1 Samuel 6:6-18

6Why then do you harden your hearts 1as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When He had severely dealt with them, 2did they not let 3the people go, and they left? 7Now then, take and 4prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there 5has never been a yoke; and hitch the cows to the cart and take their calves back home, away from them. 8Then take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart; and put 6the articles of gold which you return to Him as 7a guilt offering in a saddlebag by its side. Then send it away that it may go. 9But watch: if it goes up by the way of its own territory to 8Beth-shemesh, then He has done this great evil to us. But if not, then 9we will know that it was not His hand that struck us; it happened to us by chance.”

10Then the men did so: they took two milk cows and hitched them to the cart, and shut in their calves at home. 11And they put the ark of the Lord on the cart, and the saddlebag with the gold mice and the likenesses of their tumors. 12Now the cows went straight in the 10direction of 11Beth-shemesh; they went on 12the same road, bellowing as they went, and did not turn off to the right or to the left. And the governors of the Philistines followed them to the border of Beth-shemesh.

13Now the people of Beth-shemesh were gathering in their wheat harvest in the valley, and they raised their eyes and saw the ark, and rejoiced at seeing it. 14And the cart came into the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite and stopped there where there was a large stone; and they split the wood of the cart and 13offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. 15And 14the Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the saddlebag that was with it, in which were the articles of gold, and put them on the large stone; and the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices that day to the Lord. 16When the 15five governors of the Philistines saw it, they returned to Ekron that day.

17Now 16these are the gold tumors which the Philistines returned as a guilt offering to the Lord: one for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, and one for Ekron; 18and the gold mice, corresponding to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five governors, 17both of fortified cities and of country villages. 18The large 19stone on which they placed the ark of the Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite.