The Philistines give back God's Covenant Box
1 The Philistines had the Lord's Covenant Box in their country for seven months. 2 Then they called their priests and their magicians to meet with them. The people asked them, ‘What must we do with the Lord's Covenant Box? Tell us how we should send it back to its home.’
3 The priests and magicians answered, ‘Send the Covenant Box of Israel's God back with a special offering. You must not send it back without anything. Send an offering so that their God will forgive you. Then you will get well again. You will understand why he has continued to punish you.’
4 The people asked, ‘What offering should we send to their God, so that he will forgive us?’
The priests and magicians replied, ‘You must send gold images of five tumours and five mice. You must make five images of each one because the Philistines have five rulers. They have the same disease that all of you have. 5 Make images of the tumours and the mice that are destroying everything in the country. Do that to give honour to the God of Israel. Maybe then he will stop punishing you, your gods and your land. 6 Do not be like the Egyptians and Pharaoh, their king. They did not agree to obey God. So God punished them a lot until they let the Israelites leave Egypt.
6:4A tumour is a lump that grows in your body. It makes you very ill. See 1 Samuel 5:6. 7 You must make a new cart. Find two cows that have just given birth to calves. It must be the first time that those cows have pulled a cart. Tie them to the cart with ropes so that they can pull it. Then take their calves away from them. 8 Put the Lord's Covenant Box on the cart. Put another box on the cart with the gold images inside it. Those are your offerings to their God so that he will forgive you. Then send the cart away. 9 But continue to watch it carefully. The cows may pull it across our border to Beth Shemesh in Israel. If that happens, we will know that the God of Israel has punished us with this great trouble. But if the cart goes somewhere else, we will know that it was not their God who did this to us. We will know that our disease happened only by chance.’
10 So the Philistines did what the priests and magicians told them. They took two cows that had just given birth to calves. They tied the cows to a cart. They took away their calves and they kept them at home. 11 They put the Lord's Covenant Box on the cart. They put the other box beside it on the cart. That box contained the gold images of the mice and the tumours. 12 The cows pulled the cart straight along the road towards Beth Shemesh. They did not turn off the road at all, to the left side or the right side. As they went, they made a lot of noise. The Philistine rulers walked behind the cart all the way, as far as the edge of Beth Shemesh.
