The Trespass Offering

The Philistines, who had seized God’s ark of the covenant and were drunk with a great sense of victory, now came to suffer because of that ark. God had gone into Philistia and was working there by himself, and they could not bear his power. So they began to think hard about how to send the ark back to Israel. For a human being to take on God is unthinkable, and no one can wage war against God. Because God is the one who created the world, no human being can win against him under any circumstances.

It looks as though the Philistines have now defeated Israel and taken God’s ark, but the victory of Philistines who despise God is already a defeat in itself. The Philistines, who belonged to the world, did not know this. They took Israel’s failure for God’s failure, mocked God, and made light of even God himself, until judgment came upon them. Israel, which had shut the great God up inside small human thinking and tried to use him however it wanted, and the Philistines, who were drunk on their victory over Israel and despised God, are alike nothing but objects of judgment.

Today believers and the world are committing the same sin as they did. Believers are failing to cast greed out of their hearts; they try to use God for their own benefit in the same way the world uses its idols, and they end up sitting in the seat of judgment instead. Looking at Israel, which lost the ark of the covenant to the Philistines, and at the Philistines, who set the holy ark before the idol of Dagon and still were not afraid, we must now be able to judge wisely which path we will choose. God recorded this event in Scripture out of a heart of love, hoping that as we look at their lives we will not commit the same sin they did. If we saw the failure of our forefathers and still made the same choice they made, we would have no excuse before God, and we would not be forgiven.

Only after God struck down the idol of Dagon and sent disaster in the form of severe tumors did fear finally rise in the Philistines, and they moved the ark of the covenant to Gath. When the people of Gath suffered in turn, they moved the ark this time to Ekron. Think of Goliath, who was born in Gath, and you can guess how physically outstanding the people there were, and you can tell that it was a place of advanced civilization. But in God’s eyes the people of Gath are nothing more than people of the world who are ignorant of the Word. If you are in God, you have nothing to worry about, even when you meet those who are powerful in the world. For they are people who have already been judged by God. Only when you know that God calls his children from above the world, beyond it, will you finally stop fearing the world.

When the people of Ekron heard that people in the other regions had suffered from tumors, they thought that God’s ark coming to them was itself death. So they would have done everything they could to keep God’s ark from entering their camp. They had rejoiced while the ark was a trophy of victory, but now that it had become something fearful that brought disaster, they wanted to get rid of it. Only seven months had passed since Yahweh’s ark entered the Philistine camp, and already it had become a headache.

In verse 2 of the text, when the ark that had been their trophy of victory brought a curse, the Philistines tried to take it far away and throw it out where there were no people. They were afraid to keep the ark of the covenant where people were. In the same way, believers who expected God to bless them often close their hearts when their wishes are not fulfilled quickly. That is because people usually think with themselves as the standard and pursue whatever benefits them. But drawing near to God when good things happen to you and keeping away from him when hardship comes, as the Philistines did, is itself evil. Serving God regardless of how life in the world is going is what a born-again believer looks like, and what a spiritually mature believer looks like.

The priests and diviners who served Dagon began to think hard about how they could send God’s ark, now a headache, safely back to Israel. They look very much like the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes who thought hard about how to kill Jesus. Those leaders expected that Jesus, who came as the Messiah, would come like David, as a king with worldly power, and make their lives prosperous. But when the way Jesus went did not meet their expectations, they did everything they could to kill him by the measure of the world. Like the Jewish leaders who tried to kill Jesus, the Philistines, now that God’s ark stood in the way of their life in the world, are working hard to get rid of it.

The priests who served Dagon and the Jewish leaders who thought hard about how to kill Jesus were like whitened tombs. Just as a tomb looks clean on the outside but has no life inside, they had neither the wisdom to judge rightly nor the ability to discern spiritually. Because they were in such darkness, they did not realize that God’s ark was God himself; they did not realize that Jesus was God himself, and they hung him on a cross and killed him.

You must judge and decide rightly within the Word and keep filling your life with the fragrance of faith. If you look at the problems of the world not from a human standpoint but always from God’s side, you can easily find the answer, even to hard problems. It is because people are spiritually blind that they can throw the holy ark of God out into a field, and that they can lay a cross on Jesus the Messiah and mock him.

Verse 3 of the text shows the priests and diviners conferring and agreeing that the ark must not be sent away empty, and that a trespass offering must be given by way of compensation. The idea is that, just as someone who has infringed on another person’s rights pays damages to match, damages must be paid to God as well. But if the one paying is not offering a sincere apology but has come up with a scheme to avoid a greater loss, the payment means little. When compensation is made with a heart that truly repents of the wrong, the one receiving it would instead come to feel grateful, and the relationship can be born anew as a good one. The Philistines, though, had killed God’s people and taken the ark of the covenant, and now they came up with the trespass offering as a way to avoid a greater disaster from God.

For the trespass offering they made five tumors and five golden mice, for the number of the lords of the Philistines. It is said that the ancient Gentiles had a custom, when they asked the gods they served for something or gave thanks, of offering an image of what they meant. Those who wanted to be healed of a disease gave the god an image of that disease made of gold or silver; freed slaves gave their shackles to the temple; and victorious gladiators gave their swords to the god. Because they now make the offering in the shape of mice, we can take what was tormenting them to be plague spread by mice.

