1 Samuel, Chapter 6 - Holy Fear | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] >> Shalom friends. Welcome back to the Prophets of Israel daily. This is the first book of Samuel chapter 6 brought to you by the Land of Israel Network at the landofisrael.com. Shalom Jeremy, good to see you. >> Good to be here. I love the fact that we're going through the book of Samuel. It's just the heart in so many ways of the entire Tanakh. I just love it. >> Yeah, I've been looking forward to it and I know I'm going to miss it. So, I'm just trying to be present within it. Um totally, I agree with you. And now we're 7 months in. Uh not into the Prophets of Israel daily, but 7 months into the greatest disaster in the history of the Tabernacle, of the Mishkan, the Ark of Hashem, the very seat of the divine presence was captured on the battlefield by the Philistines. 30,000 soldiers of Israel fell that day. Hophni and Phinehas, the corrupt sons of Eli the high priest, dead. And Eli himself, hearing the news, falls backwards off his chair and dies. And Phinehas' his wife, in labor at the very moment, she names the child Ichabod Ichabod, the glory has departed. And that was the end of chapter 4. And then chapter 5 showed us what happened next, that the Philistines immediately discovered that winning the Ark was not winning anything at all. Dagon, their god, fell on his face before the Ark twice. And the plague of the hemorrhoids, devastatingly painful, embarrassing, swept from city to city wherever the Philistines brought it. Ashdod, Gath, Ekron, everywhere the Ark went, God went with it. Um and and now, at the opening of chapter 6, the Philistines have had enough. Verse 1. Vayihi Aron Hashem bisdei Plishtim shiv'a chadashim, and the Ark of Hashem was in the field of the Philistines 7 months. 7 months, not a week, not a battle or two, 7 months of devastation. 7 months of Hashem making absolutely clear from inside Philistine territory who he is. Not from Jerusalem, not from a Jewish city, but from within the enemies camp itself, from their holiest places within Dagon's very sanctuary. Right? There's something extraordinary happening here that I think it's important that we don't miss this. The ark is not in exile. The ark is on a mission. >> You know, Ari, that's such an important reframe for the whole chapter. I mean, we read it as the ark was captured, but now it's becoming clear that the ark went where Hashem wanted it to go. And while it was there, it reflects the divine will. It exposed everything false within its path. Dagon falls, cities break out in plagues, the Philistines, they can't handle it. It's not that God was weakened by being in Philistine territory. It's like on the contrary, the ark went into the belly of the beast, to the temple of Dagon, and publicly destroyed their false god, and destroyed their whole civilization, hemorrhoid by hemorrhoid. >> Hemorrhoid by hemorrhoid. I really like the way you said that. You know, it exposed every false thing in its path. That's right. And And now the Philistines call their priests and their diviners, their wisest religious authorities, and ask, "What do we do with this thing?" And the priests give a fascinating answer, verse three. Al tishlichuha rekam. Do not send it back empty. You must return it to him a guilt offering, an asham, an offering of acknowledgement. Then you will be healed. An asham, a guilt offering. The Philistines know enough to know that when the God of Israel strikes, you don't just return what you took. You acknowledge. You bring an offering. You confess the wrong. Now, friends, let that just like sink in for a moment. Jeremy, think about this. The Philistines The Philistines are doing a form of chuva, of return, of repentance. They don't call it that. They don't have that sort of framework. I imagine those words didn't really exist in their world of paganism and idolatry and child sacrifice. But what they're actually describing, acknowledging guilt, making a concrete offering, restoring what was taken, that's the architecture of chuva, of repentance. And and and they arrived at it through 7 months of suffering. And the offering they bring is specific. Verse 4. Zahav vehamisha ah baraze zahav, five golden hemorrhoids or tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines. Right? Five lords, five cities, five golden representations of the very plague that struck them. They're not hiding it. They're naming it. They're memorializing it in gold and sending it back with the ark as a permanent acknowledgement of what happened. >> You know, Ari, the word here for tumor hemorrhoids in Hebrew is ofalim tchorim. And the physical mark of their suffering, that's what they're sending. The Philistines, they were making a statement. When they send back