1 Samuel 6:7–14

⁷“Now therefore, take and ^aprepare a new cart and two milch cows on which there ^bhas never been a yoke; and hitch the cows to the cart and take their calves home, away from them.

⁸“Take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart; and put ^athe articles of gold which you return to Him as ^ba guilt offering in a box by its side. Then send it away that it may go.

⁹“Watch, if it goes up by the way of its own territory to ^aBeth-shemesh, then He has done us this great evil. But if not, then ^bwe will know that it was not His hand that struck us; it happened to us by chance.”

¹⁰Then the men did so, and took two milch cows and hitched them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home.

¹¹They put the ark of the Lord on the cart, and the box with the golden mice and the likenesses of their tumors.

¹²And the cows took the straight way in the ¹direction of ^aBeth-shemesh; they went along ^bthe highway, lowing as they went, and did not turn aside to the right or to the left. And the lords of the Philistines followed them to the border of Beth-shemesh.

¹³Now the people of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and they raised their eyes and saw the ark and were glad to see it.

¹⁴The cart came into the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite and stood there where there was a large stone; and they split the wood of the cart and ^aoffered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord.