How this substitute for Jahweh’s own presence is to be understood comes out unmistakably in two very ancient verses preserved in Nu 10% (prob, J). There we pane ‘When the ark [which, according to v.%3, went before the people to search a a cainping-place for them] set forward, Moses said—
Rise up, Jahweh, and let thine enemies be scattered ; And let thine adversaries flee before thee !
And when it rested, he said—
Return, Jahweh, to the myriads of the thousands of Israel !’
* The usual translation ‘ Ark of the Covenant’ fails to recog- nize that bérith here cannot mean ‘covenant,’ but only the Law on which the covenant was based. Instead of bérith the Priests’ Code’ uses ‘edith ‘testimony’ in the same sense (Ex 2516f and often).
Jahweh and the Ark, that is to say, appear here as practically identical. Not as though this wooden chest represented Jahweh. But His presence appeared inseparably connected with the Ark; wherever it was seen there Jahweh was, and showed Himself active. This notion has frequent and ex-
ress testimony borne to it down to the time of Solomon. In Nu 14” Israel’s defeat by the Amalekites is explained by the absence of the Ark. According to 18 3° the youthful Samuel slept in the temple of Jahweh at Shiloh where the Ark of God was, and this is used to account for the revela- tion given him by Jahweh at night. When the sons of Eli bring the Ark of Jahweh to the camp, ‘that it may come among us and save us out of the hands of our enemies’ (1 § 4%), the Philistines —quite in the spirit of the Hebrew narrator— exclaim, ‘God is come into their camp . . . Who will deliver us out of the hand of this mighty God ?’ ete. (v.7+). With the Ark the ‘glory,’ ze. the presence of Jahweh, is departed from Israel (v.22). And, even when the Ark is captured, the Dagon of the Philistines falls upon his face before Jahweh the more powerful God present in it, and tumbles down as if dead when he is set up in his place again (1 8 54). The Ark of Jahweh brings pestilence upon the other cities of the Philistines (v.°%-) Nay, even the Israelites of Beth-shemesh look with fatal results upon the Ark when it is sent back by the Philistines (6%), so that the survivors exclaim, ‘Who is able to stand before Jahweh, this exalted God?’ And when David went to bring up to Jerusalem ‘the ark of God which is called by the name of Jahweh of hosts’ (28 61%), we read that he and all the house of Israel danced ‘ before Jahweh’ (v.°, cf. also vv. 16 21), but that Uzzah was struck dead on the spot by Jahweh for having, with the best of intentions, laid hold of the swaying Ark to steady it (v.°).
It need hardly be remarked that all the above statements would be meaningless if the Ark had been simply the receptacle of the tables of the Law, and not a symbol and pledge of the presence of Jahweh. With all the more force does the question urge itself upon us, What can account for so high a place being assigned to the Ark? Un- fortunately, we are here again thrown back upon mere conjectures. The most probable explanation, however, appears to be that the Ark of Israel, like the sacred arks of other religions,* contained stones—in point of fact, one or more meteoric stones (BaTrvAca) ; but it can hardly be supposed to have had in it a stone image of the Deity.+ But,
* Cf. Schwally, Semit. Kriegsalterttimer, i. p. 9 ff.
t From the copious recent literature on the Ark we select the following as deserving of special notice: F. Seyring, ‘Der alttest. Sprachgebrauch in betreff des Namens der sogen. “Bundeslade”’ (ZAU'W xi. [1891] 114ff.); L. Couard, ‘Die religiés - nationale Bedeutung der Lade Jahwes (ib. xii. [1892] 53 ff.). According to the latter, the Ark contained stone fetishes in which Jahweh was believed to be present, whence the Ark and its contents were in the earliest times identified with Jahweh Himself. Kraetzschmar, again (Die Bundesvorstellung im AT, Marburg, 1896, p. 208ff.), thinks that the Ark most likely contained the stones used in forming the alliance of the Rachel-tribes ; while Budde (‘ Bucher Sam.’ [in Kurzer Hdcom.] p. 31) makes these stones to have been taken from Sinai as a re- presentation of this abode of Jahweh. W. Reichel (Ueber vor- hellenische Gétterculte, Vienna, 1897, p. 23 ff.) explains the Ark as a portable throne of Jahweh—a view opposed by Budde (Hapository Times, ix. [1898] 898f.) but strongly reaffirmed by Meinhold (Die Lade Jahwehs, Tiibingen and Leipzig, 1900; cf. also the ‘Nachtrag’ to this in SK, 1901, p. 593 ff.). Meinhold holds that the Ark was originally the moving rocky throne of the god enthroned on Sinai, and that the charge of this one pre-Canaanite common sanctuary of the Hebrews became hereditary in the family of Moses. The view of Meinhold ap- pears to be favoured by the circumstance that once (Jer sit) the whole of Jerusalem takes the place of the Ark as the throne of Jahweh ; while even the Priests’ Code appears (e.g. in Nu 789) to look upon the lid of the Ark as Jahweh’s seat, from which He reveals Himself to Moses. But all this does not refute the argument reasserted by Budde (74 7'W, 1901, p. 193 ff.), that the Heb. word ’47dn means nothing but a bow or chest, and that