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The Lost Ark of the Covenant – The Most Dangerous Object in the Bible · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: At the foot of a burning mountain in the Sinai
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  Speaker 1: Desert around the thirteenth century before Christ, a runaway people
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  Speaker 1: who had spent four hundred years as slaves were told
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  Speaker 1: to build a chest, not a weapon, not a wall,
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  Speaker 1: not a fortress. A chest roughly four feet long, a
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  Speaker 1: little over two feet high, plaited in gold light, enough
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  Speaker 1: for four men to carry on poles. And from the
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  Speaker 1: moment it was finished, that chest became the most dangerous
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  Speaker 1: object the Hebrew Bible would ever describe. It would topple
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  Speaker 1: a pagan god overnight. It would flatten the walls of
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  Speaker 1: a fortified city. It would strike men dead for touching it,
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  Speaker 1: and strike a whole army with panic for capturing it.
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  Speaker 1: Kings would tremble in front of it, and one king
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  Speaker 1: would dance half naked before it in the street. It
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  Speaker 1: carried a name that meant the throne of the Living God,
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  Speaker 1: and it carried a reputation that meant come close carelessly,
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  Speaker 1: and you will not survive it. This is the story
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  Speaker 1: of the Ark of the Covenant, where it came from,
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  Speaker 1: what it did, and how, at the height of Israel's
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  Speaker 1: longing for it, it vanished from history without a trace.
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  Speaker 1: To understand why the ark was so feared, you have
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  Speaker 1: to start with who ordered it built and why the
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  Speaker 1: setting is Mount Sinai. In the months after the exodus
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  Speaker 1: from Egypt, Israel has crossed the sea, watched Pharaoh's army
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  Speaker 1: drown behind them, and arrived at the mountain, where, according
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  Speaker 1: to the Book of Exodus, God descends in fire and
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  Speaker 1: smoke to speak with Moses. In the middle of those instructions, laws, festivals,
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  Speaker 1: the design of a portable sanctuary comes a command about
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  Speaker 1: a single piece of furniture, and it is given before
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  Speaker 1: almost everything else. The order of priorities is the first
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  Speaker 1: clue to its importance. Before the people are told how
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  Speaker 1: to build the tent that will house it, they are
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  Speaker 1: told how to build the box itself. The specifications are
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  Speaker 1: exact in Exodus twenty five, verse ten. The command begins,
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  Speaker 1: have them make an arc of acacia wood two and
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  Speaker 1: a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide,
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  Speaker 1: and a cubit and a half high. Acacia was the hard, dense,
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  Speaker 1: insect resistant wood of the desert, one of the few
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  Speaker 1: timbers available in the Sinai and prized for its durability.
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  Speaker 1: Over that wooden core went gold inside and out, as
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  Speaker 1: verse eleven specifies, overlay it with pure gold, both inside
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  Speaker 1: and out, and make a gold molding around it. Then
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  Speaker 1: came the means of carrying it. Four gold rings were
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  Speaker 1: cast and fixed to the feet of the chest, and
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  Speaker 1: poles of acacia overlaid with gold were slid through them.
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  Speaker 1: And here the text adds a detail that will matter
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  Speaker 1: enormously later in verse fifteen, the poles are to remain
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  Speaker 1: in the rings of this ark. They are not to
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  Speaker 1: be removed. The poles were never to come out. No
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  Speaker 1: one was ever supposed to handle the ark directly. It
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  Speaker 1: was designed from the first blueprint to be carried without
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  Speaker 1: being touched. What went inside is named plainly. Verse sixteen.
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  Speaker 1: Then put in the ark the tablets of the Covenant law,
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  Speaker 1: which I will give you. This is the heart of
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  Speaker 1: the thing. The ark was first and most basically a
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  Speaker 1: container for the two stone tablets Moses received on the mountain,
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  Speaker 1: the terms of the agreement between God and Israel, what
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  Speaker 1: the Bible called the Covenant. That is where its full
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  Speaker 1: name comes from. The Ark of the Covenant. It was
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  Speaker 1: the strong box of a treaty in the ancient Near East.
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  Speaker 1: Important treaties were deposited in temples at the feet of
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  Speaker 1: the gods who were called to witness them. Israel's treaty
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  Speaker 1: was deposited at the feet of its God, inside the
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  Speaker 1: most sacred object the nation possessed. But the lid was
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  Speaker 1: not just a lid. And this is where the ark
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  Speaker 1: stops being a box and starts being a throne. Verse seventeen.
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  Speaker 1: Turns to the cover. Make an atonement cover of pure
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  Speaker 1: gold two and a half cubits long and a cubit
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  Speaker 1: and a half wide. This slab of solid gold, sometimes
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  Speaker 1: translated the mercy seat, was the same length and width
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  Speaker 1: as the chest. Sealing it and rising out of it,
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  Speaker 1: hammered from the same single piece of gold, were two
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  Speaker 1: winged figures verse eighteen, and make two cherubim out of
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  Speaker 1: hammered gold at the ends of the cover. Cherubim in
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  Speaker 1: the Biblical imagination are not the chubby infants of later
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  Speaker 1: European art. They are fierce, composite guardians, the same kind
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  Speaker 1: of creature, stationed with a flaming sword at the entrance
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  Speaker 1: to Eden. Here two of them face each other across
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  Speaker 1: the lid, wings stretched upward and inward. Verse twenty describes
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  Speaker 1: the posture precisely, the Cherubim are to have their wings
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  Speaker 1: spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The Cherubim are
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  Speaker 1: to face each other looking toward the cover. The empty
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  Speaker 1: space between those two outstretched wings was the entire point.
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  Speaker 1: It was understood as the seat of an invisible presence,
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  Speaker 1: a throne with no visible occupant. The God of Israel
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  Speaker 1: made no images of himself, but he located his presence here,
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  Speaker 1: hovering above the gold, between the guardians, over the box
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  Speaker 1: that held his law. Verse twenty two makes the function
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  Speaker 1: explicit there above the cover, between the two Cherubim that
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  Speaker 1: are over the ark of the covenant law, I will
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  Speaker 1: meet with you and give you all my commands for
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  Speaker 1: the Israelites. That single sentence is the source of all
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  Speaker 1: the danger. The ark was the address where heaven and
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  Speaker 1: earth touched. It was not a relic that symbolized God's
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  Speaker 1: presence at a comfortable distance. It was the place, the
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  Speaker 1: text says, God actually showed up, and a holy presence
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  Speaker 1: in the logic of Israel's religion is not safe. It
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  Speaker 1: is like high voltage life giving when channeled correctly through
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  Speaker 1: the priests and the rituals, lethal when grabbed carelessly. The
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  Speaker 1: same fire that warmed the camp could incinerate the man
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  Speaker 1: who reached for it the wrong way. The chapters that
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  Speaker 1: follow described the construction being carried out exactly as commanded.
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  Speaker 1: In Exodus thirty seven, a craftsman named Bezelel, said to
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  Speaker 1: be filled with skill by God's spirit, builds the ark
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  Speaker 1: to the letter. The opening of that chapter reads almost
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  Speaker 1: like an echo of the command. Bethelel made the arc
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  Speaker 1: of acacia wood two and a half cubits long, a
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  Speaker 1: cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a
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  Speaker 1: half high. The repetition is deliberate. In the ancient world,
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  Speaker 1: the proof that a sacred object was legitimate was that
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  Speaker 1: it matched the divine pattern with no human improvisation. Nothing
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  Speaker 1: about the ark was Bezelel's idea. He was a craftsman
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  Speaker 1: executing a design, and the text is careful to leave
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  Speaker 1: him no creative license at all. Modern readers sometimes imagine
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  Speaker 1: the ark as a uniquely Israelite invention, but archaeology suggests
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  Speaker 1: the form would have looked familiar to anyone who had
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  Speaker 1: lived in Egypt, which the Israelites, by their own account,
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  Speaker 1: had done for centuries. Egyptian temples used portable shrines, gilded
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  Speaker 1: wooden chests fitted with carrying poles, sometimes flanked by winged
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  Speaker 1: protective goddesses whose outstretched wings shielded the sacred contents. When
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  Speaker 1: Howard Carter opened the tomb of Teuton Kamun in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty two, he found exactly this kind of object, a
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  Speaker 1: gilded chest guarded by winged figures with their arms spread
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  Speaker 1: protectively around it, carried in procession on poles. The visual
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  Speaker 1: VOCs tabulary of a gold box carrying poles and guardian
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  Speaker 1: wings was the standard language of the ancient Near East
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  Speaker 1: for housing something holy. What was radical about the Ark
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  Speaker 1: was not its shape. It was what it refused to contain.
