The Trespass Offering

Having seized the ark of God, the Philistines had been drunk with a sense of triumph; now that same ark was bringing them grief. God had gone into Philistia and was at work there by his own hand, and they could not withstand his power. So they began to puzzle over how to send the ark back to Israel. It is unthinkable for human beings to set themselves against God, and no one can wage war on him. Man can never prevail against him, whatever the circumstances, since God is the one who created the world.

It looks for the moment as if the Philistines have beaten Israel and carried off the ark of God, but a victory won by those who despise God is already a defeat in itself. Belonging as they did to the world, the Philistines could not see this. They took Israel’s failure for God’s failure, mocked him, and made light even of God, until judgment fell on them. Israel had tried to confine the great God within its own small thoughts and use him however it wished; the Philistines, intoxicated by their victory over Israel, had despised him. Both alike stand under judgment, and nothing more.

The church and the world today commit the very same sin as these two. Believers cannot rid their hearts of greed; they try to use God for their own gain just as the world uses its idols, and they end up in the seat of judgment instead. As we look at Israel, who lost the ark of the covenant to the Philistines, and at the Philistines, who set the holy ark before the statue of Dagon and felt no fear, we must be able to decide wisely which road we will take. God recorded this event in Scripture out of love: he longs for us to look at their lives and not commit the same sin. If we see how those who went before us failed and still make the same choice, we will have no excuse before God, and we will not be forgiven.

Only when God toppled the statue of Dagon and struck them with a plague of painful tumors did fear finally take hold of the Philistines, and they moved the ark to Gath. When the people of Gath suffered in their turn, the ark was moved again, this time to Ekron. Goliath was born in Gath. Think of him, and you can guess how physically formidable its people were and see that it was a place of advanced civilization. But in God’s sight the men of Gath were nothing more than worldly people, ignorant of his word. If you are in God, you have nothing to fear even when you face the powerful of this world, because God has already judged them. When God calls his children, he calls them from a place far above the world. Only when we understand this will we stop being afraid of it.

The people of Ekron had heard how others had suffered from the tumors, and they believed that the very arrival of God’s ark among them meant death. So they would have done all they could to keep it out of their camp. While the ark was a trophy of victory they had rejoiced over it; now that it had become a thing of dread that brought disaster, they wanted to be rid of it. Only seven months had passed since Yahweh’s ark entered Philistine territory, and already it had become a burden they could not bear.

In verse 2, now that the ark, once their prize, had brought a curse on them, the Philistines wanted to carry it far off and cast it away where no one lived. They were afraid to keep it anywhere near people. In the same way, believers who expected God to bless them often close their hearts when their wishes are not quickly granted. The reason is that most people take themselves as the measure of everything and pursue whatever serves their own interest. But to draw near to God when things go well and pull away from him when trouble comes, as the Philistines did, is in itself evil. To serve God whatever happens to us in this life: that is the mark of one who has been born again, the mark of spiritual maturity.

The priests and diviners who served Dagon began to consider how they might send the troublesome ark of God safely back to Israel. They look remarkably like the chief priests, elders, and scribes who plotted how to kill Jesus. Those leaders had expected the Messiah to come like David, a king with earthly power, and to make their lives prosperous. When Jesus’ course did not answer their hopes, they measured him by the world’s yardstick and did everything they could to put him to death. Like the Jewish leaders who sought Jesus’ death, the Philistines now strain to be rid of the ark of God because it stands in the way of their worldly life.

The priests of Dagon and the Jewish leaders who schemed to kill Jesus were like whitewashed tombs. Clean on the outside but lifeless within, they had neither the wisdom to weigh things rightly nor the power to discern spiritually. Because they sat in such darkness, they did not realize that the ark of God was God himself; nor did they realize that Jesus was God, and so they hung him on a cross and killed him.

