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So now set to work and make a new cart. Then take two milk cows that have not borne the yoke; hitch them to the cart, but drive their calves indoors away from them.[a](A) You shall next take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart, putting the golden articles that you are offering as reparation for your guilt in a box beside it. Start it on its way, and let it go. Then watch! If it goes up to Beth-shemesh[b] along the route to the Lord’s territory, then it was the Lord who brought this great calamity upon us; if not, we will know that it was not the Lord’s hand, but a bad turn, that struck us.”

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Footnotes

  1. 6:7 But drive their calves indoors away from them: a test to confirm the source of the Philistines’ trouble. Left to their instincts, milk cows would remain near their calves rather than head for the road to Beth-shemesh.
  2. 6:9 Beth-shemesh: a border city (about twenty-four miles west of Jerusalem) between Philistine and Israelite territory.