The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright 2020 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

Chapter 87

Don’t Mess with the Ark

Some of the stuff in the Ark went missing.

Why was it called an ark?

Or as Bill Cosby said in his old and famous Noah comedy routine —

“What’s an ark?”

The Hebrew word ‘aron’ means a box or chest. The English word ‘ark’ likewise meant a box or chest, from the Latin ‘arca,’ which meant a box or chest. So the Ark of the Covenant means “box of the agreement.” That box originally held manna, Aaron’s rod, and the two Ten Commandment tablets. But by the time Solomon put that box into the new Temple he had just built, some of that stuff was missing.

1Kgs 8
1) Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the princes of the fathers’ households of the children of Israel, to king Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of Yahweh out of the city of David, which is Zion.
2) All the men of Israel assembled themselves to king Solomon at the feast, in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month.
3) All the elders of Israel came, and the priests took up the ark.
4) They brought up the ark of Yahweh, and the Tent of Meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the Tent; even these the priests and the Levites brought up.

This was about four centuries after Moses. And all that was left in the Ark was —

1Kgs 8
9) There was nothing in the ark except the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb, when Yahweh made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.
10) It came to pass, when the priests had come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of Yahweh,
11) so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud; for the glory of Yahweh filled the house of Yahweh.

What happened to Aaron’s rod and the manna?

The Bible never says.

When the Ark was put into the new Temple, though, God approved it even without that stuff, because His cloud filled the Temple.

With the rod and manna gone, only the Ten Commandments were left in the Ark of the Testimony. We don’t know what happened to the rod and manna.

Did someone reach into the Ark and take them out?

When Phinehas and Hophni took the Ark of the Covenant into battle against the Philistines, the Philistines captured it.

The Ark was to be carried by Levites with poles through rings on the corners. Yet somehow the Philistines managed to carry the Ark from the battlefield to the temple of their “god” Dagon. They were obviously not Levites but they had great respect for the Ark and the God that had conquered Egypt. Since none of the Philistines were killed carrying the Ark, they must have carried it by the poles without touching it.

But when they placed the ark in front of Dagon, that was definitely disrespectful and, dagonit! — Dagon kept falling down before it.

1Sam 5
2) The Philistines took God’s ark, and brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon.
3) When the people of Ashdod arose early on the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before Yahweh’s ark. They took Dagon, and set him in his place again.
4) When they arose early on the following morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before Yahweh’s ark; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold. Only Dagon’s torso was intact.

After that, the Philistines themselves began to have problems with their own torsos.

1Sam 5
6) But the hand of Yahweh was heavy on them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and struck them with tumors, even Ashdod and its borders.

Mickelson’s Strong Dictionary says that the Hebrew word for tumors means “a tumor in the anus or pudenda.” Or as the King James version says, “emerods,” or hemorrhoids.

The Philistines did not have Preparation H, but they did have big T –

Trouble.

1Sam 5
7) When the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel shall not stay with us; for his hand is severe on us, and on Dagon our god.”

When they saw that Dagon wasn’t doing real well against Yahweh, why was he still their god? Can you imagine them taking someone into their temple to show Dagon off? A headless god with no hands couldn’t have been too impressive!

1Sam 5
8) They sent therefore and gathered all the lords of the Philistines to them, and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?” They answered, “Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried over to Gath.” They carried the ark of the God of Israel there.
9) It was so, that after they had carried it about, the hand of Yahweh was against the city with a very great confusion: and he struck the men of the city, both small and great; and tumors broke out on them.
10) So they sent the ark of God to Ekron. It happened, as the ark of God came to Ekron, that the Ekronites cried out, saying, “They have brought about the ark of the God of Israel to us, to kill us and our people.”
11) They sent therefore and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and they said, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go again to its own place, that it not kill us and our people.” For there was a deadly confusion throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there.
12) The men who didn’t die were struck with the tumors; and the cry of the city went up to heaven.

Which is to say, their cries about their bottoms rose to the tops of the heavens.

The Philistines desperately sent the Ark back to Israel. So they set it on a new cart, and they must have used the poles to put it up there because nobody died moving it. Two untrained cows, without a human driver, pulled the cart back to Beth Shemesh in Israel.