the ark, they're declaring, "We understand that this suffering was from God, not from our own weakness and not from chance." Casting your own wound in gold and sending it away as an offering, it's saying, "We accept this. We acknowledge this. This came from somewhere beyond us and it is like a chuva." They're recognizing the power of the God of Israel. And that's at least the way that I understand the golden hemorrhoid tumors that are being sent back. >> Yeah, I think that's what it was. You know, and now comes the test that will determine everything. The priests tell the Philistines exactly what to do. Verse seven. Vata kruva sagala chadash. Now take and make a new cart and take two nursing cows upon which a yoke has never come. Two nursing cows. Cows that have never been yoked, no training whatsoever. And critically, nursing cows. Cows that have calves because every natural instinct a mother animal has is to stay near her young. You separate a nursing cow from her calf and she will not go away calmly. She will be torn, distracted. She will turn back. She will try desperately to find her baby. The priests are essentially designing a type of test that nature should uh should test. If these untrained cows, pulled in every direction by their maternal instinct, still go straight, then we know it wasn't luck, it wasn't disease, it was him. And then, verse 12. And the cows went straight on the road toward Beth Shemesh. Along one highway they walked, going and lowing. And they turned neither to the right nor to the left. Yashar. All right, straight along the highway. Lowing the whole time. Moo, moo. The whole time crying. It was more than just a moo. It was a cry. They were crying for their calves and yet not turning. Not once. Just going, crying and continuing. Jeremy, I don't know if you are a visual thinker, but just like visualize that. These are not mystical creatures. These are ordinary cows, ordinary mothers separated from their ordinary calves, carrying something that they've never carried before on a road they've never walked. And they do not turn right nor left. They go straight, crying as they go toward the place they were never trained to find. >> You know, it really is such a powerful image going and lowing. Holech vego'eh. And there's, you know, there's so much in those two words together. The sages comment on that phrase and they're going and crying simultaneously. Like, well, they go while they cry. Their grief is real. Their longing is real. And yet, they're still going. Something beyond them is compelling them to walk. It means they're acting in total contradiction to their instincts. A mother cow would never leave her calf to go down the road. She's even expressing, she's crying, she doesn't want to do it. And they're going down a road they've never gone before, led by no one. They were distressed mothers crying for their young. And they didn't turn aside and they didn't turn around. And that's why the Philistines understood it wasn't random or chance. The God of Israel was guiding the ark home. >> That's right. You know, along with the Philistine lords, they follow the cart to the border of Beit Shemesh. They need to see with their own eyes and they do. The cart arrives in the field of Yehoshua, the Beit Shemeshite. We should call our friends from Beit Shemesh Beit Shemeshites. You know, a great stone is there. The Levites come down and take the ark off the cart and they use the wood of the cart itself, the very cart the Philistines built, and they offer the two cows as a burnt offering to Hashem. The instrument of exile becomes the fuel of the offering. The thing built to carry the ark home is consumed in gratitude for its return. And the Philistine lords see it all and they turn and go back to Ekron that very day. But now, and this is where the chapter sort of turns, something happens that we must really look at with sober and honest eyes. Verse 19. Vayach b'Anshei Beit Shemesh. And he struck among the men of Beit Shemesh, for they looked into the ark of Hashem. 70 men dead. The same ark that broke the Philistines because they tried to possess it as a trophy, now breaks the men of Beit Shemesh because they looked inside it with a with a casual familiarity. Do you see what the text is teaching us here, right? Holiness is not geographic. It's not Philistine danger versus Jewish safety. The ark doesn't belong to anyone in a possessive sense. It belongs to Hashem. And approaching it, whether you're a Philistine lord trying to harness its power or an Israelite villager curious to peer inside, without the proper reverence, without recognizing what you are standing before, it carries the same consequence. The Philistines suffered because they tried to live alongside the ark as if it were a captured