In just 12 verses, there were 8 times the author mentioned about the "ark."
(1) Even though Israel was defeated by the Philistines, God's power was not under the power of Dagon v.1-4. The initial assessment of the Philistines in the battlefield were correct.
4:7b They said, “Too bad for us! We’ve never seen anything like this! 4:8 Too bad for us! Who can deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all sorts of plagues in the desert!
However, they lost that fear when they overcame Israel in the battle and they just put the ark into the temple of Dagon and beside Dagon. It was as if God was just one of their idols.
5:2 The Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the temple of Dagon, where they positioned it beside Dagon.
Reflections: Do we lose the proper fear to our God with our success? Once you can handle most of the problems by yourself and you become too big and God become too small?
(2) In the rest of the occurrences of the word, "ark," almost all of them related to the attack of God to the people where the ark was. In the last city, Ekron, the people knew ahead of time that disaster would come to them.
v.10b But when the ark of God arrived at Ekron, the residents of Ekron cried out saying, “They have brought the ark of the God of Israel here to kill our people!”
The same thing happened before,
Lev 16:1 The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of Aaron’s two sons when they approached the presence of the LORD and died, 16:2 and the LORD said to Moses: “Tell Aaron your brother that he must not enter at any time into the holy place inside the veil-canopy in front of the atonement plate that is on the ark so that he may not die, for I will appear in the cloud over the atonement plate.
This time, not only the 2 sons of Eli died, but the Philistine people who lived in the city where the ark was.
Reflections: The punishment of violations reflected the holiness of God. No one can treat God without the proper respect. Or else, we die. How do we treat our devotion time? Our prayer time? Our worship time on Sunday?
Audrey
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