1 Samuel 6 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
The of Yahweh stayed in territory for seven months.
The Philistines called for their priests and and asked, "What should we do with Yahweh's chest? Tell us how we should send it back to where it belongs."
They answered, "If you're going to send back the chest of the God of Israel, don't send it back empty. You absolutely must send a back with it. Then you'll be healed, and you'll understand why his hand hasn't let up on you."
They asked, "What guilt offering should we send back to him?" The priests replied, "Five gold and five gold rats — one for each of the Philistine — because the same plague has hit all of you and your
So make models of your tumors and models of the rats that are destroying the land. Give to the God of Israel. Maybe then he'll ease his grip on you, your gods, and your land.
Why be as as the Egyptians and their Pharaoh were? When God dealt harshly with them, didn't they eventually let Israel go? And Israel left.
"Now then, build a and get two milk cows that have never worn a Hitch the cows to the but take their calves away and pen them up back home."
"Then take Yahweh's chest and put it on the cart. Place the gold objects you're sending as the guilt offering in a box beside it. Then send it off and let it go."
"But watch where it goes. If it heads up the road toward its own territory, toward then it was Yahweh who brought this massive disaster on us. But if it doesn't, we'll know it wasn't his hand that struck us — it just happened to us by
So that's what they did. They took two milk cows, hitched them to the cart, and penned up their calves back home.
They placed Yahweh's chest on the cart along with the box containing the gold rats and the models of their tumors.
The cows headed straight up the road toward Beth-shemesh. They stayed on that one road, as they went, and didn't turn off to the right or left. The Philistine rulers followed them all the way to the border of Beth-shemesh.
The people of Beth-shemesh were in the valley. When they looked up and saw the chest, they were overjoyed.
The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh and stopped there near a large rock. The people chopped up the wood of the cart and sacrificed the cows as an to Yahweh.
The took down Yahweh's chest and the box that was with it — the one containing the gold objects — and set them on the large rock. That day the people of Beth-shemesh made entirely burned offerings and other sacrifices to Yahweh.
The five Philistine rulers watched all of this and then went back to that same day.
These are the gold tumors the Philistines sent as a guilt offering to Yahweh: one for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, and one for Ekron.
And the gold rats matched the number of all the Philistine towns belonging to the five rulers — the fortified towns and the unwalled villages alike. The large rock in the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh, where they set Yahweh's chest, is a to this day.
But God struck down some of the men of Beth-shemesh because they Yahweh's chest. He struck down seventy men, and the people mourned deeply because Yahweh had dealt them such a devastating blow.
The people of Beth-shemesh asked, "Who can stand in the presence of Yahweh, this God who is other? And where should the chest go from here — away from us?"
So they sent messengers to the people of saying, "The Philistines have sent back Yahweh's chest. Come down and take it up to your town."