idol. The men of Beit Shemesh suffered because they treated the ark's return as just a a neighborhood event, an over-familiarity, just a curiosity. Neither understood. You do not approach the holiness of the God of Israel casually. >> You know, and there's something about that that really speaks directly to us. I mean, we live in an era when the miraculous has become commonplace. Just the last few years, so many miracles, I can't even keep track of the miracles that we've experienced in Israel. And in the big picture, the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. Something our ancestors prayed for and died for across 2,000 years of exile. It's now something that we merit to live in the land of Israel. When we look out our window, we see it before our very eyes. And if you're still in the exile, okay, it's a 9-hour flight to come here and see it. The mountains of Judea, Yerushalayim, the growing communities, it's all here. And the danger of our generation is exactly the danger of the men of Beit Shemesh. It's not that we like reject it, it's that we approach it too casually. We just take it for granted. We forget that we're standing in the presence of something miraculous, and we take the miracles for granted and just lose the wonder in all of it all. >> Yeah, you really need to keep that alive in your heart. It's a It's a human thing, you know, and the chapter closes with the people of Beth Shemesh asking one of the most piercing questions in the world, right? Verse 20. Mi yuchal la'amod lifnei Hashem Elohim HaKadosh hazeh? Who is able to stand before Hashem, this holy God? Who can stand? Mi yuchal la'amod lifnei Hashem? I don't I don't think that was a rhetorical question, and I don't think it was asked out of terror or despair. The truth is, I'm not even sure it was a question at all. And maybe it was just a statement. You know, as we read in Proverbs, it was a statement that's the beginning of wisdom, chapter 9 in Proverbs. The beginning of wisdom is fear of God. The men of Beth Shemesh have just learned what the Philistines learned before them, that the God of Israel is not a manageable force, not a symbol you put in a shrine, not a cultural artifact you look into out of curiosity. He is the holy the holy God. He's the living God of Israel. He's isn't just a true God, he is the one true God, and standing before him requires everything. And because they now understand they're not ready, they send messengers to Kiryat Yearim. Come, right? Come, take him take him up to you. The ark will rest there in Kiryat Yearim for 20 years until a young shepherd king named David will rise to bring it home to Jerusalem. But that's where this chapter leaves us with a question still in the air. Mi Mi la'amod? Who can stand? Who can stand? And the answer the entire book of Samuel will spend its pages working out is only the one who approaches in reverence, in truth, in teshuvah. Right? Return to who we're meant to be. That's what teshuvah is. Not the one who is most powerful, not the one who's most religiously entitled, not the one who's the most observant, the one who knows at every moment before whom they are standing. Whose whose life is a reflection of the truth that King David says in Psalms chapter 24. Mi ya'aleh v'har Hashem u'mi yakum bimkom kodsho? Neki kapayim u'var levav. Who will ascend the mountain of Hashem? Who may stand in his holy place? Only with clean hands and a pure heart. Friends, as we watch the unfolding of geulah, of redemption in our own days, as the ark of history moves through places no one expected, striking down things that tried to contain it, returning to a land through paths no natural force could explain, the question the men of Beit Shemesh asked is still ours to answer and ours to ask. Not is God here, not is this real, but are we standing before Hashem with the right posture? With trembling and awe and love and genuine gratitude. Because the God who guided those crying cows down a straight road against every natural instinct straight home is still guiding, still moving, still returning what was taken, and he is asking of us only one thing. Don't look inside with casual eyes. Stand before this with everything you have. And my friends, I'll say Prophets of Israel Daily is one piece of something much bigger we're building from the heartland of Israel, from the hills of Judea. Come on over and visit us at the landofisrael.com and find the membership tier that fits where you are. And know that becoming a member is what keeps the Prophets of Israel daily going, [music] what keeps us going, strengthens us and holy and will hopefully be a great blessing to you. Hazak u'baruch, my friends. Be strong and courageous. And b'ezrat Hashem, God willing, we will see you tomorrow for chapter 7.