1 Samuel 6:7-15

7Now then, take and 1prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there 2has 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 3the articles of gold which you return to Him as 4a 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 5Beth-shemesh, then He has done this great evil to us. But if not, then 6we 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 7direction of 8Beth-shemesh; they went on 9the 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 10offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. 15And 11the 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.