Scriptures

New Living Translation (NLT)

1 Samuel 6
⁷ “Now build a new cart, and find two cows that have just given birth to calves. Make sure the cows have never been yoked to a cart. Hitch the cows to the cart, but shut their calves away from them in a pen.
⁸ Put the Ark of the LORD on the cart, and beside it place a chest containing the gold rats and gold tumors you are sending as a guilt offering. Then let the cows go wherever they want.
⁹ If they cross the border of our land and go to Beth-shemesh, we will know it was the LORD who brought this great disaster upon us. If they don’t, we will know it was not his hand that caused the plague. It came simply by chance.”
¹⁰ So these instructions were carried out. Two cows were hitched to the cart, and their newborn calves were shut up in a pen.
¹¹ Then the Ark of the LORD and the chest containing the gold rats and gold tumors were placed on the cart.
¹² And sure enough, without veering off in other directions, the cows went straight along the road toward Beth-shemesh, lowing as they went. The Philistine rulers followed them as far as the border of Beth-shemesh.
¹³ The people of Beth-shemesh were harvesting wheat in the valley, and when they saw the Ark, they were overjoyed!
¹⁴ The cart came into the field of a man named Joshua and stopped beside a large rock. So the people broke up the wood of the cart for a fire and killed the cows and sacrificed them to the LORD as a burnt offering.
¹⁵ Several men of the tribe of Levi lifted the Ark of the LORD and the chest containing the gold rats and gold tumors from the cart and placed them on the large rock. Many sacrifices and burnt offerings were offered to the LORD that day by the people of Beth-shemesh.
¹⁶ The five Philistine rulers watched all this and then returned to Ekron that same day.
¹⁷ The five gold tumors sent by the Philistines as a guilt offering to the LORD were gifts from the rulers of Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron.