Exodus 25:14-15
The staves shall not be taken from it
The carrying gear is permanently installed. The design assumes it will be moved and forbids improvising when it is.
Objects of the Bible
The ark of the covenant
A gold-covered box with carrying poles that were never to be taken out, and every disaster around it involves someone treating it as furniture.
The dimensions are given first and they are modest: two cubits and a half by a cubit and a half. Shittim wood overlaid with pure gold within and without, a crown of gold round about, four rings and two staves, and the staves shall be in the rings of the ark, they shall not be taken from it. What goes inside is the testimony. What goes on top is the mercy seat and two cherubim of beaten work, and the promise attached is about meeting and speaking.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The ark of the covenant
- 01
- 02
Joshua 3:14-17
The priests bare the ark before the people
It goes first into a flooding river and the water stops. The distance between it and the people is specified at two thousand cubits.
- 03
1 Samuel 4:3-11
That it may save us out of the hand of our enemies
They send for it after a defeat, treating it as equipment. Thirty thousand die, the ark is taken, and Eli falls backward at the news.
- 04
1 Samuel 5:1-4
Dagon was fallen upon his face
The trophy is put in a temple and the resident god ends up face down twice, the second time with his head and hands broken off on the threshold.
- 05
2 Samuel 6:6-15
Uzzah put forth his hand
A new cart is not the method it was given. The second attempt uses bearers, and David dances before it in a linen ephod.
Why it matters
Its history is a series of people getting the handling wrong. Israel carries it into battle as a talisman and loses it, and the Philistines find that their own god falls over in front of it twice and then keeps it for seven months of trouble before sending it back on a cart. David tries the cart method too, and Uzzah puts out his hand to steady it and dies, and the ark stays three months in another man’s house, which is blessed. The second attempt uses poles and bearers and stops every six paces to sacrifice.
8 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
