Ethan: Welcome to Immerse: the daily bible reading experience.
Day 100 and 86
the Ark of the Lord remained in Philistine territory.
Seven months in all.
Then the Philistines called in their priests and diviners and asked them, what
should we do about the ark of the Lord?
Tell us how to return it to its own country.
Send the Ark of the God of Israel back with a gift.
They were told.
Send a guilt offering so the plague will stop.
Then if you are healed, you will know it was his hand that caused the plague.
What sort of guilt offering should we send?
They asked and they were told.
Since the plague has struck both you and your five rulers make five gold tumors and
five gold rats, just like those that have ravaged your land, make these things to
show honor to the God of Israel, perhaps.
Then he will stop afflicting you, your gods and your land.
Don't be stubborn and rebellious as Pharaoh and the Egyptians were.
By the time God was finished with them, they were eager to let Israel go.
Now build a new cart and find two cows that have just given birth to calves.
Make sure the cows have never been yoked to a cart.
Hitch the cows to the cart, but shut their calves away from them in a pen.
Put the arc of the Lord on the cart and beside it, place a chest containing
the gold rats and gold tumors you are sending as a guilt offering.
Then let the cows go wherever they want.
If they cross the border of our land and go to Beth Shems, we will
know it was the Lord who brought this great disaster upon us.
If they don't, we will know.
It was not his hand that caused the plague.
It came simply by chance.
So these instructions were carried out.
Two cows were hitched to the cart, and their newborn
calves were shut up in a pen.
Then the arc of the Lord and the chest containing the gold rats and gold
tumors were placed on the cart, and sure enough, without veering off in
other directions, the cows went straight along the road toward Beth Shem lowing.
As they went, the Philistine rulers followed them as far
as the border of Beth Shemesh.
The people of Beth Shemesh were harvesting wheat in the valley, and when
they saw the ark, they were overjoyed.
The cart came into the field of a man named Joshua and
stopped beside a large rock.
So the people broke up the wood of the cart for a fire and killed
the cows and sacrificed them to the Lord as a burnt offering.
Several men of the tribe of Levi lifted the arc of the Lord and
the chest containing the gold rats and gold tumors from the cart and
placed them on the large rock.
Many sacrifices and burnt offerings were offered to the Lord that
day by the people of Beth Shamus.
The five Philistine rulers watched all this and then
returned to Akron that same day.
The five gold tumors sent by the Philistines as a guilt
offering to the Lord were gifts from the rulers of Ash stud.
Gaza, Ashlan, Gath, and Akron.
The five gold rats represented the five Philistine towns and their
surrounding villages, which were controlled by the five rulers.
The large rock at Beth Shamus, where they set the Ark of the Lord still
stands in the field of Joshua as a witness to what happened there.
But the Lord killed 70 men from Beth Shamus because they
looked into the ark of the Lord.
The people mourned greatly because of what the Lord had done, who is able
to stand in the presence of the Lord.
This holy God, they cried out, where can we send the ark from here?
So they sent messengers to the people at Ky Jiram and told them the Philistines
have returned the ark of the Lord.
Come here and get it.
So the men of Curth, JIRAM came to get the ark of the Lord.
They took it to the hillside home of Abada and ordered Eliezer,
his son to be in charge of it.
The ark remained in Kieth GM for a long time, 20 years in.
All during that time, all Israel mourned because it seemed
the Lord had abandoned them.
Then Samuel said to all the people of Israel, if you want to return to
the Lord with all your hearts, get rid of your foreign gods and your
images of eth, turn your hearts to the Lord and obey him alone.
Then he will rescue you from the Philistines.
So the Israelites got rid of their images of Baal and eth
and worshiped only the Lord.
Then Samuel told them, gather all of Israel to mpa and I
will pray to the Lord for you.
So they gathered at MPA and in a great ceremony, drew water from a well
and poured it out before the Lord.
They also went without food all day and confessed that they
had sinned against the Lord.
It was at MSPA that Samuel became Israel's judge.
When the Philistine rulers heard that Israel had gathered at mpa, they
mobilized their army and advanced.
The Israelites were badly frightened when they learned that the
Philistines were approaching Don't stop pleading with the Lord our God,
to save us from the Philistines.
They begged Samuel.
So Samuel took a young lamb and offered it to the Lord as a whole burnt offering.
He pleaded with the Lord to help Israel and the Lord answered him.
Just as Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines
arrived to attack Israel.
But the Lord spoke with a mighty voice of thunder from heaven that
day, and the Philistines were thrown into such confusion that
the Israelites defeated them.
The men of Israel chased them from SBA to a place below Beth Carr,
slaughtering them all along the way.
Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of SBA and Ana.
He named it Ebenezer, which means the stone of help.
For, he said, up to this point, the Lord has helped us, so the
Philistines were subdued and didn't invade Israel again for some time.
And throughout Samuel's lifetime, the Lord's Powerful hand was
raised against the Philistines.
The Israelite villages near Akron and Gaff that the Philistines had captured
were restored to Israel along with the rest of the territory that the
Philistines had taken, and there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.
In those days.
Samuel continued as Israel's judge for the rest of his life.
Each year he traveled around setting up his court, first at Bethel,
then at Gilgel, and then at mspa.
He judged the people of Israel at each of these places.
Then he would return to his home at Rama and he would hear cases there too.
And Samuel built an altar to the Lord at Rama.
This concludes today's immerse reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.