We must weigh and decide rightly within the word, filling our lives with the fragrance of faith. If we look at the problems of life from God’s side rather than from a human standpoint, even hard questions find their answers easily. Spiritual blindness is what makes it possible to abandon the holy ark of God in an open field, and to lay a cross on Jesus the Messiah and mock him.

Verse 3 shows the priests and diviners conferring: the ark must not simply be sent back, they said, but a trespass offering had to go with it, by way of compensation. Their thinking was that, just as someone who infringes on another’s rights pays damages to match, they owed God damages too. But if the one paying is not truly sorry and is only scheming to avoid a greater loss, the payment means little. When restitution is made out of genuine sorrow for the wrong, the one who receives it will come away grateful, and the relationship can be reborn as a good one. The Philistines, however, had killed God’s people and seized the ark, and now they hit on a trespass offering merely as a way to escape still greater disaster from God.

For the trespass offering they made five golden tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines. It is said that the pagans of the ancient world had a custom: when they asked their god for something or wished to show their thanks, they gave the matter a visible form and offered that. Someone who wanted to be healed of a disease would offer an image of it in gold or silver; a freed slave would dedicate his shackles at the temple; a victorious gladiator would present his sword to the god. That they were shaping their offering like mice suggests that the affliction they were suffering was the plague that mice carry.

The trespass offering God commanded Israel always required the shedding of blood. When someone sinned by doing harm to holy things or to another person, they brought God a trespass offering to have that sin forgiven. Before offering the sacrifice, the offender first had to repay the injured party for the damaged goods and, on top of that, give a fifth of their value as compensation. Only then could they bring their offering to God and be forgiven.

The Philistines came up with this trespass offering to soothe God’s anger. In verse 6 they remember how the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts and suffered still greater plagues, and they agree to send the ark away before worse befalls them. If they knew that the Egyptians had hardened their hearts against God and been struck down for it, then rather than keeping God at a distance because of the calamity, they should have bowed before the might of the God who sent it. Instead of looking only at what lay on the surface and devising shallow tricks to escape it, they should have acknowledged that it was God who brought the disaster, and worshiped him.

Their idea of a trespass offering shows that, rather than fearing that they had sinned against God, they had no thought beyond calming his wrath by sending back the ark with gifts. The trespass offering God commanded for the forgiveness of Israel’s sins and the one the Philistines now present are therefore different at the root. What we must understand is this: worship, prayer, and service offered for our own needs are something entirely different from the worship, prayer, and devotion God has commanded.

Dagon’s statue had been toppled, the five lords struck with tumors, and many lives lost because of the mice. Having gone through such suffering, the Philistines should have realized how great the God was who did these things, and turned back to him. To put on a show of faith merely to deal with the trouble at hand, as the Philistines did, is a sin in itself. Whoever looks only at the problem before their eyes will inevitably meet another problem, and then another calamity. So people like that will offer a trespass offering every time disaster strikes, but because the offering is a mere formality, they only meet disaster again and offer another, round and round, day after day.

Instead of sacrificing to God only when disaster strikes and hurrying to send the ark far away to escape it, we must kneel wholeheartedly before the great God who strikes down Dagon, the god the world worships, and we must repent of our sins and turn back. These people failed to see God’s power at work judging the very god they served, and they sent the ark away. Their story makes it plain that those who do not know the word cannot, in the end, become children of God.

Verse 7 tells how the Philistines built a new cart and hitched to it two milk cows that had never borne a yoke. The calves were taken from their mothers by force and sent back home. A cow nursing a young calf will never willingly leave its side. The Philistines exploited this mother’s instinct to put God to the test. If the cows abandoned their calves and went to Beth Shemesh, then every disaster they had suffered had indeed come from God; but if the cows followed their instinct and could not leave the calves, they would put the plague down to chance. They could do something so cruel because of a foolish notion: that by their own standards and reasoning they could settle whether the disaster had come from God or had simply happened. Only foolish people who do not believe in God could behave like this. Unable to kneel before God’s work, the Philistines instead staked their fate on a mere cow to decide whether it was God’s doing or chance.