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  Speaker 1: Every other such shrine in Egypt or Canean held a statue,
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  Speaker 1: an image of the god. The Ark held stone tablets
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  Speaker 1: and an empty space. Israel took the most familiar sacred
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  Speaker 1: form in the region and hollowed out its center, insisting
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  Speaker 1: that the god enthroned there could not be carved, cast
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  Speaker 1: or seen. So by the end of the Book of Exodus,
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  Speaker 1: the people camped at Sinai possess a finished object acacia
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  Speaker 1: and gold four feet of treaty box crowned by a
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  Speaker 1: throne of guardian wings, with strict orders that it must
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  Speaker 1: never be touched, and a promise that God himself would
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  Speaker 1: speak from the gap above its lid. They had been
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  Speaker 1: told how to build it before they were told almost
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  Speaker 1: anything else. They had been warned in the very design
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  Speaker 1: that it was not to be handled. What they did
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  Speaker 1: not yet fully grasp, what the centuries ahead would teach
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  Speaker 1: them again and again in blessing and in sudden death,
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  Speaker 1: was just how literally that warning would have to be taken.
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  Speaker 1: The chest was built, now it had to be lived with,
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  Speaker 1: and living beside the presence of God, as Israel was
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  Speaker 1: about to learn, was the most dangerous thing a nation
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  Speaker 1: could do. A finished gold box is just a container
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  Speaker 1: until you know what it holds and what it does.
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  Speaker 1: The ARC's danger came from three things at once. What
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  Speaker 1: was sealed inside it, where it sat, and who was
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  Speaker 1: allowed to come near it. Each of these was governed
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  Speaker 1: by rules so strict that breaking them, in the biblical account,
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  Speaker 1: meant death. To live beside the Ark was to live
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  Speaker 1: beside a presence that did not tolerate improvisation, And the
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  Speaker 1: Israelites learned that lesson early. Sometimes at the cost of
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  Speaker 1: the very priests appointed to serve it. Start with the contents.
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  Speaker 1: Over time, the ark held more than the two stone tablets.
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  Speaker 1: The New Testament letter to the Hebrews, looking back across
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  Speaker 1: the centuries, gives the fullest inventory. In a single sentence.
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  Speaker 1: In Hebrews nine, verse four, the writer describes the Inner
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  Speaker 1: Sanctuary as having the gold covered arc of the Covenant.
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  Speaker 1: This arc contained the gold jar of manner, aaron staff
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  Speaker 1: that had budded, and the stone tablets of the Covenant.
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  Speaker 1: Three objects, and each one is a frozen memory of
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  Speaker 1: a moment when Israel had pushed God too far and
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  Speaker 1: survived only by mercy. The tablets were the Covenant lore itself,
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  Speaker 1: the terms of the relationship. The jar of Manner preserved
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  Speaker 1: a sample of the bread that had fallen from the
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  Speaker 1: sky in the wilderness, the proof that the people had
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  Speaker 1: been fed when they were certain they would starve. And
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  Speaker 1: Aaron's staff was the strangest of the three, a dead
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  Speaker 1: piece of wood that had sprouted buds, blossoms, and ripe
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  Speaker 1: almonds overnight. That staff has its own story, and it
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  Speaker 1: explains why a budded stick was worth keeping inside the
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  Speaker 1: holiest object in the nation During the wilderness years, Aaron's
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  Speaker 1: exclusive right to the priesthood was challenged. To settle the dispute,
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  Speaker 1: the leaders of each tribe played wooden staff before the ark,
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  Speaker 1: and only Aarons came back to life. The instruction afterward
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  Speaker 1: was deliberate. In number seventeen, verse ten, God tells Moses
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  Speaker 1: put back Aaron's staff in front of the ark of
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  Speaker 1: the Covenant Law, to be kept as a sign to
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  Speaker 1: the rebellious. This will put an end to their grumbling
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  Speaker 1: against me, so that they will not die. Notice the
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  Speaker 1: logic of that last clause, so that they will not die.
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  Speaker 1: The relic was a warning marker. Each of the three
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  Speaker 1: objects inside the ark commemorated a rebellion that had nearly
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  Speaker 1: ended in mass death. The ark was not a treasure
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  Speaker 1: chest of trophies. It was a record of how close
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  Speaker 1: the people had come, again and again to being destroyed
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  Speaker 1: by the presence they were carrying. Now, consider where the
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  Speaker 1: ark sat. It did not travel openly or rest in
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  Speaker 1: the middle of the camp where anyone could see it.
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  Speaker 1: It was housed in the innermost chamber of the portable
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  Speaker 1: sanctuary the tabernacle, a space called the most holy place
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  Speaker 1: or the Holy of holies. A thick woven curtain separated
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  Speaker 1: that chamber from the rest of the tent, and behind
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  Speaker 1: the curtain there was nothing but the ark, no lamp stand,
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  Speaker 1: no table, no window, just the gold box, the throne
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  Speaker 1: of wings, and the darkness, because the presence that filled
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  Speaker 1: the room did not need light, and the text says
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  Speaker 1: it manifested as a cloud. The geography of holiness in
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  Speaker 1: Israel was a series of concentric circles, each one harder
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  Speaker 1: to enter than the last. The ordinary Israelite could enter
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  Speaker 1: the courtyard, the priests could enter the outer chamber of
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  Speaker 1: the tent daily, but the inner room, where the ark stood,
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  Speaker 1: was sealed off from everyone all year long, with a
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  Speaker 1: single exception. That exception was the day of atonement Yom Kippur,
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  Speaker 1: the most solemn day in the Israelite calendar, once a year,
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  Speaker 1: and only once. The high Priest was permitted to pass
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  Speaker 1: through the curtain and stand before the ark, carrying blood
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  Speaker 1: and incense to make atonement for the sins of the
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  Speaker 1: whole nation. And even this was hedged with a warning
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  Speaker 1: that reads less like a religious instruction and more like
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  Speaker 1: a safety protocol for handling something lethal. In Leviticus sixteen
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  Speaker 1: verse two. The command is given through Moses to Aaron,
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  Speaker 1: the first high Priest. Tell your brother Aaron that he
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  Speaker 1: is not to come whenever he chooses into the most
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  Speaker 1: holy place behind the curtain in front of the Atonement cover,
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  Speaker 1: on the ark, or else he will die, for I
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  Speaker 1: will appear in the cloud over the Atonement cover. He
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  Speaker 1: is not to come whenever he chooses, not on his
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  Speaker 1: own schedule, not on his own terms, not without the
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  Speaker 1: blood and the incense and the precise sequence of acts.
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  Speaker 1: The penalty for casual entry is stated flatly, he will die.
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  Speaker 1: The high priest, the single human being on earth authorized
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  Speaker 1: to stand in that room, could still be killed for
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  Speaker 1: entering it wrong. This was not an empty threat, and
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  Speaker 1: Israel had already seen it carried out, not on a layman,
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  Speaker 1: but on two of Aaron's own sons. The episode comes
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  Speaker 1: shortly after the priesthood is first installed. In a moment
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  Speaker 1: that should have been pure celebration, Erin's sons, Nadab and Abihu,
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  Speaker 1: newly ordained priests, decided to offer incense to God in
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  Speaker 1: a way they had not been commanded. The text in
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  Speaker 1: Leviticus ten, verses one and two describes it without drama,
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  Speaker 1: and without mercy. Aaron sons Nadab and Abihu, took their senses,
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  Speaker 1: put fire in them and added incense, and they offered
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  Speaker 1: unauthorized fire before the Lord, contrary to his command. So
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  Speaker 1: fire came out from the presence of the Lord and
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  Speaker 1: consumed them, and they died before the Lord unauthorized fire.
