The Capture of the Covenant Box

4 At that time the Philistines gathered to go to war against Israel, so^[a] the Israelites set out to fight them. The Israelites set up their camp at Ebenezer and the Philistines at Aphek. ² The Philistines attacked, and after fierce fighting they defeated the Israelites and killed about four thousand men on the battlefield. ³ When the survivors came back to camp, the leaders of Israel said, “Why did the Lord let the Philistines defeat us today? Let's go and bring the Lord's Covenant Box from Shiloh, so that he^[b] will go with us and save us from our enemies.” ^4 (A)So they sent messengers to Shiloh and got the Covenant Box of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned above the winged creatures.^[c] And Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, came along with the Covenant Box.

⁵ When the Covenant Box arrived, the Israelites gave such a loud shout of joy that the earth shook. ⁶ The Philistines heard the shouting and said, “Listen to all that shouting in the Hebrew camp! What does it mean?” When they found out that the Lord's Covenant Box had arrived in the Hebrew camp, ⁷ they were afraid, and said, “A god has come into their camp! We're lost! Nothing like this has ever happened to us before! ⁸ Who can save us from those powerful gods? They are the gods who slaughtered the Egyptians in the desert! ⁹ Be brave, Philistines! Fight like men, or we will become slaves to the Hebrews, just as they were our slaves. So fight like men!”

¹⁰ The Philistines fought hard and defeated the Israelites, who went running to their homes. There was a great slaughter: thirty thousand Israelite soldiers were killed. ¹¹ God's Covenant Box was captured, and Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were both killed.

The Death of Eli

¹² A man from the tribe of Benjamin ran all the way from the battlefield to Shiloh and arrived there the same day. To show his grief, he had torn his clothes and put dirt on his head. ¹³ Eli, who was very worried about the Covenant Box, was sitting in his seat beside the road, staring. The man spread the news throughout the town, and everyone cried out in fear. ¹⁴ Eli heard the noise and asked, “What is all this noise about?” The man hurried to Eli to tell him the news. (¹⁵ Eli was now ninety-eight years old and almost completely blind.) ¹⁶ The man said, “I have escaped from the battle and have run all the way here today.”

Eli asked him, “What happened, my son?”

¹⁷ The messenger answered, “Israel ran away from the Philistines; it was a terrible defeat for us! Besides that, your sons Hophni and Phinehas were killed, and God's Covenant Box was captured!”

¹⁸ When the man mentioned the Covenant Box, Eli fell backward from his seat beside the gate. He was so old and fat that the fall broke his neck, and he died. He had been a leader in Israel for forty years.

The Death of the Widow of Phinehas

¹⁹ Eli's daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant, and it was almost time for her baby to be born. When she heard that God's Covenant Box had been captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she suddenly went into labor and gave birth. ²⁰ As she was dying, the women helping her said to her, “Be brave! You have a son!” But she paid no attention and did not answer. ²¹ She named the boy Ichabod,^[d] explaining, “God's glory has left Israel”—referring to the capture of the Covenant Box and the death of her father-in-law and her husband. ²² “God's glory has left Israel,” she said, “because God's Covenant Box has been captured.”

The Covenant Box among the Philistines

5 After the Philistines captured the Covenant Box, they carried it from Ebenezer to their city of Ashdod, ² took it into the temple of their god Dagon, and set it up beside his statue. ³ Early the next morning the people of Ashdod saw that the statue of Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground in front of the Lord's Covenant Box. So they lifted it up and put it back in its place. ⁴ Early the following morning they saw that the statue had again fallen down in front of the Covenant Box. This time its head and both its arms were broken off and were lying in the doorway; only the body was left. (⁵ That is why even today the priests of Dagon and all his worshipers in Ashdod step over that place and do not walk on it.)

⁶ The Lord punished the people of Ashdod severely and terrified them. He punished them and the people in the surrounding territory by causing them to have tumors.^{[e] 7} When they saw what was happening, they said, “The God of Israel is punishing us and our god Dagon. We can't let the Covenant Box stay here any longer.” ⁸ So they sent messengers and called together all five of the Philistine kings and asked them, “What shall we do with the Covenant Box of the God of Israel?”

