Study Desk

"Now then, take and ^(C1)prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there ^(C2)has never been a yoke; and hitch the cows to the cart and take their calves back home, away from them.

"Then take the ark of the LORD and place it on the cart; and put ^(C1)the articles of gold which you return to Him as ^(C2)a guilt offering in a saddlebag by its side. Then send it away that it may go.

"But watch: if it goes up by the way of its own territory to ^(C1)Beth-shemesh, then He has done this great evil to us. But if not, then ^(C2)we will know that it was not His hand that struck us; it happened to us by chance."

Then the men did so: they took two milk cows and hitched them to the cart, and shut in their calves at home.

And they put the ark of the LORD on the cart, and the saddlebag with the gold mice and the likenesses of their tumors.

Now the cows went straight in the ^(F1)direction of ^(C1)Beth-shemesh; they went on ^(C2)the same road, bellowing as they went, and did not turn off to the right or to the left. And the governors of the Philistines followed them to the border of Beth-shemesh.