When misfortune or catastrophe strikes, something in us hopes that it is not God’s judgment but mere chance. That is no different from spitting into your palm, slapping it, and deciding for yourself that if the spittle flies left it is a plague from God and if it flies right it is chance. The Philistines clearly knew from the beginning that every disaster had come from God. Still, to the very end they could not give up hoping it was chance.

We ourselves are probably well aware that we stand under rebuke because we have not offered God the whole worship of a life lived by faith. But we often go looking for excuses: “It’s because of so-and-so,” “Things aren’t going well,” “The economy is hard.” Faith like this is no different from the folly of the Philistines, who left their fate to a beast. The people of the world still foolishly hand their lives over to a cow, hoping for chance. But we are God’s wise children who believe in him, and so we must not commit our lives to foolish human reckoning.

Proverbs 16:9

9A man’s heart plans his course, but Yahweh directs his steps.

The Bible says that however clean people may consider all their own ways to be, God is the one who weighs the heart. When our hearts are false, we can deceive other people, but we can never deceive God, because he searches the hidden depths of the heart. I hope you will be honest and open before God. God rebukes his children when they sin, but he is also the God of love who wraps in grace those who honestly confess their sins and leads them along a path where they need not be ashamed.

However hard the Philistines tried to ward off disaster by borrowing the outward form of a trespass offering, God was not deceived, because he searched their hearts. For God decides and acts on his own. Had the Philistines bowed before him, even if only out of fear of his judgment, he would have forgiven them, and he would have shown them grace as well. Only those who lay their sins bare before God can receive his grace and know for themselves the work by which he turns human weakness into strength. The Philistines met the almighty God and still did not receive grace; the Israelites were chosen by God and still failed, because they did not offer him a whole faith. Before God, both are sinners alike. That sin drove them at last into death, and because of it they never entered the rest of eternal life.

Faith is the vessel that holds eternal life. The word is the way of salvation, and it leads to the blessings we will receive and enjoy in heaven. So may you always confess your sins and never stray from faith. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Commit Your Way to Yahweh

1 Samuel 6:10-7:2

10The men did so, and took two milk cows, and tied them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home. 11They put Yahweh’s ark on the cart, and the coffer with the golden mice and the images of their tumors. 12The cows took the straight way by the way to Beth Shemesh. They went along the highway, lowing as they went, and didn’t turn away to the right hand or to the left; and the lords of the Philistines went after them to the border of Beth Shemesh. 13The people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley; and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see it. 14The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh, and stood there, where there was a great stone. Then they split the wood of the cart, and offered up the cows for a burnt offering to Yahweh. 15The Levites took down Yahweh’s ark, and the coffer that was with it, in which the jewels of gold were, and put them on the great stone; and the men of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices the same day to Yahweh. 16When the five lords of the Philistines had seen it, they returned to Ekron the same day. 17These are the golden tumors which the Philistines returned for a trespass offering to Yahweh: for Ashdod one, for Gaza one, for Ashkelon one, for Gath one, for Ekron one; 18and the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both of fortified cities and of country villages, even to the great stone, on which they set down Yahweh’s ark. That stone remains to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh. 19He struck of the men of Beth Shemesh, because they had looked into Yahweh’s ark, he struck fifty thousand seventy of the men. Then the people mourned, because Yahweh had struck the people with a great slaughter. 20The men of Beth Shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before Yahweh, this holy God? To whom shall he go up from us?” 21They sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath Jearim, saying, “The Philistines have brought back Yahweh’s ark. Come down, and bring it up to yourselves.” 1The men of Kiriath Jearim came, and took Yahweh’s ark, and brought it into Abinadab’s house on the hill, and consecrated Eleazar his son to keep Yahweh’s ark. 2From the day that the ark stayed in Kiriath Jearim, the time was long; for it was twenty years; and all the house of Israel lamented after Yahweh.