Chasing the Ark

Sharon and I are teaching for the second summer, BLC's Intermediate Biblical Hebrew Ulpan. Today we read I Sam 4-7 in class and drove around Israel following the wild ride of the Ark of the Covenant.

We started at an overlook of the Philistine-Israeli battle between Afek and Evan ha-Ezer (1 Sam 4:1). The Israelites thought they could broker power in their battle by using the Ark as a talisman in their battle. Instead they got thoroughly whipped by the Philistines, in fact locing the Ark to their enemies.

From there, we drove to Ashdod where the victorous Philistines brought the Ark as war booty, placing it in the Temple of Dagon. After the statue of Dagon is found prostrated before the Ark with its head and hands cut off and after a plague of tumors/hemorrhoids/swellings (?) strikes the citizens of Ashdod, the once proud Philistines pass this "hot potato" on to their neighboring Philistine cities of Gat and Ekron. Tel Ashdod is a pile of crap, cow crap that is. At the top of the tel is a cow pen that smells ferociously. There we proclaimed to our students that we had arrived at the Temple of Ashdod.

From there we drove to an overlook of the Sorek Valley gazing upon Bet Shemesh, because the Philistines decide to place the Ark in a wagon with 5 gold rats and 5 gold tumors (?) with two unmanned milking cows. The cows, mooing the whole time, follow the road undirected up into the Judean hills to Bet Shemesh. There in the field of Joshua, the Israelites celebrate the return of the Ark by throwing a BBQ. But they must have drank too much, because at some point, they decide to look inside the Ark and God let's them have it. 50,070 die.

The people of Bet Shemesh decide that the Ark is bad news, so they have men come from Kiryat Yairim to take the Ark away. So that is where we went next, ancient Kiryat Yairim where a French church commerates the occasion. The Ark dwells there for next so many years until eventually David will bring it to Jerusalem as he consolidates Israel's worship.

After that our final stop was at the Elvis restaraunt where two bad representations of Elvis have been carved out of bronze and a glittering gold paint. So, lastly, I proclaim that Dagon still lives in Israel, he's just changed shapes.

Last year I did a sermon at Narkis Street about our "Follow the Ark" tour. This bizarre story leaves the reader with many questions and few answers. I think the bottom line is God will not stay in a box. Do not assume anything.