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  Speaker 1: The Hebrew phrase is sometimes rendered strange fire, fire that
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  Speaker 1: God had not asked for. Their offense was not idolatry
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  Speaker 1: or theft or violence. It was enthusiasm without obedience, worship
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  Speaker 1: on their own initiative rather than his. And the same
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  Speaker 1: presence that accepted the authorized sacrifice reached out and consumed
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  Speaker 1: the men who improvised. The point hammered home at the
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  Speaker 1: very beginning of the priesthood was that nearness to God
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  Speaker 1: was a privilege measured to the inch. Step inside the
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  Speaker 1: line and you were the most blessed people on earth.
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  Speaker 1: Step over it, and the blessing became fire. This is
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  Speaker 1: what makes the ark so different from how a modern
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  Speaker 1: reader might imagine a holy object. We tend to think
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  Speaker 1: of sacred things as comforting, a relict to touch for
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  Speaker 1: good luck, a shrine to visit for peace. The Ark
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  Speaker 1: was nothing like that it was treated the way a
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  Speaker 1: careful generation would treat a reactor core, revered essential, and
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  Speaker 1: absolutely not to be approached without protocol. The priests who
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  Speaker 1: carried it covered it first with the curtain, then with hides,
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  Speaker 1: then with a cloth, so that no one, not even
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  Speaker 1: the Levites who bore the weight, would lay eyes directly
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  Speaker 1: on it. The danger was not in the gold or
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  Speaker 1: the wood. It was in what the gold and wood marked,
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  Speaker 1: the meeting point between a holy God and a people
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  Speaker 1: who were, by the Bible's own repeated admission, stubborn, forgetful,
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  Speaker 1: and prone to rebellion. That combination perfect holiness pressed up
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  Speaker 1: against persistent human failure was the live wire running through
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  Speaker 1: the whole arrangement. And yet the Israelites did not leave
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  Speaker 1: it behind. They could have after Sinai, they could have
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  Speaker 1: built their religion around the mountain, around a fixed temple,
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  Speaker 1: around anything safer than a portable box that killed people
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  Speaker 1: who mishandled it. Instead, they picked it up and carried
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  Speaker 1: it with them at the head of the column, out
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  Speaker 1: in front, into the wilderness and toward them land they
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  Speaker 1: had been promised. The presence that could destroy them was
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  Speaker 1: also the presence that led them fed them and fought
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  Speaker 1: for them. They had decided that the danger was worth it,
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  Speaker 1: that a God who was lethal up close was better
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  Speaker 1: than no God at all. The next test of that
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  Speaker 1: decision would come not in the quiet of the camp,
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  Speaker 1: but at the edge of a flooded river and the
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  Speaker 1: walls of a city that stood between them and everything
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  Speaker 1: they had been promised. The Ark was about to go
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  Speaker 1: to war. For forty years, the ark moved at the
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  Speaker 1: front of a wandering nation, and the Israelites built a
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  Speaker 1: battle cry around it. Whenever the camp broke and the
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  Speaker 1: box was lifted onto its poles to lead the march,
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  Speaker 1: Moses spoke words that turned the sacred chest into a
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  Speaker 1: war banner. The Book of Numbers preserves them in Chapter ten,
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  Speaker 1: verses thirty five and thirty six. Whenever the Ark set out,
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  Speaker 1: Moses said, Rise up, Lord, May your enemies be scattered,
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  Speaker 1: May your foes flee before you. Whenever it came to rest,
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  Speaker 1: he said, return Lord. To the countless thousands of Israel.
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  Speaker 1: The Ark going out meant God going out ahead of
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  Speaker 1: his people. The Ark coming to rest meant God settling
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  Speaker 1: down among them. It was not merely a religious symbol
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  Speaker 1: carried for morale. In the theology of the conquest, the
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  Speaker 1: ark was the visible sign that the campaign belonged to God,
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  Speaker 1: that the armies of Israel were not advancing on their
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  Speaker 1: own strength, but following a presence that scattered enemies before
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  Speaker 1: a single sword was drawn. The first two times that
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  Speaker 1: claim was tested, it produced two of the most famous
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  Speaker 1: miracles in the Hebrew Bible. By the time of the
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  Speaker 1: first test, Moses was dead, leadership had passed to Joshua,
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  Speaker 1: and the nation stood on the eastern bank of the
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  Speaker 1: Jordan River, looking across at the land they had been
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  Speaker 1: promised for four hundred years. There was one immediate problem.
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  Speaker 1: The Jordan was in flood. The Book of Joshua is
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  Speaker 1: careful to mention this. The river was at its highest,
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  Speaker 1: swollen with the spring runoff, exactly when an army with women, children, livestock,
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  Speaker 1: and a gold box on poles needed to get across.
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  Speaker 1: There were no bridges. A crossing under these conditions should
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  Speaker 1: have been impossible, and the Canaanite cities on the far
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  Speaker 1: side knew it. That was precisely the moment chosen for
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  Speaker 1: the miracle, and the ark was placed at the center
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  Speaker 1: of it. The priests carrying it were sent ahead into
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  Speaker 1: the water first, before there was any sign that the
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  Speaker 1: river would yield. What happened next is told in Joshua three,
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  Speaker 1: beginning at verse fourteen. So when the people broke camp
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  Speaker 1: to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the Ark of
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  Speaker 1: the Covenant went ahead of them. Now the Jordan is
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  Speaker 1: at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as
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  Speaker 1: the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: distance away at a town called Adam in the vicinity
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: of the Araba, that is, the Dead Sea, was completely
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. The
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: detail in that passage is striking for its specificity. It
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: names the town up stream where the water piled up, Adam,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: near Zarethan, roughly twenty miles north of the crossing point.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: This is not vague poetry. It is told as geography,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and the image deliberately echoes the parting of the sea
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: a generation earlier, except that this time the instrument of
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: the miracle is not Moses' staff, but the ark carried
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: into the flood by the priests. Then comes the detail
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: that captures everything about the ark's role Verse seventeen. The
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Lord stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: on dry ground while all Israel passed by. Until the
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground, the
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: priests did not cross and wait on the other side.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: They walked to the center of the river bed and
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: stood there holding the ark, while the entire nation, hundreds
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: of thousands of people, by the texts reckoning, filed past them.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: As long as the ark held its ground in the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: middle of the river, the water stayed back. The held
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: open jaw gordon was in effect resting on the presence
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: in that box. Only when the last Israelite had reached
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the far bank did the priests carry the arc up
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: out of the river bed, and the moment they did,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the flood crashed back down. The crossing was a controlled demonstration.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: The river obeyed the ark, not the other way around.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: The second test came almost immediately at the city of Jericho.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Jericho was a fortified town guarding the entrance to the
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: central highlands, and by the standards of the day, its
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: walls made it nearly unassailable for a people with no
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: siege engines and no experience taking cities. Israel had spent
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: four decades in the desert. They were herders and former slaves,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: not engineers, so the instructions Joshua received made no military
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: sense at all. There would be no battering ram, no ladders,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: no tunneling. Instead, the army was to march around the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: city once a day for six days, with the ark
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: carried in the procession, and seven priests blowing trumpets made
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: of rams horns. On the seventh day, they were to
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: circle the city seven times, and then on a signal,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: the whole army was to shout. The Book of Joshua
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: narrates the march in chapter six, with the ark embedded
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: in the column between the armed men and the rear guard,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the trumpets sounding the whole way. For six days, the
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: people walked the silent circuit and went home. It must
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: have looked to the watchers on the walls of Jericho
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: like a strange and harmless ritual. On the seventh day,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: they rose at dawn and marched the city not once,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: but seven times. Then Joshua gave the order, and the
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: climax arrives in verse twenty. When the trumpets sounded, the
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed. So
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: everyone charged straight in and they took the city. The
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: defenses that no Israelite weapon could have touched came down
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: from the inside, and the army walked over the rubble
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: into the city. Again, the ark was at the heart
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: of the procession. The victory was framed not as a
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: feat of arms, but as the act of the presence.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: The ark carried the same presence that had scattered the
