The Superstitious Box-Checkers Text: 1 Samuel 6:1-9
Introduction: When God Is a Hot Potato
We live in an age of sophisticated pagans. Our modern unbelievers do not bow down to statues of Dagon, but they are just as superstitious as any Philistine priest. They may not consult diviners with ephods, but they read their horoscopes, trust their therapeutic gurus, and put their faith in the ever-shifting orthodoxies of secularism. They believe in luck, in chance, in karma, and in the power of positive thinking. But the one thing they cannot abide is the absolute, untamable sovereignty of the living God.
The story before us is a masterful depiction of what happens when a pagan worldview collides with the raw reality of Yahweh. For seven months, the Philistines have been playing a game of divine hot potato with the Ark of the Covenant. They captured it in battle, thinking they had captured Israel's God, treating Him like a tribal talisman. But they quickly discovered that you do not capture the God who spoke the universe into existence. He is not a mascot to be paraded in a victory tour. The Ark in Philistia was like a live grenade in a nursery. Tumors, death, and panic followed it from city to city. Their god, Dagon, was found twice prostrate before it, the second time with his head and hands cut off on his own threshold. God was systematically dismantling their entire religious framework from the inside out.
So now, in our text, the Philistine leadership is in a panic. Their pragmatism has failed. Their military might is useless against an invisible plague. They are beaten, and they know it. But their problem is that they are still pagans. They think like pagans. And so, they come up with a pagan solution. They approach the problem with the mindset of a superstitious mechanic trying to figure out which wire to jiggle to make the divine engine stop sputtering. What follows is a masterclass in the folly of unbelief, as they try to manage, test, and ultimately control the God who cannot be managed, tested, or controlled.
This is not just an ancient story. This is the story of every attempt by man to deal with God on his own terms. It is the story of every effort to reduce the sovereign Lord to a manageable principle, a predictable force, or a sentimental deity who can be appeased with the right formula. The Philistines are about to learn, and we are about to be reminded, that you either bow to God as Lord or you get run over by Him. There is no third way.
The Text
Now the ark of Yahweh had been in the fields of the Philistines seven months. And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, "What shall we do with the ark of Yahweh? Make us know how we shall send it to its place." So they said, "If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty; but you shall surely return to Him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why His hand is not turned away from you." Then they said, "What shall be the guilt offering which we shall return to Him?" And they said, "Five golden tumors and five golden mice according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for one plague was on all of you and on your lords. So you shall make likenesses of your tumors and likenesses of your mice that bring the land to ruin, and you shall give glory to the God of Israel; perhaps He will ease His hand from you, your gods, and your land. Why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When He had abused them, did they not allow the people to go, and they went? So now, take and make a new cart and two milch cows on which there has never been a yoke; and hitch the cows to the cart and take their calves home, away from them. And take the ark of Yahweh and place it on the cart; and put the articles of gold which you return to Him as a guilt offering in a box by its side. Then send it away that it may go. See, if it goes up by the way of its own territory to Beth-shemesh, then He has done us this great evil. But if not, then we will know that it was not His hand that smote us; it happened to us by chance."
(1 Samuel 6:1-9 LSB)
Pagan Pragmatism in a Panic (vv. 1-3)
The scene opens after seven long months of divine judgment. The Philistines have had enough.
"Now the ark of Yahweh had been in the fields of the Philistines seven months. And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, 'What shall we do with the ark of Yahweh? Make us know how we shall send it to its place.'" (1 Samuel 6:1-2)
Their question is entirely practical: "What shall we do?" This is the cry of every pagan religion. Religion, for the unbeliever, is a technology. It is a system for managing the gods, for getting what you want, for averting disaster. They don't ask, "Who is Yahweh?" They don't ask, "How can we be forgiven?" They ask for a procedure. "Make us know how we shall send it to its place." They want a divine shipping manifest.
They call for their religious experts, the priests and the diviners. These are the men who supposedly understand the supernatural mechanics of the cosmos. And their advice reveals the core of all pagan thought.
"So they said, 'If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty; but you shall surely return to Him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why His hand is not turned away from you.'" (1 Samuel 6:3)
Notice the transactional nature of their counsel. They understand, through a sort of common grace intuition, that an offense has been committed and restitution is required. The concept of a "guilt offering" was not unique to Israel. Many ancient cultures understood that when you trespass against a deity, you must pay damages. But their understanding is entirely superficial. For them, the guilt offering is a cosmic bribe. It is a payment to make the problem go away. They think God's wrath can be bought off. They are not concerned with holiness, repentance, or submission. They are concerned with results: "Then you will be healed." It is a quid pro quo. We give God His trinkets, and He turns off the plague machine.
The Idolatry of Appeasement (vv. 4-6)
The lords of the Philistines then ask for the specifics of the payment, and the answer is pure, unadulterated sympathetic magic.
"Then they said, 'What shall be the guilt offering which we shall return to Him?' And they said, 'Five golden tumors and five golden mice according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for one plague was on all of you and on your lords. So you shall make likenesses of your tumors and likenesses of your mice that bring the land to ruin, and you shall give glory to the God of Israel; perhaps He will ease His hand from you, your gods, and your land.'" (1 Samuel 6:4-5)
This is how paganism works. You create an image of the problem to appease the god who sent it. They were afflicted with tumors, likely bubonic plague, which we know is spread by rats or mice. So they make golden models of the tumors and the mice. This is not repentance; it is religious voodoo. It is an attempt to manipulate the spiritual world through physical representation. This is the very heart of the Second Commandment, which forbids graven images. God is not to be represented, managed, or manipulated by things we make with our hands.