Israel was overjoyed to have the Ark back, but their joy turned to sorrow because the men of Beth Shemesh showed less respect for the Ark than the Philistines had.

1Sam 6
19) He struck of the men of Beth Shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of Yahweh, he struck of the people fifty thousand seventy men [ESV – He struck seventy men of them] ; and the people mourned, because Yahweh had struck the people with a great slaughter.

What do we learn from that experience of the Philistines and Beth Shemesh?

First, any Gentiles who take the Ark are in big trouble.

Second, whoever has the Ark better treat it with the utmost respect.

From Beth Shemesh, the Ark was taken to the house of Abinadab in Israel. He set apart his son Eleazar to take care of the ark.

1Sam 7
1) The men of Kiriath Jearim came, and fetched up the ark of Yahweh, and brought it into the house of Abinadab in the hill, and sanctified Eleazar his son to keep the ark of Yahweh.
2) It happened, from the day that the ark stayed in Kiriath Jearim, that the time was long; for it was twenty years: and all the house of Israel lamented after Yahweh.

The men of Kiriath Jearim were able to safely move the Ark, and it remained in that town, with no one disrespecting it and no one getting hurt. Apparently Eleazar the caretaker was really respectful with the Ark.

But his brother wasn’t.

David wanted to move the Ark to the city of David. That’s when Abinadab, whose son Eleazar had taken care of the Ark for years, lost that other son.

2Sam 6
3) They set the ark of God on a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab that was in the hill: and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, drove the new cart.
4) They brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was in the hill, with the ark of God: and Ahio went before the ark.
5) David and all the house of Israel played before Yahweh with all kinds of instruments made of fir wood, and with harps, and with stringed instruments, and with tambourines, and with castanets, and with cymbals.
6) When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached for the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the cattle stumbled.
7) The anger of Yahweh was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.

Again we see the lesson. Be very careful with the Ark of the Covenant!

But those who were respectful of the Ark?

2Sam 6
10) So David would not move the ark of Yahweh to be with him in the city of David; but David carried it aside into the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite.
11) The ark of Yahweh remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite three months: and Yahweh blessed Obed-Edom, and all his house.
12) It was told king David, saying, “Yahweh has blessed the house of Obed-Edom, and all that pertains to him, because of the ark of God.” David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom into the city of David with joy.

In that move, David followed God’s instructions for moving the Ark and all went well.

Then when David fled Jerusalem because of Absalom’s coup, the priests were going to follow David with the Ark, but David sent them back.

2Sam 15
23) All the country wept with a loud voice, and all the people passed over: the king also himself passed over the brook Kidron, and all the people passed over, toward the way of the wilderness.
24) Behold, Zadok also came, and all the Levites with him, bearing the ark of the covenant of God; and they set down the ark of God; and Abiathar went up, until all the people finished passing out of the city.
25) The king said to Zadok, “Carry back the ark of God into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of Yahweh, he will bring me again, and show me both it, and his habitation;
26) but if he say thus, ‘I have no delight in you;’ behold, here am I. Let him do to me as seems good to him.”

The last time the Old Testament mentions the box that Moses built was in Josiah’s time. King Josiah reigned over Judah only a few decades before Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. By this time, the Temple had been so neglected that it required a major refurbishing. After the Temple was repaired, Josiah told the Levites to put the Ark back in the Temple.

2Chr 34
8) Now in the eighteenth year of his [Josiah’s] reign, when he had purged the land and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the recorder, to repair the house of Yahweh his God.

And after those repairs were finished —

2Chr 35
3) He said to the Levites who taught all Israel, who were holy to Yahweh, “Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel built. There shall no more be a burden on your shoulders. Now serve Yahweh your God, and his people Israel.

Again, that’s the last time the Ark is mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures.

So what do we learn from this brief history of the Ark?

1) Gentiles who took the Ark were cursed. The Ark belonged with Israel.

2) Anyone, Israel included, who disrespected the Ark was in mortal danger.

But it’s been missing for over two and a half millennia. How could anyone have possibly taken it without losing his own life, like the Philistines, or the men of Beth Shemesh, or Uzzah?

All of which still leaves the very puzzling question —

What happened to the Ark of the Covenant?