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: river now scattered the stones of a fortress. These two
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: episodes set a pattern that would shape Israel's imagination for centuries,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: and it is worth pausing on what that pattern actually taught,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: because it carried a hidden danger. The lesson God's instructions
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: were meant to teach was about obedience. Cross when you
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: are told, march when you are told, Shout when you
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: are told, and the impossible gives way. The arc led,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: but the arc led people who were doing exactly what
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: they had been commanded. The river opened for priests who
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: walked into a flood on faith. The walls fell for
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: an army that marched in silence for seven days without complaint.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: The power was never in the gold. It was in
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the relationship between a holy God and a people walking
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: in step with him, and the ark was the visible
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: hinge of that relationship. But there is a subtle and
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: fatal misreading available here, and Israel would eventually fall into it.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: If the ark goes in front and the enemy falls,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: a person might conclude that the ark itself is the weapon,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: that the box has power on its own, that carrying
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: it guarantees victory, the way a charm guarantees luck. That
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: conclusion drains the obedience out of the equation and keeps
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: only the object. It treats the throne of God as
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: a battlefield mascot, something to be wheeled out when the
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: fighting gets hard, regardless of whether the nation carrying it
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: is actually following the God who sits on it. The
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Jordan and Jericho could be remembered two ways. Remembered Rightly
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: they said trust and obey, and God will fight for you.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Remembered Wrongly, they said, grab the Box, and you cannot
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: lose for now. Under Joshua, the right reading held, the
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Ark led a faithful generation into the land, and the
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: conquest moved forward. The Box that had been built at
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Sinai had proven itself in flood and in battle. But
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Joshua's generation would not last forever. The judges who followed
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: presided over centuries of drift, of forgetting, of doing what
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: was right in their own eyes, And when a later
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: generation of Israelites finally faced an enemy they could not beat,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: they would remember the Ark not as the sign of
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a god to be obeyed, but as a weapon to
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: be seized. They would carry it onto the field, expecting Jericho.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: What they got instead was the single greatest disaster in
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: the Ark's do history, and the only time the most
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: dangerous object in the Bible would fall into enemy hands.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Generations after Joshua, Israel had drifted far from the discipline
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: that made the Ark a weapon of victory. The era
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: of the Judges had been a cycle of forgetting and ruin,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: and by the time the story returns to the Ark,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the nation was facing a new and per enemy along
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: its coast, the Philistines, a sea people with iron weapons,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and organized armies. The two sides met in battle at
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: a place called Affek, and Israel lost badly, leaving about
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: four thousand men dead on the field. It was the
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: kind of defeat that demanded an explanation, and the elders
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: of Israel reached for one. But the explanation they chose
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: and the solution they devised, would expose exactly how badly
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: they had misunderstood the source of their own power. The
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Book of First Samuel records there reasoning in chapter four,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: verse three, when the soldiers returned to camp, the elders
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: of Israel asked, why did the Lord bring defeat on
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the Ark
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: of the Lord's Covenant from Shiloh, so that He may
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: go with us and save us from the and of
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: our enemies. On the surface, this sounds pious. They wanted
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: God to go with them, but look closely at what
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: they actually proposed. They did not repent. They did not
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: ask whether their own conduct had brought the defeat. They
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: did not consult God at all. They simply decided to
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: fetch the box, as though the Ark were a machine
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: that produced victory when present and defeat when absent, they
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: remembered Jericho and drew the fatal lesson from it. Grab
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the Ark and you cannot lose. They were treating the
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: throne of God as a good luck charm, and they
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: sent for it from the sanctuary at Shiloh, carried by
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: two men who embodied everything wrong with the nation's religion
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: at that moment, Hofni and finnihas the corrupt sons of
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the aging priest Eli, men the text has already described
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: as scowl andrels who treated the Lord's offerings with contempt.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: When the Ark arrived in the Israelite camp, the soldiers
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: raised a shout so loud the ground shook, and the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Philistines heard it and were afraid because word reached them
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: that the gods of the Hebrews had come into the camp.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: For a moment, it seemed the charm might work by
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: sheer terror, but the Philistines rallied, told each other to
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: fight or become slaves, and attacked. What followed was not Jericho,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: It was the opposite of Jericho. Israel was routed even
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: more catastrophically than before. Thirty thousand foot soldiers fell, and
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: the account delivers its hammer blow in chapter four, verse eleven,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the Ark of God was captured, and Eli's two sons,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Hofni and finnehas died. The unthinkable had happened. The most
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: dangerous object in the Bible, the throne of the Living God,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: the box that had opened a river and flattened a
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: city had been carried off as plunder by a pagan army,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: and the men who had presumed to use it as
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: a weapon were dead. The news traveled back to Shiloh.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Old Eli ninety eight and nearly blind, was sitting by
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the gate waiting for word of the ark. When the
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: messenger reported the defeat, the death of his sons, and
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: the capture of the Ark, Eli fell backward off his chair,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: broke his neck, and died. But the most haunting reaction
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: belonged to his daughter in law, the wife of Finnihas,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: who was pregnant and went into labor. When she heard
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: the news. She died giving birth, and with her last
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: strength she named the child. Chapter four, verses twenty one
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: and twenty two, the boy Ikobod, saying the glory has
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: departed from Israel because of the capture of the Ark
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: of God and the deaths of her father in law
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and her husband. She said, the glory has departed from Israel,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: for the Ark of God has been captured ikobod. The
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: name means roughly, where is the glory or no glory.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: It was a verdict on the whole nation. The presence
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: that had led them out of Egypt opened the Jordan
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: and toppled Jericho appeared to have been carried away into
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: enemy territory. For Israel, it was the darkest hour in
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the Ark's history. They had lost the unlosable, but the
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Philistines were about to discover what Israel had forgotten. The
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: danger of the Ark did not depend on who was
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: carrying it. They brought their prize to the city of
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Ashdod and set it up as a trophy inside the
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: temple of their chief god, Dagon, placing it beside the
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: statue as a sign that their god had defeated the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: God of Israel. That was the whole point of capturing
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: an enemy's sacred object. In the ancient world, it proclaimed
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: that your deity was stronger. What happened overnight turned that
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: logic inside out. The account in chapter five is almost
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: comic in its restraint. When the people of Ashdod rose
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: the next morning they found Dagon fallen on his face
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: on the ground before the ark. They set the idol
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: back up. The following morning, the message was no longer
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: subtle verse four. But the following morning when they rose,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: there was Dagon fallen on his face on the ground
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: before the ark of the Lord. His head and hands
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: had been broken off and were lying on the threshold.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Only his body remained. The god of the phyllis deans
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: lay face down in the posture of worship before the
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: captured arc, and then was dismembered, head and hands. The
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: seat of thought and the instruments of action severed and
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: dumped at the doorway. The trophy was destroying the temple
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: that held it. Then the affliction spread from the idol
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: to the people verse six. The Lord's hand was heavy
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: on the people of Ashdod and its vicinity. He brought
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: devastation on them and afflicted them with tumors. A plague
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: broke out. The Hebrew word suggests swellings or tumors, and
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: the later mention of an infestation of rats has led
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: many scholars to suspect the description of something like bubonic
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: plague spreading through the Philistine cities. The people of Ashdod
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: wanted the er ark gan. They sent it to Gath,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: and the plague followed. They sent it to Ekron, and