And yet, we do the same thing. We may not make golden tumors, but we create our own idols of appeasement. We think we can bargain with God. "God, if you get me out of this financial mess, I'll start tithing." "God, if you heal my relative, I'll be a better person." We treat God like a cosmic vending machine, and our good works or pious promises are the currency. But God does not trade. He commands.
The diviners say this act will "give glory to the God of Israel." But this is not true glory. This is the glory a defeated enemy gives to a conqueror out of sheer terror. It is an acknowledgment of raw power, not of righteous character. And it is tentative: "perhaps He will ease His hand." They are still not sure. Their gods are capricious and unpredictable, and they assume Yahweh is the same. They cannot conceive of a God who operates according to a holy, unchanging character and who desires true repentance from the heart, not golden replicas of a plague.
Their most insightful moment comes next, when they reference a history lesson they learned the hard way.
"Why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When He had abused them, did they not allow the people to go, and they went?" (1 Samuel 6:6)
Here we see the fear of God working on the nations. The story of the Exodus was the great object lesson for the ancient world. Yahweh was known as the God who had dismantled the most powerful empire on earth with ten plagues. The Philistines, in their pagan wisdom, recognize the pattern. They see that hardening your heart against this God is suicidal. It is a shrewd political and theological calculation. Resisting Yahweh is bad for your health. But notice, this is still the logic of self-preservation, not worship. It is the reasoning of a man who drops his weapon not because he loves the king, but because the king has a sword at his throat.
The Impossible Test (vv. 7-9)
Having decided on the payment, they now devise a test. And this is where their worldview is laid completely bare. They are trying to determine if their suffering has been the result of the direct, personal intervention of Yahweh, or if it was all just a string of bad luck.
"So now, take and make a new cart and two milch cows on which there has never been a yoke; and hitch the cows to the cart and take their calves home, away from them... See, if it goes up by the way of its own territory to Beth-shemesh, then He has done us this great evil. But if not, then we will know that it was not His hand that smote us; it happened to us by chance." (1 Samuel 6:7, 9)
The conditions of this test are designed to be scientifically rigorous. They stack the deck against a "natural" success as high as they possibly can. First, a new cart, one that has no ruts or habits of its own. Second, two milch cows, who have just calved. Every ounce of maternal instinct in those animals would be screaming at them to return to their hungry calves. Third, these cows have never been yoked. They are untrained for this kind of work. They should be wild, uncooperative, and pulling in opposite directions.
The Philistines are setting up a binary choice. Either the God of Israel is so sovereign that He can override the most powerful instincts He himself created, or this whole affair is just "chance." The Hebrew word for chance here is miqreh. It means an accident, a coincidence, something that just happens. This is the fundamental divide between a Christian worldview and a secular one. We believe in providence; they believe in miqreh. We believe that every molecule in the universe is governed by the meticulous, sovereign plan of God; they believe that the universe is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
They want to put God in a laboratory. They want to run an experiment on the Almighty. They are the first biblical empiricists. "If X, then God. If not X, then chance." But God is not a variable to be tested. He is the one who created the very laws of nature that they are trying to use against Him. He is the one who wrote the software for maternal instinct. He is not subject to the test; He is the one running it.
The God Who Is Not Tamed
This entire episode is a glorious display of God's absolute sovereignty over the foolishness of men. The Philistines, in their terror, are trying to find a way to get rid of God, to put Him back in His geographical and theological box. They treat the Ark like it is radioactive, and they just want it off their hands.
But in their very attempt to test God, they are forced to acknowledge His power. Their elaborate scheme is an unwitting confession that only a supernatural intervention could make their plan work. They are trying to find a loophole, a way to write off their suffering as bad luck, but their own test makes that impossible.
This points us directly to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Ark of the Covenant was the place where God's presence dwelt symbolically among His people. It was holy and unapproachable. And when it fell into the hands of God's enemies, it brought nothing but judgment. In the same way, Jesus Christ is the true dwelling place of God. He is Immanuel, God with us. To those who receive Him in faith, His presence brings life, healing, and salvation. But to those who reject Him, who treat Him as a mere historical figure or a moral teacher to be managed, His presence brings judgment.
The Philistines tried to appease God with a guilt offering of golden tumors. It was a pathetic, superstitious attempt to pay for their sin. But the only guilt offering God accepts is the one He provided Himself. Jesus Christ is our guilt offering (Isaiah 53:10). He took upon Himself the full plague of our sin, the true tumor of our rebellion, and He paid for it completely on the cross. We cannot appease God with our own pathetic golden idols, whether they are made of metal or of our own good intentions. We must come empty-handed to the cross, confessing that our only hope is in the perfect sacrifice He has made for us.
The Philistines wanted to know if it was God or chance. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is God's definitive answer to that question. It is the ultimate sign, the ultimate proof that God is sovereign over life and death, over sin and judgment. It is the event that leaves no room for miqreh. You cannot chalk up the empty tomb to coincidence. You either bow to the risen Lord in faith, or you harden your heart like Pharaoh and the Philistines and face the consequences. The Ark is on the move. God will not be managed, He will not be bargained with, and He will not be ignored. He will be worshipped.