Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 4-7.

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When the Israelites lost to the Philistines, they asked each other why God had allowed them to be defeated, but they did not ask God.  Instead, they brought the ark of the covenant to the battlefield, apparently thinking that they could force God to fight for them by doing so.  God doesn’t work that way and allowed Israel to be defeated again in the next battle, allowing the ark of the covenant to be captured.  The Philistines on the other hand thought that they had defeated the Israelites and captured the ark of the God of Israel because their god, Dagon, was more powerful than the God of Israel.  The symbolism of their statue of Dagon falling on its face before the ark of God was not lost on them.  Yes, the first time it happened, they assumed it was just coincidence.  However, when it happened a second time they got the message.  Perhaps the most interesting thing here is what the Philistines decide to do when they wish to return the ark of the covenant to the Israelites.

They do not just take it back to the Israelites and turn it over.  Instead, they put it on a cart and harness two cows which had recently given birth and were still nursing their calves…and which had never been yoked previously.  They then shut up the calves “at home”, which implies to me they shut up the calves on the farm from which the cows were taken.  The cows, yoked to the cart carrying the ark of the covenant, went straight towards Israelite territory, “lowing as they went.”  Anyone who knows anything about milk cows would expect the cows to go towards their calves, or towards the place where they were regularly milked.  “Lowing” refers to the sound milk cows make when their udders are uncomfortable because they need to either nurse their calves or be milked.  So, the cows heading straight for Beth-shemesh is not natural behavior for cows.  Further, the reason they chose two cows which had never been yoked was to ensure that they were not reacting to training.  The Philistines wanted to be absolutely certain that no one could think that there was some purely natural explanation for the cows taking the ark back to Israel.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.