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the people of Ekron cried out that it had been
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: brought to kill them. For seven months, the ark moved
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: from Philistine city to Philistine's city like a curse no
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: one could put down, leaving panic and death in its wake.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: The conquerors had captured an object they could neither keep
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: nor destroy. Finally, the Philistine rulers called in there priests
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: and diviners and asked how to get rid of it
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: without making things worse. The answer was to send it
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: back to Israel with a guilt offering five gold tumors
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: and five gold rats, one for each Philistine city, an
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: admission in precious metal that their god had lost. But
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: they devised a test to be sure the disasters were
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: really the hand of Israel's guard and not coincidence. They
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: built a new cart, hitched it to two cows that
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: had recently carved and penned up the calves at home.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: By every natural instinct, the cows should have turned back
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: toward their bellowing calves, if instead they pulled the cart
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: straight toward Israelite territory the Philistines would know the plague
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: had come from the Ark. The result is recorded in
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: chapter six, verse twelve. Then the cows went straight up
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: toward Bethshemesh, keeping on the road and lowing all the way.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: They did not turn to the right or to the left.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: The cows lowed for their calves the entire way, and
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: never once turned aside. Even the animals bent to the
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: will of the presence in the box. The Ark had
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: brought itself home, untouched by human hands, on a cart
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: pulled by cattle that defied their own nature. But the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: homecoming carried one final sobering lesson, and it landed on Israel,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: not on the pillag steins. The men of beth Chemesh,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: overjoyed to see the Ark, made the same mistake the
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: elders had made. At effect, they grew familiar with it.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Some of them looked into the Ark, lifting the lid
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: to peer at the holy contents, and the same lethal
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: holiness that had broken Dagon and afflicted the Philistines turned
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: on them. Chapter six, verse nineteen records the toll. But
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: God struck down some of the men of Beth Chemesh,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: putting seventy of them to death because they looked into
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: the ark of the Lord. The people mourned because of
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: the heavy blow the Lord had dealt them. The ark
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: was not safer in Israelite hands. It was never about
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: whose hands held it, It was about whether it was
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: treated with the reverence its holiness demanded. The terrified people
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: of Beth Chemesh asked the question that the whole episode
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: had been driving toward. Who can stand in the presence
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: of the Lord, this holy God. They wanted it gone too,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and they sent for the people of a nearby town
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: to come and take it away. The Ark was about
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: to enter a long, strange period of obscurity, set aside,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: half forgotten, waiting in a private house on a hill
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: for the one man bold enough and devoted enough to
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: bring it back to the center of the nation's life.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: That man was David, and his first attempt would end
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: in sudden death. After the men of Bethshemesh sent it
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: away in terror, the ark came to rest in a
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: quiet town in the hills called Kiriath Jirim, in the
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: house of a man named Abinadab, and there it stayed
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: not for months, but for decades. Through the rest of
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Samuel's lifetime. Through the entire reign of Israe, Riel's first king, Saul,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: and into the early years of the second, the Ark
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: sat in a private home on a hilltop, set apart
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: and largely ignored. The nation that had once carried it
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: into battle now functioned without it. Saul, the text notes, pointedly,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: almost never inquired of it. An entire generation grew up
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: knowing the Ark only as a relic in someone's house,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: a holy thing too dangerous to touch and too awkward
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: to use. The presence that had defined Israel's identity had
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: been quietly shelved. Then came David. When David finally united
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: the tribes, captured the fortress of Jerusalem, and made it
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: his capital, he understood something his predecessor never had. A
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: nation built around the God of Israel needed the throne
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: of that God at its center. The Ark could not
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: stay forgotten on a hill, So David assembled thirty thousand
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: chosen men and went up to kiriath Jerim to bring
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: it home in a grand national procession. His devotion was
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: real and his intentions were good, But in his enthusiasm,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: David made the same mistake the elders had made at
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: effect and the Philistines had made at Ashdod. He handled
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the holy without consulting how it was supposed to be handled.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: The Book of Second Samuel describes the method in chapter six,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: verse three. They set the Ark of God on a
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: new cart and brought it from the house of Abinadab,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: which was on the hill. Uzar and Ohio, sons of Abinadab,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: were guiding the new cart a new cart. The detail
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: matters because it reveals where David got the idea. This
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: was exactly how the Philistines had transported the Ark on
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: a new cart pulled by animals. It was the pagan method,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the practical method, the method that treats a sacred object
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: like cargo. But Israel had been given explicit instructions at
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Sinai for how the Ark was to move, carried on poles,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: on the shoulders of the Levites, never touched, never loaded
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: onto a wagon. David, in his eagerness, had borrowed his
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: enemy's technique and forgotten his own God's command. The procession
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: set out with music and celebration, the king and all
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Israel dancing before the Ark with songs and harps and
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: tambourines and cymbals. It was a festival, and then the
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: oxen stumbled. What happened next is one of the most
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: disturbing moments in the entire Bible, because the man it
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: happened to was, by every human measure, trying to help.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Chapter six, verses six and seven. When they came to
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: the threshing floor of Nakon, Uza reached out and took
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: hold of the Ark of God. Because the oxen stumbled,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: the Lord's anger burned against Uza because of his irreverent act. Therefore,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: God struck him down, and he died there beside the
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Ark of God. Uza saw the ark tip he did
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: what any of us would instinctively do. He put out
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: his hand to steady it, to keep it from falling
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: in the dirt, and he died on the spot beside
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: the cart, with his hand on the gold. To modern ears,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: this seems monstrously unfair. Uzar was protecting the ark, but
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: that instinct itself was the problem. Usu reached out to
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: keep the holiest object in the world from being soiled
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: by ordinary ground, as if his hand were cleaner than
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: the earth, as if the ark needed a man's help
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: to keep its dignity. The poles were never to be removed,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: precisely so that no human hand would ever touch it.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: The whole arrangement existed to teach that holiness is not
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: steadied by human effort. It is approached on God's terms,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: or not at all. The cart should never have been built.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Uza's death was the price of a casual approach to
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: the presence that David, for all his devotion, had not
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: taken seriously enough. The king's reaction was not piety, It
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: was fear and anger. Chapter six, verse nine. David was
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: afraid of the Lord that day and said, how can
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: the Ark of the Lord ever come to me? The
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: question is raw and honest. David had wanted to bring
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: the presence of God into the heart of his kingdom,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: and the attempt just killed a man in front of
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: thirty thousand witnesses. The procession stopped. David did not dare
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: bring the ark the rest of the way into Jerusalem. Instead,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: he turned it aside into the house of a man
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: named Obedidom, a Gitthite, and left it there the way
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: a person leaves something they are afraid of. For three months,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: the ark sat in oberd Edam's home, while David wrestled
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: with what had happened, And in those three months, the
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: other face of the ark appeared verse eleven. The ark
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: of the Lord remained in the house of Oberdidom, the Gitthite,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: for three months, and the Lord blessed him and his
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: entire household. The same object that had struck us are
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: dead became a fountain of blessing in the home that
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: simply housed it. With reverence. Word reached David that Obedidom
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: and everything he owned were flourishing because of the ark.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: This is the dual nature that has run through the
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: whole story. The ark is lethal to the presumptuous and
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: life giving to the reverend. And the difference is not
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: in the box, but in the approach. David heard the reports,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: and his fear turned back into resolve, but this time
