The Ark Of The Covenant (Part One)
A wooden box covered in pure gold. On the outside, just over a metre long. On the inside, according to the Biblical text, the literal presence of the creator of the universe. Two men touched it without authorization – they died instantly. An entire army captured it as a war trophy and within seven months entire cities were devastated by tumors and plagues so violent that they begged the captors to return it. When seventy men from an Israelite village made the mistake of opening the lid and looking inside the text of First Samuel records that 50,070 were dead. No object in the history of humanity has generated more fear or reverence or more obsession than the Ark of the Covenant.
Empires coveted it; kings killed for it; entire nations were judged in its presence. But then, in a moment that no one can explain with certainty, it simply disappeared as if it had never existed. For 2,500 years archaeologists and historians have wondered ‘where is the Ark of the Covenant now?’
To try to understand the truth about this ark (container) we need to go back to the moment it was conceived. The order came directly from God when the Israelites were in the Sinai Desert around 1,446 B.C. according to the most accepted chronology. The people of Israel have just left Egypt, camped in the middle of nothing – sand, rock and merciless sun. Moses climbed Mt. Sinai and stayed there for forty days and forty nights – no food, no water – alone in the presence of something the text describes as a consuming fire on the mountain top. It had a thick cloud with thunder and lightning so violent that the people in the camp below trembled in fear. It is in this setting that God gives Moses the design for the Ark with tremendous detail. Exodus Chapter 25:10 says, “And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.” In modern measurements this would be 3 feet 9 inches long by 2 feet 3 inches wide and 2 feet 3 inches high.
God does not speak in vague terms. He specifies every inch. The Ark was to be made of Acacia wood (Shittim). Exodus continues “And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about. And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it. And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, that the ark may be borne with them. The staves shall be in the rings of the ark, they shall not be taken from it. And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony that I shall give thee.” Exodus 25:11-16.
It’s important to know that the most impressive part of the Ark was not the box but the lid. In Hebrew it was called the ‘kapporet’ but, in English, it is the “mercy seat”. This was the place where forgiveness happened – the place where God’s justice and mercy met. It included two cherubim cast in solid gold. Exodus seems to be emphatic that the cherubim and the mercy seat were to be one solid piece of gold with the cherubim (with wings) facing each other but looking down toward the lid. It is here between these wings that God said “Here I will meet with you and speak with you.” Thus, God just gave a physical address in the whole universe – He chose a spot in the middle of the desert and said “this is where I will be, this is where I will speak.”
From this we can see that the ark was not a symbol or a metaphor or a ritual object. It was, according to the text, the earthly throne of God – the contact point between heaven and earth. Also, it was mobile! It went where the people went; it entered battles; it crossed rivers and it brought down walls. An entire nation organized its life, its religion, its wars and its identity around a golden wooden box for centuries.
Thus, we need to understand what was in the ark. The Bible lists three objects kept inside the ark. The first are the tablets of the law – the two stone slabs on which God wrote the ten commandments. We know that these were not the original tablets written by the finger of God. Moses threw those down and broke them in disgust over the people’s behavior. The tablets in the ark were re-written by God and testify to man’s failure right from the start. The second object was a jar of manna. Exodus records that God commanded Moses to keep an omer (roughly 2 quarts) of manna – that supernatural food that fell from the sky every day to feed the Israelites in the desert. Note that, normally, the manna spoiled within twenty-four hours and anyone who tried to keep it longer ended up with a pot full of worms. However, the manna inside the ark never spoiled. The third object was the strangest! Aaron’s rod. A dry, dead piece of wood cut from an almond tree. Numbers 17:1-8 says that there was a rebellion and the people questioned Aaron’s authority as the high priest. So God commanded each tribe to bring a rod and place them before the ark. The next morning eleven rods were still dead and dry but Aaron’s had sprouted flowers and produced fresh almonds overnight – dead wood producing living fruit.
Three objects. The broken law – a reminder of human failure; the preserved manna – a reminder of divine provision; and the rod that blossomed – a reminder that God chooses whom He will and that death is not the last word. All of this sealed inside a box that no one could open or touch, covered by a lid called the place of forgiveness with two angels looking down. Every bit of this carried a message that would take centuries for man to fully understand.
The ark was made by a man named Bezaleel. Exodus 31:2-3 is God speaking to Moses and says, “See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.” This is one of the few artisans ever directly called by name in the Bible. The text says he received supernatural ability to work with gold, silver, bronze, precious stones and wood. Imagine this man constructing the ark and the mercy seat knowing that it would be the place of the living God!!
According to Exodus, the moment the ark was finished and placed inside the tabernacle (tent) for the first time a cloud covered the tent and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle in such a way that Moses could not enter. The presence was too dense and too unreal and from that moment on the ark became the absolute centre of everything! The twelve tribes camped around the tabernacle containing the ark. When the cloud over the tabernacle lifted, the people disassembled everything and marched. When the cloud stopped the people stopped. The ark dictated when they slept, when they awoke, where they went and where they stopped.
Numbers says that the ark went ahead of the people at a distance of a three day journey – three days ahead. It went ahead, alone carried by the Levi priests. It was as if it was clearing the way and it was in this context that the ark performs the first truly impossible thing recorded in the Bible after the exodus from Egypt. In Joshua Chapter 3 – Moses had already died and Joshua was the new leader. The people needed to cross the Jordan River; God’s command was specific. The priests carrying the ark were to step into the water first and go first. The people were to follow at a distance of 900 metres (2,000 cubits), because in the words of Joshua 3:4 “You have not passed this way before.” The ark always went first.
Joshua 3: 15-17 describes what happened when the priests’ feet touched the edge of the water. “And as they that bare the ark were come unto the Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, that the waters which came down from above and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho. And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground, until all the people were passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan.”
Thus, the priests stood still in the middle of the Jordan while the people passed by on dry ground. Joshua says that at the exact instant the priests with the ark stepped onto the opposite bank, the waters returned immediately. The precision of the event is what is most impressive – it was timed with the steps of the priests with the ark. Now, with the people on the other side of the Jordan, the ark would face its first war. However, the way this war happened is so strange that it defies any known military logic in history. The war was against Jericho, the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world.
