The Ark Of The Covenant (Part Two)
Picking up from part one of the history of The Ark of the Covenant in the June 2026 issue of the TKC, the Israelites are about to war with the City of Jericho – the Ark would face its first war. According to archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, the walls of the city were up to twelve feet thick with an estimated height of twenty-five feet, surrounded by an outer ditch – designed to be impregnable. The strategy God gave Joshua to take the city sounded like a joke. Joshua Chapter 6 describes the strategy. March around the city once a day for six days in total silence with the Ark in the centre of the procession with seven priests blowing seven trumpets of ram’s horns. On the seventh day march seven times around and, at the end of the seventh lap, with the trumpets sounding, all the people were to shout!
Firstly, the psychological effect on the inhabitants of the city must have been devastating watching the daily march around the city by an army carrying a golden box but what came next was worse. On the seventh lap with the trumpets sounding and the people shouting, Joshua says the wall collapsed flat (the Hebrew text uses the expression ‘tataha’ which literally means under itself). The wall didn’t fall outward. It didn’t fall inward. It fell straight down onto its foundations. This is what the archaeological excavations of John Garstang, in 1930, and of Kathleen Kenyon, in the 1950’s, found. The impression is bricks fallen flat so that the attackers could easily advance into the city. Some have tried to explain this uniform collapse of the city walls without the supernatural, but have failed.
The Ark was not a weapon. It was something much more dangerous. It was a declaration that the God that dwells between the cherubims does not need armies. He needs obedience! But if Jericho showed the power of the Ark when Israel obeyed, what happened next showed what happens when Israel disobeyed. This next event changed the concept of the Ark from being a sacred object to being a terrifying one because it killed those it was thought to protect – sparing no one – not priests, not kings, not entire nations.
Immediately after Jericho, Israel came up against the city of Ai – a small city. It was so insignificant that Joshua’s spies reported that it wasn’t even worth sending a whole army to defeat it and that two or three thousand men would be enough. They had total confidence. However, the soldiers of Ai came after the Israelite and attacked them – Israel fled and thirty-six were killed. The psychological effect on Israel was calamitous. Joshua 7: 5 says the hearts of the people melted and became like water. The protection had been withdrawn! Something between Israel and the Ark had broken. Joshua tore his clothes and fell facedown before the Ark. God answered with a chilling sentence “There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee.” Joshua 7:13 A single man named Achan had stolen parts of the spoils of Jericho that should have been dedicated to God and hid it under his tent. Thirty six men died because of this.
This shows the seriousness of living in proximity to the Ark. Achan, his sons, daughters, donkeys, sheep and everything he possessed were destroyed. The entire people stoned them. Achan didn’t just die, he was erased and only after this sin was removed did God say to Joshua “Now go up against Ai.” Ai fell. The lesson was clear – the Ark did not work independently of the behaviour of the Israelites. The Ark amplified everything. In the presence of obedience, it amplified power. In the presence of sin, it amplified destruction. It didn’t choose sides!
However, the real event that changed the Israelite’s regard for the Ark into an object of terror happened about 300 years later as recorded in 1 Samuel chapter 4 to 6. In 1,104 BC Israel made probably its worst military decision ever. Israel was at war with the Philistines who occupied the coastal strip which is now Gaza. In the first battle, in a place called Ebenezer, Israel lost! 4,000 soldiers were dead. In response the elders asked “Why has the Lord defeated us today by the Philistines?” Their solution was to go and get the Ark from Shiloh. They didn’t ask God what they had done wrong. They didn’t seek repentance. They didn’t consult any prophet. They simply decided to bring the Ark to the battlefield as if it was a good luck charm – as if the power was in the box and not in the God dwelling above it. They had lost their understanding.
The Ark arrived at the Israelite camp carried by the two sons of the High Priest Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. The Bible makes sure to record in previous chapters that these two men were corrupt. First Samuel records that they did not know the Lord. They stole the offerings of the people. They slept with the women who served at the entrance of the tabernacle. When they brought the Ark into battle, the shout was so intense that the earth shook. First Samuel 4: 5 states that the shout was so loud that the Philistines heard it and were afraid. They feared the Ark. They knew its power and its reputation. However, instead of fleeing, the Philistines strengthened themselves as recorded in 1 Samuel 4:9. They committed themselves to fight and, thus, they attacked.
Israel didn’t just lose. They were massacred – 30,000 infantry soldiers dead including Hophni and Phinehas and the unthinkable happened! The Ark of the Covenant was captured as war booty by the Philistines. The news later reached Shiloh where the High Priest Eli (98 years old and blind) sat in a chair by the gate waiting for news. The news was that Israel fled, many died, your two sons are dead and the Ark of God has been taken. When Eli heard this, he fell backward in his chair, broke his neck and died as recorded in 1 Samuel 4: 18. The glory of God had departed from Israel. The Ark was now in the hands of the Philistines and what happened in the next seven months is one of the strangest and most disturbing series of events in the entire Bible.
The Philistines took the Ark to the city of Ashdod and placed it inside the temple of their primary God, Dagon beside his statue. This was almost as if the Ark was a gift to the Philistine God. 1 Samuel 5: 2 &3, The next morning the priests entered the temple and found the statue fallen face-down with its face towards the Ark ie., prostrate as if in a position of worship to the Ark. The priests lifted the statue and put it back in its place. The next morning Dagon was on the floor again but verse 4 adds that, this time, Dagon’s head and the palms of both hands were cut off. Only the torso remained. Dagon had been decapitated and amputated in his own temple by a golden box.
The destruction didn’t stop at the temple. 1 Samuel 5: 6 says that the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the inhabitants of Ashdod. Tumors began to appear in the population – a violent epidemic and, along with the tumors, something the Septuagint adds, came rats. These invaded the land and the crops. Tumors and rats. To any modern epidemiologist these are the classic symptoms of bubonic plaque. The bacterium is transmitted by fleas from rodents and causes swelling in the lymph nodes – bubos. This appears to be the same plaque that killed a third of Europe 3,000 years later ie., the Black Death of the 14th century.
The inhabitants of Ashdod didn’t take long to understand. 1 Samuel 5:7 relates that the Ark of the God of Israel must not stay with us for his hand is severe upon us. They decided to send the Ark to another Philistine city, Gath. The plaque came with it. I Samuel 5: 9, describes tumors on the people from the least to the greatest – total panic. Gath passed the Ark to Ekron and when these inhabitants saw the Ark approaching they cried out ‘They have brought the Ark of the God of Israel to kill us.’ No one wanted it. The Ark was transferred among the Philistine cities like a bomb being passed from hand to hand. It was seven months of systematic destruction. Thus, they asked the priests ‘What do we do with the Ark of Israel?’
Part 3: The Ark Of The Covenant coming in the August 2026 edition of the TKC Magazine.