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: a corrected resolve. The parallel account in First Chronicles tells
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: us what David learned in the interval. He summoned the
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: priests and levites and told them plainly why the first
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: attempt had ended in death. In First Chronicles fifteen, verse thirteen,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: it was because you the Levites, did not bring it
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: up the first time that the Lord our God broke
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: out in anger against us. We did not inquire of
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: him about how to do it in the prescribed way.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: We did not inquire of him about how to do
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: it is in the prescribed way. That sentence is the
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: moral of the whole episode. The failure was not a
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: lack of zeal. David had zeal in abundance. The failure
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: was zeal without obedience, celebration without consultation, the assumption that
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: good intentions excuse ignoring the rules. So the second time
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: David did it correctly. No cart. The Levites carried the
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: ark on poles on their shoulders, exactly as the law
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: at Sinai had commanded, and they consecrated themselves first. This time,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: the procession reached Jerusalem in triumph, and David's joy overflowed
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: in a way that would become one of the most
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: memorable images of his reign. Chapter six, verse fourteen. Wearing
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: a linen ephart, David was dancing before the Lord with
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: all his might. The King of Israel stripped off his
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: royal robes, put on the simple linen garment of a priest,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: and danced through the streets of his own capital with
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: everything he had, leading the ark home with shouting and
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: trumpet blasts. It was an act of total undignified devotion,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: a king making himself small before the presence of the God,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: who was the true king of Israel. Not everyone admired it.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Watching from a window was Mihal, the daughter of Saul
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: and David's wife, and her reaction belonged to the old
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: order to her father's house that had ignored the ark
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: for a generation. Verse sixteen. As the ark of the
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Lord was entering the city of David, Michael, daughter of Saul,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: watched from a window, and when she saw King David
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: leaping and dancing before the Lord, she despised him in
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: her heart. When David came home, she met him with contempt,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: mocking him for exposing himself like a vulgar commoner in
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: front of the servant girls. David answered that he would
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: become even more undignified than this, that he had danced
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: before the Lord who had chosen him over her father's house,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: and that he would gladly be humiliated in his own
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: eyes for the sake of honoring God. The chapter closes
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: by noting that Mihal remained childless to the day of
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: her death. The line of Saul, which had shelved the Ark,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: fading out, while David, who brought it home on the
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: shoulders of the Levites, became the founder of the dynasty
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: through which Israel's hope would run. So the Ark was
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: finally back at the center of national life, housed in
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: a tent David pitched for it in Jerusalem. The presence
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: had returned on its own terms to a king who
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: had learned the hard way that devotion without obedience can kill.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: But David wanted to do more than picture tent. He
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: wanted to build the God of Israel a permanent house,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: a temple of stone and cedar and gold worthy of
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: the Ark. It would hold that ambition would be granted,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: but not to him. The house would be built by
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: his son, and when it was finished, the Ark would
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: enter the one place built to be its final resting place.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: For a brief golden moment, the most dangerous object in
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: the Bible would come fully to rest. David wanted to
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: build a house for the Ark. He was living in
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: a palace of cedar while the throne of God sat
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: under a tent, and the imbalance troubled him. But when
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: he proposed building a temple. The answer that came back
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: through the prophet Nathan was no, not no forever, but no,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: not by you. The reason is stated bluntly in Firse
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Chronicles twenty two, verse eight, where later explains it to
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: his son. But this word of the Lord came to me.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: You have shed much blood and have fought many wars.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: You are not to build a house for my name,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: because you have shed much blood on the earth. In
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: my sight, David was a warrior, and the wars that
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: had secured Israel's borders had also stained his hands. The
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: house that would hold the most sacred object in the nation,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: the meeting place of heaven and Earth, was not to
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: be built by a man of bloodshed. It would be
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: built by a man of peace. That man was Solomon,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: David's son, whose very name comes from the Hebrew word
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: for peace. So David did the next best thing. He
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: could not build the temple, but he could prepare for it.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: He gathered the materials gold, silver, bronze, iron, cedar, cut stone,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: on a scale the text is scribes as beyond measuring.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: He organized the priests and levites, the musicians, and the gatekeepers.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: He drew up the plans and handed them to Solomon,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: along with a charge to be strong and do the work.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: And then he died, leaving his son a kingdom at
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: peace and a mountain of materials waiting to become a
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: house for God. When Solomon took the throne and consolidated
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: his rule, he began the project that would define his reign.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: According to the chronology worked out by the scholar Edwin Tile,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: whose framework for dating the kings of Israel and Judah
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: remains a standard reference, construction began around nine hundred sixty
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: six before Christ, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: It took seven years to complete. The temple Solomon built
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: was not large by the standards of ancient monuments. The
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: bill holding itself was modest in footprint compared to the
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: great temples of Egypt or Mesopotamia, but it was lavish
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: beyond description. Overlaid inside with gold, paneled in cedar, carved
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: with palm trees and flowers, and cherubim built of stone,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: dressed at the quarry so that no hammer or chisel
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: was heard at the building site. At its heart was
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: a windowless inner chamber, a perfect cube of about thirty
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: feet in every dimension, overlaid entirely in gold, the most
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Holy place built for one purpose and one occupant. Inside it,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Solomon placed two enormous cherubim, carved from olive wood and
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: covered in gold, each about fifteen feet tall. Their wings
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: stretched out so that they spanned the entire width of
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the room, wingtip to wingtip, touching the two walls and
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: meeting in the center. This was the room, and it
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: was built around an empty space waiting to be filled.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: When everything was ready, Solomon summoned the elders of Israel
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: and all the heads of the tribes to Jerusalem to
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: bring the ark up from the tent David had pitched
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: for it and install it in its permanent home. The
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: priests carried it on poles on their shoulders, the way
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: David had finally learned it must be done into the
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: inner sanctuary. The Book of First Kings records the moment
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: in chapter eight, verse six. The priests then brought the
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Ark of the Lord's Covenant to its place in the
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: inner sanctuary of the Temple, the most Holy Place, and
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: put it beneath the wings of the cherubim. The ark,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: with its own too small cherubim, hammered from the lid
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: was set down beneath the vast, outstretched wings of Solomon's
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: two giant cherubim guardian wings. Within guardian wings, the throne
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: of gold sheltered under the throne of olive wood and gold.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: After more than four centuries of wandering through the desert,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: across the Jordan, into battle, into captivity, into a Philistine temple,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: into a forgotten house on a hill, onto a fatal cart,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: the Ark had finally arrived at a place built to
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: be its rest. The text then pauses to note something
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: quietly significant about what the Ark contained. At this point,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: chapter eight, verse nine. There was nothing in the Ark
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: except the two stone tablets that Moses had placed in
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: it at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: the Israelites after they came out of Egypt. Nothing except
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: the two tablets, The jar of Manner and the budded
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: staff of Aaron, which the Ark had carried in the wilderness,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: are no longer mentioned. Somewhere across the centuries of capture
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: and obscurity, those two relics had disappeared, and only the
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: tablets of the covenant remained the core of the thing.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: The actual terms of the Treaty between God and Israel.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: The Ark had been stripped down to its essence. What
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: was enthroned in the holiest room in the nation was,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: in the end the law itself, the words of the
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Covenant beneath the wings of the Cherubim. And then came
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: the sign that everything Israel believed about the Ark was true.
