1 Samuel 6:7–14

⁷“Now then, prepare one new cart and two milk cows that have never been yoked.^x Hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up. ⁸Take the ark of the Lord, place it on the cart, and put the gold objects that you’re sending him as a guilt offering in a box^y beside the ark.^z Send it off and let it go its way. ⁹Then watch: If it goes up the road to its homeland toward Beth-shemesh,^aa it is the Lord who has made this terrible trouble for us. However, if it doesn’t, we will know that it was not his hand that punished^ab us—it was just something that happened to us by chance.”

¹⁰The men did this: They took two milk cows, hitched them to the cart, and confined their calves in the pen. ¹¹Then they put the ark of the Lord on the cart, along with the box containing the gold mice and the images of their tumors. ¹²The cows went straight up the road to Beth-shemesh.^ac They stayed on that one highway,^ad lowing as they went; they never strayed to the right or to the left. The Philistine rulers were walking behind them to the territory of Beth-shemesh.

¹³The people of Beth-shemesh were harvesting wheat in the valley, and when they looked up and saw the ark, they were overjoyed to see it. ¹⁴The cart came to the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh and stopped there near a large rock. The people of the city chopped up the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord.^a