesh — He hath done to us this great evil; and if not, then we have known that His hand hath not come against us; an accident it hath been to us.’
10And the men do so, and take two suckling kine, and bind them in the cart, and their young ones they have shut up in the house;
11and they place the ark of Jehovah upon the cart, and the coffer, and the golden mice, and the images of their emerods.
12And the kine go straight in the way, on the way to Beth-Shemesh, in one highway they have gone, going and lowing, and have not turned aside right or left; and the princes of the Philistines are going after them unto the border of Beth-Shemesh.
13And the Beth-Shemeshites are reaping their wheat-harvest in the valley, and they lift up their eyes, and see the ark, and rejoice to see [it].
14And the cart hath come in unto the field of Joshua the Beth-Shemeshite, and standeth there, and there [is] a great stone, and they cleave the wood of the cart, and the kine they have caused to ascend — a burnt-offering to Jehovah.
15And the Levites have taken down the ark of Jehovah, and the coffer which [is] with it, in which [are] the vessels of gold, and place [them] on the great stone; and the men of Beth-Shemesh have caused to ascend burnt-offerings and sacrifice sacrifices in that day to Jehovah;
16and the five princes of the Philistines have seen [it], and turn back [to] Ekron, on that day.
17And these [are] the golden emerods which the Philistines have sent back — a guiltoffering to Jehovah: for Ashdod one, for Gaza one, for Ashkelon one, for Gath one, for Ekron one;
18and the golden mice — the number of all the cities of the Philistines — for the five princes, from the fenced city even unto the hamlet of the villages, even unto the great meadow on which they placed the ark of Jehovah — [are] unto this day in the field of Joshua the Beth-Shemeshite.
19And He smiteth among the men of Beth-Shemesh, for they looked into the ark of Jehovah, yea, He smiteth among the people seventy men — fifty chief men; and the people mourn, because Jehovah smote among the people — a great smiting.
20And the men of Beth-Shemesh say, ‘Who is able to stand before Jehovah, this holy God? and unto whom doth He go up from us?’
21And they send messengers unto the inhabitants of Kirjath-Jearim, saying, ‘The Philistines have sent back the ark of Jehovah; come down, take it up unto you.’
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1 Samuel 6: YLT98
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maintained by the British and Foreign Bible Society
1 Samuel 6
6
1After the Ark of the Lord had been in the country of the Philistines for seven months, 2the Philistines summoned the priests and fortune-tellers, and asked, “What should we do with the Ark of the Lord? Explain to us how to send it back to where it came from.”
3“If you're going to send back the Ark of the God of Israel, do not send it back empty-handedly, but make sure to send along with it a gift of a guilt offering to him,” they replied. “Then you will be healed, and you will understand why he has treated you like this.”
4“What kind of guilt offering should we send back to him?” asked the Philistines. “Five gold objects in the shape of the swellings, and five gold rats representing the number of rulers of the Philistines,” they replied. “The same plague attacked both you and your rulers. 5Make models to represent your swellings and the rats destroying the country, and honor the God of Israel. Perhaps he will stop punishing you, your gods, and your land. 6Why be stubborn like the Egyptians and Pharaoh? When he punished them, didn't they send the Israelites on their way as they left?
7So get a new cart ready, pulled by two milk cows that have never been yoked. Tie the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and put them in a stall.#6:7. The purpose of this was to force the cows to do something unusual by voluntarily leaving their calves behind. In this way the people would be sure that this course of action had God's approval if he made it happen. 8Pick up the Ark of the Lord, put it on the cart, and place the gold objects you are sending him as a guilt offering in a chest beside it. Then send the Ark away. Let it go whichever way it wants, 9but keep watching it. If it goes up the road to its home country, to Beth-shemesh, then it is the Lord who caused all this terrible trouble for us. But if it doesn't, then we'll know that it wasn't him who punished us—it just happened to us by chance.”
10So that's what the people did. They took two milk cows and tied them to the cart, and kept their calves in a stall. 11They put the Ark of the Lord on the cart, together with the chest containing the gold rats and models of their swellings. 12The cows went straight up the road to Beth-shemesh, lowing as they went, going directly on the main road and not turning either left or right. The Philistine rulers followed them all the way to the border of Beth-shemesh.
13The people of Beth-shemesh were reaping wheat in the valley. When they looked up and saw the Ark, they were so happy to see it. 14The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh, and stopped there beside a large rock. The people cut up the cart for wood and sacrificed the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. 15The Levites took down the Ark of the Lord and the chest containing the gold objects, and put them on the large rock. The people of Beth-shemesh presented burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the Lord that day. 16The five Philistine rulers saw all that happened and then went back to Ekron the same day.
17The five gold models of swellings sent by the Philistines as a guilt offering to the Lord were from the rulers of Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. 18The gold rats represented the number of Philistine towns of the five rulers—the fortified towns and their surrounding villages. The large rock on which they placed the Ark of the Lord still stands to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh as a witness to what happened there.
19But God killed some of the people of Beth-shemesh because they looked inside the Ark of the Lord. He killed seventy,#6:19. Some manuscripts appear to read 50,070, but this is an improbably large figure for a small settlement. and the people mourned deeply because the Lord had killed so many. 20The people of Beth-shemesh asked, “Who can stand before the Lord, this holy God? Where should the Ark go from here?”
21They sent messengers to the people of Kiriath-jearim to say, “The Philistines have returned the Ark of the Lord. Come down and take it home with you.”
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Dr. Jonathan Gallagher. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License. Version 4.3. For corrections send email to jonathangallagherfbv@gmail.com