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: As the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, having set
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: the ark in position, the presence that the box had
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: always carried made itself visible. Chapter eight, Verses ten and eleven.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: filled the temple of the Lord, and the priests could
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: not perform their sir because of the cloud. For the
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: glory of the Lord filled his temple. The same cloud
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: that had descended on Mount Sinai, the same cloud that
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: had led Israel through the wilderness and filled the Tabernacle,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: now poured into Solomon's temple so thickly that the priests
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: could not stand to minister. It was not smoke from
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: the sacrifices. It was the glory. The Hebrew word is kavod,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: the weight, the manifest presence of God himself, settling onto
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: the Ark in the room built to receive it. The
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: presence had come home, and its arrival was so overwhelming
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: that the human servants had to clear out for a moment.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: No ritual could be performed because the one the rituals
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: pointed to had filled the house in person. Solomon understood
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: exactly what he was seeing, and his response captures the
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: entire mystery of the Ark in two sentences, Chapter eight,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Verses twelve and thirteen. Then Solomon said, the Lord has
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: said that he would dwell in a dark cloud. I
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: have built a magnificent temple for you, a place for
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: you to dwell forever a dark cloud. The God of
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: Israel did not appear as a blazing statue or a
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: golden image, the way the gods of the surrounding nations
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: were displayed. He came in thick darkness, hidden present but unseen,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: enthroned above the Ark in a room with no windows
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: and no light. The invisibility was the point. Israel's God
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: could be approached, could dwell among his people, could fill
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: a house with his weight and glory, but he could
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: never be looked at, captured, carved, or controlled the empty
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: space between the cherubim that had been designed at so
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Ainei was now filled with a presence too holy to see.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: This was the high point of the Ark's history, and
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: arguably the high point of Israel's national life. The kingdom
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: was united, at peace and prosperous. The temple stood finished
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: on the mountain in Jerusalem. The Ark rested in the
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: most holy place beneath the wings of the Cherubim, and
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: the glory of God filled the house. Solomon stood before
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: the whole assembly of Israel and prayed one of the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: great prayers of the Bible, asking that this house be
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: the place where the prayers of his people and even
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: of foreigners who came to seek the God of Israel,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: would be heard. For a generation, everything the Ark represented
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: seemed permanent and secure. The presence had a home, the
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: home had a king, and the king ruled a kingdom
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: at rest. But the cloud that filled the temple would
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: not stay forever. The same books that record the glory
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: descending also record the long, slow decline that followed Solomon's
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: own drift into idolatry in his later years, the splitting
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: of the kingdom after his death, and the centuries of
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: unfaithful kings who would lead Judah toward catastrophe. The temple
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: would stand for nearly four hundred years, but the Ark
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: inside it was approaching the strangest chapter of its entire existence.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Not destruction in plain view, not capture by a named enemy,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: but something far more unsettling. It was about to disappear,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: and the Bible, which described its construction down to the
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: cubit and its journeys down to the threshing floor, would
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: fall almost completely silent about where it went. The most
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: dangerous object in the Bible does not get a death scene.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: After the glory filled Solomon's Temple, the Ark is mentioned
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: less and less until it slips out of the narrative,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: almost without anyone noticing. There is no chapter describing its destruction,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: no verse recording its capture, no account of where it
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: was taken or hidden. One generation, it is the throne
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: of God at the center of the nation. A few
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: centuries later it is simply gone, and the silence around
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: its disappearance is so complete that it has fueled three
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: thousand years of speculation. To understand how the Ark vanished,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: you have to follow the long decline of the kingdom
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: that housed it. After Solomon, the kingdom split in two
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Israel in the north, Judah in the south, with Jerusalem
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: and the Temple in the south. The northern kingdom collapsed,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: first destroyed by Assyria in seven hundred twenty two before Christ.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: Judah survived longer, but spiraled through a cycle of faithful
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: and faithless kings. One of the worst, Manasseh, is said
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: to have set up idols and pagan altars inside the
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: temple itself, in the very courts surrounding the ark. Whether
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: the Ark remained in the most holy place through those
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: decades of corruption or was removed and hidden by faithful
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: priests to protect it, the Bible does not say. What
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: we do get is one last fleeting glimpse during the
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: reign of the reformer king Josiah around six hundred twenty
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: two before Christ, as he was purging the Temple of
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: idolatry and restoring true worship. The record in Second Chronicles
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: shows him instructing the Levites to put the sacred ear
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: back in the temple. That instruction to return it to
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: its place is the final time the Ark of the
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: Covenant appears in the historical narrative of the Bible as
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: a physical object in the world. After Josiah it is
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: never described again. The curtain comes down, and when it lifts,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: the ark is no longer there. Josiah's reforms did not
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: last within a generation, his sons had undone his work,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: and Judah's final slide toward catastrophe accelerated to the east.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: Babylon under nebukud Nezza had become the dominant power of
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: the ancient Near East, and Jerusalem made the fatal mistake
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: of rebelling against it. The Babylonian response unfolded in stages,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: and these are among the best documented events of the
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: entire Old Testament, because we have records from both sides.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: The cuneiform tablets known as the Babylonian Chronicles independently confirm
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: nebukud Nezar's campaign against Jerusalem. One of them records the
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: capture of the city and the deposing of its king
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: in five ninety seven before Christ, dating the event with
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: a precision that lines up remarkably well with the Biblical account.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: This is one of those points where the Bible's history
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: can be checked against an outside source and it holds.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: Then came the final blow. After a further rebellion, nebucud
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Neza returned besieged Jerusalem for roughly eighteen months, and in
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: five hundred seven, before Christ broke through the walls and
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: destroyed the city, the temple Solomon had built was burned
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: to the ground. The Book of Second Kings described the
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: destruction in chapter twenty five, verse nine. He set fire
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: to the Temple of the Lord, the royal Palace, and
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burned down.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: And here is where the silence becomes deafening. The Biblical
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: writers recording the looting of the temple take care to
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: itemize exactly what the Babylonians carried off. They were meticulous
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: about it. Chapter twenty five, verse thirteen. The Babylonians broke
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: up the bronze pillars, the movable stands, and the bronze
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: sea that were at the Temple of the Lord, and
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: they carried the bronze to Babylon. The passage goes on
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: to list the pots, the shovels, the wick trimmers, the dishes,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: the censers, the bronze, and the gold and the silver,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: every fixture of the temple cataloged as plunder hauled east.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: The parallel account in Second Chronicles thirty six, verse eighteen
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: summarizes it. He carried to Babylon all the articles from
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: the Temple of God, both large and small, and the
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: tree measures of the Lord's temple, and the treasures of
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: the king and his officials, and all the articles, both
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: large and small. And yet in these careful inventories of
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: what Nebuchadnezzer took lists detailed enough to mention the wick trimmers,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant is never named the single
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: most valuable, most sacred, most famous object in the entire temple.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: A chest of solid gold over a wooden core is
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: simply absent from the loot list if the Babylonians had
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: carried it to Babylon. It is almost inconceivable that the
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: Biblical writers who recorded the theft of bronze shovels would
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: have failed to mention the theft of the throne of God.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: The omission is not an accident of incomplete record keeping.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: The ark is missing from the plunder because by five
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: and eighty seven it was apparently no longer there to plunder.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: Sometime between Josiah's reform and the Babylonian fire, the ark
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: had already gone. The evidence for its absence only grows
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: stronger when you look at what came after the exile.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: When the Babylonian Empire fell to Persia, Cyrus the Great
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: allowed the exile Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: their temple. This Second Temple was completed around five hundred
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: and sixteen before Christ, and the books of Ezra and
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: Nehemiah described the return and the reconstruction in considerable detail.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: They list the temple vessels that Cyrus returned, the gold
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: and silver dishes and bowls that Nebucudnezzer had taken, counted
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: out item by item and brought back to Jerusalem. But
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: the ark is not among them, because the ark had
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: never been taken to Babylon in the first place. And
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: here is the most telling fact of all. The rebuilt
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: most holy place, the inner sanctuary of the Second Temple,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: stood empty. The Jews did not build a new ark
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: to replace the lost one. The holiest room in their
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: restored temple contained nothing. This was not a secret. Later
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: sources confirmed the empty chamber directly. The Jewish historian Josephus,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: writing in the first century after Christ, describes the most
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: holy place of the Temple of his own day and
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: states plainly that it stood empty, with nothing whatsoever in it.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: The rabbinic traditions preserved in the Talmud remember that the
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Ark was missing throughout the entire Second Temple period, and
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: that on the day of Atonement, the High priest now
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: entered a room where the ark should have been and
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: found only a bare foundation stone. When the Roman general
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: Pompey forced his way in two the Most Holy Place
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: in sixty three before Christ, an act of sacrilege that
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: scandalized the Jewish world, the thing that shocked him, according
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: to ancient accounts, was that he found the holiest room
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: of the Jews completely empty. There was no statue, no treasure,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: no ark. The throne of the God of Israel had
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: no occupant, and no chest. For the entire second half
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: of Biblical history, the Most Holy Place was a room
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: built around an absence. Strangest of all, the Bible itself
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: seems to have anticipated this, and even to have made
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: peace with it. Long before the Temple fell, the prophet
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: Jeremiah delivered an oracle that pointed past the ark to
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: a future where it would no longer matter. In Jeremiah
