The Philistines took the ark as a trophy. In that world, capturing an enemy's sacred object meant your god had beaten theirs, so they set the ark in the temple of Dagon, beside their own god. In the morning Dagon was face down on the ground before the ark. They set him back up. The next morning he was down again, and this time his head and both hands lay cut off on the threshold. 4"Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him." A statue could not stay standing in the same room as the thing it was supposed to have conquered.
Then came the plague. Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron were three of the five Philistine cities that later sent golden tumors as a guilt offering (6:17). It moved from Ashdod to Gath to Ekron, and each city panicked and tried to pass the ark along. What they had brought home as a trophy they could not get rid of fast enough. After seven months, the Philistine priests and diviners gave better counsel than Israel's elders had given in chapter four. Send it back with a guilt offering, they said, and 6:6"harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts." Pagan priests were quoting Israel's exodus back to Israel's God.
The test they devised was simple. Two milk cows, just separated from their calves, were hitched to a cart with no driver. Everything in the animals pulled toward home. Yet 12"the cows went straight in the direction of Beth-shemesh," lowing as they went. If that happened, the Philistines had reasoned, then the God of Israel was the one who had struck them. Nature was overruled in full view of the watching lords. No one, Philistine or Israelite, could call what happened at Ashdod a coincidence.
Israel received the ark home with joy and sacrifices. Then some of the men of Beth-shemesh looked into the ark, and the LORD struck them down. The people ask, 6:20"Who is able to stand before the LORD, this holy God?" It is the question Ashdod should have asked seven months earlier. Even covenant nearness to this God is never something to presume on.
The passage ends with a first step toward an answer. The men of Kiriath-jearim take the ark and consecrate Eleazar to guard it (7:1), a reverence finally matched to what the ark is.
Scripture answers the question by raising up someone who can stand there. Hebrews says believers have "confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus" (Hebrews 10:19), and it calls the Son "the radiance of the glory of God" (Hebrews 1:3). Dagon could not stand before the ark for one night. Christ stood before the holy God without ever falling, and we come near on the strength of his standing.
Ask whether you have grown careless about the one who is holy. Reverence and nearness are meant to go together, and the gospel gives us both.
Prayer
Father, you are holy, and we forget what it costs to approach you carelessly. Thank you that you have not left us to answer "who is able to stand" alone. Thank you for Christ, who stood where we could not and brings us near. Teach us the reverence of those who know what it cost to bring us close. In Jesus' name, amen.