Anonymous · 600 BCE · overland

1 Samuel 4 to 6 and 2 Samuel 6. The strangest journey in the Bible, because the traveller is an object. Carried into battle as a talisman and captured, the Ark spends seven months being passed between Philistine cities that all want rid of it, and then comes home on a cart pulled by two cows nobody is driving.

1. 1
   Shiloh

   The Ark has stood in the sanctuary at Shiloh for generations. The elders send for it to turn a losing battle, which is a category error - and it is captured, Eli's sons are killed, and the old priest falls off his chair and dies.

2. 2
   Ebenezer

   The battlefield where thirty thousand men are lost and the Ark taken - and the news reaches Shiloh by a runner with his clothes torn, in one of the flattest and most devastating passages in the book.

3. 3
   Ashdod

   Set up in the temple of Dagon as a trophy. Twice the statue is found face down before it, the second time with its head and hands broken off on the threshold - and then the tumours start among the people.

4. 4
   Gath

   The lords of the Philistines pass it on to Gath, and the same thing happens there - and the phrase the text keeps using is that the hand of the Lord was heavy on the city, which by now everybody has noticed.

5. 5
   Ekron

   Ekron sees it arriving and shouts that they have brought it here to kill us - and the Philistines hold a conference of priests and diviners about how to send the thing back without being blamed for it.

6. 6
   Beth-Shemesh

   They put it on a new cart with golden tumours and mice as a guilt offering, yoke two milk cows that have never pulled anything, take their calves away and let them go - and the cows walk straight to Israel, lowing.

7. 7
   Kiriath-Jearim

   After men of Beth-Shemesh look into it and die, it is moved to a house on a hill and left there twenty years - simply too dangerous to have and impossible to get rid of, which is the whole tone of the episode.

8. 8
   Jerusalem

   David finally brings it up, after a first attempt in which Uzzah steadies it and dies - and the second time it comes in with sacrifices every six paces and the king dancing in front of it in a linen ephod.