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: the three verse sixteen, in those days when your numbers
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: have increased greatly in the land, declares the Lord. People
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: will no longer say the Ark of the Covenant of
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: the Lord. It will never enter their minds or be remembered.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: It will not be missed, nor will another one be made.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: It will not be missed, nor will another one be made.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: This is an astonishing thing for a prophet to say
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: about the most sacred object in the nation. Jeremiah is
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: not promising that the Ark will be recovered. He is
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: announcing that it will become unnecessary, that a day is
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: coming when the people will not even think to ask
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: where it is, and no one will bother to build
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: a replacement. The presence of God, Jeremiah implies, was never
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: ultimately bound to a gold box. The Ark was always
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: pointing beyond itself. So the Ark of the Covenant exits
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: history not with a bang, but with a silence. Already
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: gone before the Babylonians came never replaced after the exile,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: leaving an empty room at the heart of Israel's worship
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: and an unanswered question at the heart of one of
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: the world's great mysteries. The Bible closes the case without
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: solving it. But human beings are not built to leave
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: a mystery like this alone, where did the most dangerous
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: object in the Bible actually go? Across the centuries, the
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: silence in the text would be filled by a flood
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: of theories, legends, and claimed sightings, from a cave on
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: a mountain east of the Jordan, to a chapel in
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: the highlands of Ethiopia to a chamber hidden beneath the
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: Temple mount itself. The search for the Ark would never end,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: and what people were really searching for in every one
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: of those legends turns out to be the deepest question
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: the Ark ever read. If the Bible will not say
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: where the Ark went, the human imagination has never stopped
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: trying to fill the gap. Three great theories have grown
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: up around the empty space the text left behind, and
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: each one is older than its sounds. They are not
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: modern inventions or movie plots. They reach back through medieval
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: chronicles and ancient Jewish writings to within a few centuries
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: of the Ark's disappearance, and each carries its own logic,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: its own evidence, and its own believers who hold to
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: it today. The first theory says the Ark never left
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: Jerusalem at all, that it lies hidden beneath the Temple
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: mount sealed in a chamber by priests who saw the
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: Babylonian catastrophe coming. This is the oldest Jewish tradition on
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: the question. The rabbinic sources preserved in the Mishnah and
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: later codified by by the medieval scholar Memonides, record a
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: belief that King Solomon, foreseeing that the temple would one
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: day be destroyed, had a deep and winding hiding place
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: constructed beneath it, and that the good King Josiah, in
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: his final years, ordered the ark concealed there to keep
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: it out of enemy hands. In this version, the ark
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: was never captured and never carried off, because it was
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: walled up in the rock under the Holy Mountain before
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: nebukud Netzer ever arrived, which would neatly explain why it
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: is missing from the Babylonian plunderlists. To this day. Some
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: believe the ark still rests in the tunnels and cisterns
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: beneath the Temple mount, inaccessible because the site is one
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: of the most religiously contested pieces of ground on Earth,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: where no excavation could ever take place without igniting conflict.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: The second theory sends the ark eastward out of the
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: city before it fell, carried by the prophet Jeremiah himself.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: This tradition is preserved in the book of Second Maccabees,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: written a few centuries before Christ, and it is remarkably specific.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: The text claims that Jeremiah, warned by a divine oracle,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: took the ark and the tent of meeting and the
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: altar of incense out of Jerusalem and hid them on
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: the mountain where Moses had once stood to look over
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: the promised land Mount Nebo, east of the Jordan. Second
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: Maccabees two, beginning at verse four, describes it the prophet,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: having received an oracle, ordered that the tent and the
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: ark should follow with him, and that he went out
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: to the mountain where Moses had gone up and had
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: seen the inheritance of God. Jeremiah came and found a cave,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: and he brought there the tent and the ark and
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: the altar of incense, and he sealed up the entrance.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: When some of his companions tried to come back later
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: and mark the path, they could not find it, and
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: Jeremiah's reaction turned the lost location into a promise verses
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: seven and eight, the place shall remain unknown until God
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. Then
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: the Lord and the Cloud will appear. In this tradition,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: the Ark is not lost, but deliberately hidden, waiting in
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: a sealed cave for a future appointed day. And notice
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: how closely that idea echoes the strange prophecy of Jeremiah.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: We heard earlier that the Ark would not be missed,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: that it had a purpose beyond simply being found. The
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: third theory is the most spectacular and the only one
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: with people still standing guard over their answers. According to
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: a tradition that reaches its fullest form in the medieval
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: Ethiopian national epic the Kebron Auguste The Glory of Kings,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: the Ark left Jerusalem not at the fall of the city,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: but centuries earlier, in the days of Solomon himself. The
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: story tells of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon, of
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: a son born from that meeting named Menelik, and of
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Menelik returning to Jerusalem as a young man, and then
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: departing for Ethiopia, with the Ark either taken or substituted,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: brought south to a new home in the highlands of Africa.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: To this day, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to possess
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: the actual ark of the Covenant, kept in a chapel
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: in the city of Axum, the Church of Our Lady
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: Mary of Zion. It is said to be watched over
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: by a single appointed monk, a guardian who never leaves
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: the grounds, and who alone may look upon it, a
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: man who serves until death and then names his successor.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: No scholar, no archaeologist, no outside witness has ever been
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: permitted to examine it. Every Ethiopian Orthodox Church keeps a
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: replica called a tabot, of that claimed original. Millions of
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: believers hold that the most dangerous object in the Bible
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: has been sitting quietly in a guarded chapel in northern
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: Ethiopia for nearly three thousand years. We cannot verify any
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: of the three. The chamber under the temple mount cannot
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: be excavated. The cave on Mount Nebo has never been found.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: The chapel in Axiom has never been opened to inspection.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: And it is worth sitting with the possibility that this
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: is not a failure of investigation, but the actual s
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: shape of the story. The arc was the object that
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: struck men dead for touching it, that broken idol overnight,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: that no human hand was ever permitted to lay hold of.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: It would be strangely fitting that the one object in
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: the Bible most fenced off from human handling is also
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: the one the historical record refuses to let anyone find.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: The Ark guarded its own mystery. In life, it may
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: be guarding it still, but there is a deeper answer
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: running underneath all three theories, and it is the one
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: the Bible itself seems to point toward. Recall Jeremiah's words,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: spoken before the temple even fell, that a day would
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: come when no one would say the Ark of the
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: Covenant anymore, when it would not be missed and no
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: replacement would be made. That is an extraordinary thing to
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: prophesy about the throne of God, and it only makes
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: sense if the Ark was always meant to be temporary.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: The New Testament Letter to the Hebrew's picks up exactly
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: this thread and gives it a name. The whole apparatus
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: of the Old Covenant, the Ark, the Temple, the high
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: priest entering the most holy place once a year with
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: blood was in the argument of Hebrews a shadow pointing
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: to something greater that had finally arrived in Hebrew's Chin
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: in verses eleven and twelve. But when Christ came as
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: high priest of the good things that are now already here,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: is not made with human hands, that is to say,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: is not a part of this creation. He did not
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: enter by means of the blood of goats and calves,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: but he entered the most holy place once for all
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. In this reading,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: the Ark disappeared because its job was finished. It was
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: the gold covered sign post to a meeting between God
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: and humanity, and when that meeting came in person, the
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: sign post was no longer needed. The empty room in
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: the Second Temple was not a tragedy. It was a
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: vacancy waiting to be explained. And the Bible's final word
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: on the Ark is not a hole in the ground
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: or a guarded chapel. It is a vision of the original.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: In the last book of Scripture, when the curtain between
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: Heaven and Earth is pulled fully back, John sees the thing.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: All the earthly copies were modeled on Revelation eleven, verse nineteen.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: Then God's temple in Heaven was opened, and within his
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: temple was seen the arc of his covenant. And there
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake,
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: and a severe hailstorm. The Ark appears one last time,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: not in Jerusalem, not on Mount Nebo, not in Axum,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: but in Heaven, surrounded by the same thunder and lightning
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: that had marked the presence of God on Sinai when
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: the first Ark was built. The gold box made by
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: Bezelel's hands was always a replica. The true arch, the
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: vision suggests, was never the one that could be captured
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: or hidden or lost. It was the heavenly reality the
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: desert craftsmen were told to copy. And it has been
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: there the whole time. So the most dangerous object in
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: the Bible ends as a question rather than an artifact.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: And perhaps that was always the point. For four hundred years,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: it blessed and it killed, It won battles, and it
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: was carried into captivity. It filled a temple with glory,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: and then quietly it taught a stubborn nation that holiness
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: is real, that the presence of God is not safe
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: to handle carelessly, and that nearness to Him is the
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: greatest privilege and the gravest responsibility a people can carry.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: And then, when the lesson was complete, it slipped out
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: of history and left an empty room and an open question.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: Where is it now? And what was it really? For?
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Treasure hunters still search for the gold, but the ark itself,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: in the end points past the gold, to the presence
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: it once carried, and to the deeper truth that the
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: God of Israel was never trapped inside a box at all.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: The box is gone, the question of how to stand
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: before a holy God remains, and that, far more than
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: any cave or chapel, is the thing the Ark of
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: the Covenant was built to make us face