1 Samuel 6 Test Explained

seekeroftruth

Well-Known Member
1 Samuel 6:7 “Now then, get a new cart ready, with two cows that have calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up. 8 Take the ark of the Lord and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way, 9 but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth Shemesh, then the Lord has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us but that it happened to us by chance.”​

This interesting tidbit is from the blueletterbible.org site.

The test was simple, and stacked against God. By nature, two milk cows which have never been yoked should not pull a cart at all, but they should have resisted their yokes. Additionally, they decided to take their calves home, away from them. The "maternal instinct" of the cows would have drawn them not towards the land of Israel, but back home to their own calves. The Philistines devised a test that "forced" the God of Israel to do something miraculous to demonstrate He had really been the cause of the plagues upon them.

"Such untamed heifers are wanton, and apt to wander, and keep no certain and constant paths, as oxen accustomed to the yoke do, and therefore were most unlikely to keep the direct road to Israel's land." (Poole)​

This is from Bible.org.

The cows are yoked to the cart and their calves locked up apart from their mothers. The Ark and the “guilt offering” are placed in the cart, and the cows are released. They head straight for the road leading to Beth Shemesh in Israel, lowing as they go, not turning aside to the left or to the right. The Philistine lords follow from a distance, until they observe the cart and its cargo coming to a halt in Israelite territory.

Good Job

Holy Cows

:coffee:
 
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