The trespass offering God commanded Israel always had to be a sacrifice of blood. When someone had committed a sin that harmed holy things or a person, they offered a trespass offering to God to be forgiven that sin. Before sacrificing to God, the one who had sinned first had to give the injured party, besides compensation for the damaged goods, a further amount equal to one fifth as damages. After that they could offer a sacrifice to God and be forgiven their sin.

The Philistines came up with this trespass offering to soothe the heart of an angry God. Look at verse 6 of the text. They remember that the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts and received greater disasters, and they agree to send the ark of the covenant away before a greater disaster comes upon themselves. If they knew that the Egyptians had hardened their hearts against God and received great disasters, they should not have looked only at the disasters and kept away from God; they should have submitted to the power of God, who sent those disasters. The point is this: rather than looking only at what appears on the surface and devising shallow tricks to escape, we must acknowledge that the one who sent the disaster is God, and worship him.

The trespass offering they thought up shows that, rather than any fear of having sinned against God, they had no thought at all beyond sending the ark and gifts to soothe God’s anger. So the trespass offering God commanded in order to forgive Israel’s sins and this trespass offering the Philistines are now giving are fundamentally different. What you need to know is that worship, prayer and service offered for your own needs are entirely different from the worship, prayer and devotion God commanded.

Having gone through the suffering of seeing the idol of Dagon toppled, the five lords struck with tumors, and many lives lost because of the mice, they should have realized how great the God who did these works is, and turned back. But to put on a false show of faith only to solve the problem at hand, as the Philistines did, is sin in itself. Those who look only at the problem right in front of them will inevitably meet another problem, and another disaster. So even if a person like that offers a trespass offering every time disaster comes, the offering is a mere formality, and they will only keep repeating the same routine: meeting disaster again, offering a trespass offering again.

We must not sacrifice to God only when disaster comes, or rush to send the ark far away to escape disaster. We must kneel fully before the great God who strikes Dagon, the god the world worships, repent of our sins, and turn back. Look at people who fail to see the power of God judging the very god they serve, and who send the ark far away. They show us that those who do not know the Word cannot, in the end, become children of God.

Look at verse 7 of the text. The Philistines made a new cart and tied it to two milk cows on which no yoke had come. The calves that had been born to them were forcibly taken from their mothers and sent home. A cow nursing a young calf will never want to leave its side. The Philistines used this heart of the mother cow to test God. If the cows left their calves and went to Beth Shemesh, then all the disasters that had come upon them were indeed from God; but if the cows, following their instinct, could not leave their calves, the Philistines would consider that the plague had happened by chance. They could do something so cruel because of the foolish thought that they would judge, by their own standards and ideas, whether the disaster had come from God or had happened by chance. Only foolish human beings who do not believe in God could act this way. Instead of kneeling before the work of God, the Philistines were entrusting their fate to a mere cow, to decide whether this was God’s work or chance.

When misfortune or calamity strikes, human beings have a heart that hopes it is not God’s judgment but something that happened by chance. This is no different at all from spitting in your palm, slapping it, and deciding on your own that if the spit flies to the left it is God’s disaster and if it flies to the right it is chance. The Philistines clearly knew from the start that every disaster had come from God. Even so, to the very end they could not let go of the hope that it was chance.

Believers, too, probably know well that they are being rebuked because they have not offered their lives by faith as whole worship. Yet they often go looking for excuses: “because of so-and-so,” “because the circumstances are bad,” “because the economy is hard.” Faith like this is no different at all from the foolishness of the Philistines, who entrusted their fate to an animal. Even now the people of the world hope for chance and commit the folly of entrusting their lives to a cow, a mere animal. But believers must not entrust their lives to foolish human judgment, because they are wise children who believe in God.

Proverbs 16:9

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

Scripture says that however clean a person may consider all their own ways, God is the one who weighs the motives. When someone has a false heart, they can deceive people, but no one can ever deceive God, because he examines even the depths of the heart. I hope you will be upright and honest before God. God rebukes his children when they sin, but he is also the God of love, who covers with grace those who honestly confess their sins and leads them on a path where they need not be ashamed.

However hard the Philistines tried outwardly to ward off disaster by borrowing the form of a trespass offering, God was not deceived, because he examines their hearts. For God is the one who judges and acts on his own. If the Philistines had submitted to God, even if only out of fear of the disaster of his judgment, he would have forgiven them and given them grace too. Only those who lay their sin bare before God can receive God’s grace and experience his work of turning human weakness into strength. The Philistines, who met the almighty God and still did not receive grace, and the Israelites, who were chosen by God and still failed because they did not offer whole faith, are all the same sinners before God. That sin finally drove them into death, and because of sin they did not gain the rest of eternal life.

Faith is the vessel that holds eternal life. The Word is the way of salvation, connected to the blessings to be received and enjoyed in heaven. So may you always confess your sins and so 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.