1 Samuel 6–8

The Return of the Covenant Box

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

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

⁴“What gift shall we send him?” the people asked. They answered, “Five gold models of tumours and five gold mice, one of each for each Philistine king. The same plague was sent on all of you and on the five kings. ⁵You must make these models of the tumours and of the mice that are ravaging your country, and you must give honour to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will stop punishing you, your gods, and your land. ⁶Why should you be stubborn, as the king of Egypt and the Egyptians were? Don’t forget how God made fools of them until they let the Israelites leave Egypt. ⁷So prepare a new wagon and two cows that have never been yoked; hitch them to the wagon and drive their calves back to the barn. ⁸Take the Lord’s Covenant Box, put it on the wagon, and place in a box beside it the gold models that you are sending to him as a gift to pay for your sins. Start the wagon on its way and let it go by itself. ⁹Then watch it go; if it goes towards the town of Beth Shemesh, this means that it is the God of the Israelites who has sent this terrible disaster on us. But if it doesn’t, then we will know that he did not send the plague; it was only a matter of chance.”

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

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

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

¹⁹The Lord killed 70 of the men of Beth Shemesh because they looked inside the Covenant Box. And the people mourned because the Lord had caused such a great slaughter among them.

The Covenant Box at Kiriath Jearim

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

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

Samuel Rules Israel

²The Covenant Box of the Lord stayed in Kiriath Jearim a long time, some twenty years. During this time all the Israelites cried to the Lord for help.

³Samuel said to the people of Israel, “If you are going to turn to the Lord with all your hearts, you must get rid of all the foreign gods and the images of the goddess Astarte. Dedicate yourselves completely to the Lord and worship only him, and he will rescue you from the power of the Philistines.” ⁴So the Israelites got rid of their idols of Baal and Astarte, and worshipped only the Lord.

⁵Then Samuel sent for all the Israelites to meet at Mizpah, saying, “I will pray to the Lord for you there.” ⁶So they all gathered at Mizpah. They drew some water and poured it out as an offering to the Lord and fasted that whole day. They said, “We have sinned against the Lord.” (It was at Mizpah that Samuel settled disputes among the Israelites.)

⁷When the Philistines heard that the Israelites had gathered at Mizpah, the five Philistine kings started out with their men to attack them. The Israelites heard about it and were afraid, ⁸and said to Samuel, “Keep praying to the Lord our God to save us from the Philistines.” ⁹Samuel killed a young lamb and burnt it whole as a sacrifice to the Lord. Then he prayed to the Lord to help Israel, and the Lord answered his prayer. ¹⁰While Samuel was offering the sacrifice, the Philistines moved forward to attack; but just then the Lord thundered from heaven against them. They became completely confused and fled in panic. ¹¹The Israelites marched out from Mizpah and pursued the Philistines almost as far as Bethcar, killing them along the way.

¹²Then Samuel took a stone, set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and said, “The Lord has helped us all the way”—and he named it “Stone of Help”. ¹³So the Philistines were defeated, and the Lord prevented them from invading Israel’s territory as long as Samuel lived. ¹⁴All the cities which the Philistines had captured between Ekron and Gath were returned to Israel, and so Israel got back all its territory. And there was peace also between the Israelites and the Canaanites.

¹⁵Samuel ruled Israel as long as he lived. ¹⁶Every year he would go round to Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah, and in these places he would settle disputes. ¹⁷Then he would go back to his home in Ramah, where also he would serve as judge. In Ramah he built an altar to the Lord.

The People Ask for a King

8When Samuel grew old, he made his sons judges in Israel. ²The elder son was named Joel and the younger one Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba. ³But they did not follow their father’s example; they were interested only in making money, so they accepted bribes and did not decide cases honestly.

⁴Then all the leaders of Israel met together, went to Samuel in Ramah, ^5*and said to him, “Look, you are getting old and your sons don’t follow your example. So then, appoint a king to rule over us, so that we will have a king, as other countries have.” ⁶Samuel was displeased with their request for a king; so he prayed to the Lord, ⁷and the Lord said, “Listen to everything the people say to you. You are not the one they have rejected; I am the one they have rejected as their king. ⁸Ever since I brought them out of Egypt, they have turned away from me and worshipped other gods; and now they are doing to you what they have always done to me. ⁹So then, listen to them, but give them strict warnings and explain how their kings will treat them.”

¹⁰Samuel told the people who were asking him for a king everything that the Lord had said to him. ¹¹“This is how your king will treat you,” Samuel explained. “He will make soldiers of your sons; some of them will serve in his war chariots, others in his cavalry, and others will run before his chariots. ¹²He will make some of them officers in charge of a thousand men, and others in charge of fifty men. Your sons will have to plough his fields, harvest his crops, and make his weapons and the equipment for his chariots. ¹³Your daughters will have to make perfumes for him and work as his cooks and his bakers. ¹⁴He will take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his officials. ¹⁵He will take a tenth of your corn and of your grapes for his court officers and other officials. ¹⁶He will take your servants and your best cattle^q and donkeys, and make them work for him. ¹⁷He will take a tenth of your flocks. And you yourselves will become his slaves. ¹⁸When that time comes, you will complain bitterly because of your king, whom you yourselves chose, but the Lord will not listen to your complaints.”

¹⁹The people paid no attention to Samuel, but said “No! We want a king, ²⁰so that we will be like other nations, with our own king to rule us and to lead us out to war and to fight our battles.” ²¹Samuel listened to everything they said and then went and told the Lord. ²²The Lord answered, “Do what they want and give them a king.” Then Samuel told all the men of Israel to go back home.