“Take it over to Gath,” they answered; so they took it to Gath, another Philistine city. ⁹ But after it arrived there, the Lord punished that city too and caused a great panic. He punished them with tumors which developed in all the people of the city, young and old alike. ¹⁰ So they sent the Covenant Box to Ekron, another Philistine city; but when it arrived there, the people cried out, “They have brought the Covenant Box of the God of Israel here, in order to kill us all!” ¹¹ So again they sent for all the Philistine kings and said, “Send the Covenant Box of Israel back to its own place, so that it won't kill us and our families.” There was panic throughout the city because God was punishing them so severely. ¹² Even those who did not die developed tumors and the people cried out to their gods for help.

The Return of the Covenant Box

6 After the Lord's Covenant Box had been in Philistia for seven months, ² the people called the priests and the magicians and asked, “What shall we do with the Covenant Box of the Lord? If we send it back where it belongs, what shall we send with it?”

³ They answered, “If you return the Covenant Box of the God of Israel, you must, of course, send with it a gift to him to pay for your sin. The Covenant Box must not go back without a gift. In this way you will be healed, and you will find out why he has kept on punishing you.”

⁴ “What gift shall we send him?” the people asked.

They answered, “Five gold models of tumors and five gold mice, one of each for each Philistine king. The same plague was sent on all of you and on the five kings. ⁵ You must make these models of the tumors and of the mice that are ravaging your country, and you must give honor to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will stop punishing you, your gods, and your land. ⁶ Why should you be stubborn, as the king of Egypt and the Egyptians were? Don't forget how God made fools of them until they let the Israelites leave Egypt. ⁷ So prepare a new wagon and two cows that have never been yoked; hitch them to the wagon and drive their calves back to the barn. ⁸ Take the Lord's Covenant Box, put it on the wagon, and place in a box beside it the gold models that you are sending to him as a gift to pay for your sins. Start the wagon on its way and let it go by itself. ⁹ Then watch it go; if it goes toward the town of Beth Shemesh, this means that it is the God of the Israelites who has sent this terrible disaster on us. But if it doesn't, then we will know that he did not send the plague; it was only a matter of chance.”

¹⁰ They did what they were told: they took two cows and hitched them to the wagon, and shut the calves in the barn. ¹¹ They put the Covenant Box in the wagon, together with the box containing the gold models of the mice and of the tumors. ¹² The cows started off on the road to Beth Shemesh and headed straight toward it, without turning off the road. They were mooing as they went. The five Philistine kings followed them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh.

¹³ The people of Beth Shemesh were reaping wheat in the valley, when suddenly they looked up and saw the Covenant Box. They were overjoyed at the sight. ¹⁴ The wagon came to a field belonging to a man named Joshua, who lived in Beth Shemesh, and it stopped there near a large rock. The people chopped up the wooden wagon and killed the cows and burned them as a burnt sacrifice to the Lord. ¹⁵ The Levites lifted off the Covenant Box of the Lord and the box with the gold models in it, and placed them on the large rock. Then the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt sacrifices and other sacrifices to the Lord. ¹⁶ The five Philistine kings watched them do this and then went back to Ekron that same day.

¹⁷ The Philistines sent the five gold tumors to the Lord as a gift to pay for their sins, one each for the cities of Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. ¹⁸ They also sent gold mice, one for each of the cities ruled by the five Philistine kings, both the fortified towns and the villages without walls. The large rock in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh, on which they placed the Lord's Covenant Box, is still there as a witness to what happened.

¹⁹ The Lord killed seventy of the men of Beth Shemesh because they looked inside the Covenant Box. And the people mourned because the Lord had caused such a great slaughter among them.

The Covenant Box at Kiriath Jearim

²⁰ So the men of Beth Shemesh said, “Who can stand before the Lord, this holy God? Where can we send him to get him away from us?” ²¹ They sent messengers to the people of Kiriath Jearim to say, “The Philistines have returned the Lord's Covenant Box. Come down and get it.”

7 ^(B)So the people of Kiriath Jearim got the Lord's Covenant Box and took it to the house of a man named Abinadab, who lived on a hill. They consecrated his son Eleazar to be in charge of it.