Day 9: 1 Samuel 6:1–12

“Take the ark of the Lord, place it on the cart, and put the gold objects in a box beside it, which you’re sending Him as a guilt offering. Send it off and let it go its way” (v. 8).

David’s back story continues through 1 Samuel 5 and 6, where the Philistines capture the ark of the covenant but are frightened when, in a classic show of “my god’s bigger than your god,” the presence of the Lord caused the Philistine god Dagon to fall facedown before the ark in a position of worship.

But God wasn’t through showin’ He’s God. So He sent a plague on the Philistines in Ashdod.

They moved the ark to Gath. God moved the plague to Gath.

To Ekron. To Ekron.

You get the picture?

Finally the Philistines cried “uncle.” They included an offering to the God of the Hebrews and sent the ark back to Israel . . . sort of.

Any farmer would recognize that the Philistines tried to rig the return of the ark. They put the ark on a cart pulled by two cows that had never pulled a cart, cows with nursing calves penned up at home, and sent the cows on their way with the ark. The Philistine leaders obviously did everything they could to keep the cows from taking the ark away.

Have you ever wanted a certain answer from God so desperately that you consciously or subconsciously tried to “rig” the results? Reading things into the answer that just weren’t there? Grabbing the first thing out of someone’s mouth as your answer? I think we all have. It’s easy to do, but it invariably leads to pain because we end up claiming a promise or a position God never gave us.

Obviously, the cows wouldn’t pull the cart together, and certainly they wouldn’t leave their calves. Certainly, that is, except for God. The cows obeyed the Creator of cows.

I guess this story proves another basic truth about life: sin makes you stupid. The cows had better sense than the Philistines. God can appoint even the beasts of the field to do His bidding.