40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 6:13-7:6 (Episode 230)

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

The Ark is returned to Israel, but a mistake is made that costs many lives. The Ark is moved to another town without any warnings. 20 years pass and Samuel addresses a familiar problem within Israel. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Livestream Signup 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there click on that here we still stand banner so you can sign up for the free online conference here we still stand is going out all over the world via the internet this year so make sure that you're one of those who are in attendance it's costing you nothing all you gotta do is sign up and then we'll send you some information at the appropriate time so you can

join us chad will be there and i'll be there we won't be able to see you but we'll know if you're there we want you to be there hey chad we're going to be doing uh oh the the conference starts um that friday october 16th the whole thing starts with a live recording of 40 minutes in the old testament you and i will be there together we're kicking things off we're kicking it off on that friday morning live on the internet recording this so we're gonna have to not be in our pajamas and that kind of stuff we have to be looking like regular people and uh we're going to do that thing live. And guys, I'm not going to tell you what it is. Well, no, I won't tell you. Maybe I'll tell you. Maybe leading up to it, I'll tell you. But we've got a good one

planned. We've got one that's been a long time coming planned this year. So you want to join us for that. If you've been a long time listener of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, you need to sign up and make sure you're there on Friday morning. Because if you've been a long time listener you'll know well you'll know when we get started what it is anyway uh make sure you go and sign up for that thing chad how's it going man it's good it's good we're uh my wife and i are gearing up to uh travel you know remember when people used to travel like fly places yeah i remember places i remember places those are cool yeah so we're actually going to be in uh at camp parkadia in on lake michigan this next week so looking forward to that it'll be good we're gonna

i'll be uh doing a little speaking a little teaching but most of the day just gonna kind of hang out relax which will be nice so we'll be there this next week i guess uh probably a couple days after this episode drops we'll be flying that way so trying to get everything else done so i can relax for a few days yeah yeah it's getting a little busier man it was a it was pretty chill uh spring and summer but picking up a little bit uh as as things are a little more relaxed daughter's going back to school uh on monday so she's excited about that we'll see we'll see how long that lasts uh hopefully it lasts for a while who knows what's gonna happen with that but she's real excited i think my and jess's uh entertainment abilities have

had ran dry quite some time ago yeah just not that not that mom and dad aren't so much fun anymore not when you spend that much time she's like five months around no one but you guys that's a little much so yeah i need a break no i don't blame her she's we're fine with it uh we like having her around i think she's just uh she's uh ready to be around some people her own age well speaking Speaking of people being excited, the arc is coming back to the people. Yeah, it is. Yeah, we're just about at the end of this arc narrative. A few more people have to die.

So, yeah, not quite done. It's got to be a few more deaths. So we're going to finish up Chapter 6 today, and then we'll get into Chapter 7 and see how far we get along in that. but yeah we've uh so we've been talking about this story the ark since uh beginning of chapter four the israelites took the ark out to battle things did not go well they got defeated ark got exodus we had taken went on this little exodus and uh while i was there god decided he would show the philistines who the true god was so first he took out their god dagon and then he inflict afflicted the people with all sorts of uh bodily problems we talked about that and the

philistines finally wised up and they're like you know what we need to learn our lesson from the egyptians the egyptians suffered all sorts of plagues when they didn't let the israelites go so we don't need to be like that we need to let the israelites go so they actually let that israelite ark go they sent it back home that's where we left off last time they got a couple of cows that had never been yoked, and they yoked them, and they put these cattle in front of a cart, and on that cart, they put not only the ark, but some sacrifices, some guilt sacrifices, guilt offerings to atone for their sins, I suppose is the way they were thinking about this. And then they separated the cows from the calves and let God kind of do his thing. And sure enough,

rather than the cows going back to the calves, they headed toward Israelite territory. And that's where we left off. The lords of the Philistines are following along, and they're making sure that the ark goes where it's supposed to go. And it ends up where we left off in the 12th verse of 1 Samuel chapter 6. It ends up in a place called Beth Shemesh. So Beth Shemesh, I don't think the name really has any implications for the story itself but bet bait or bet is house and shemesh is sun so this is the house of the sun and that's where we pick up so verse 13 says that the people of beth shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley so this is probably uh late spring so april may something like that they were reaping their wheat harvest in the

valley and they raised their eyes and saw the ark and they were glad to see it so the cart came into the field of a guy named joshua who was from who was a beth shemite and it stood there where there was a large stone so this i have to add this uh little little detail i think his name is significant only because so we talked about how this whole story the ark is patterned after the exodus right because just like the people of israel were exiled in egypt so the ark is exiled in the land of the philistines it plagues them they finally let it go so we get to the end of this exodus type story and the first guy that we encounter is named joshua yeah so it's like it's like kind of it's pretty obvious there that this whole thing is is patterned after

the Torah, and then the book following the Torah, Joshua. So anyway, this guy named Joshua has a field, and that's where it stops, and there's this large stone there. So they take the wood of the cart, and they offer a burnt offering to the Lord using those two Philistine cows. It says the Levites, I guess the Levites were living there in Beth Shemesh, they took the ark of the Lord and the box that was with it and the box had the the articles of gold so the the gold-shaped hemorrhoids or tumors and the gold-shaped mice they took those and they put them on the large stone and the the men of beth shemesh offered burnt offerings sacrificed to the lord that day and the five philistines five lords of the philistines were watching all this happen

and they they see it they're like all right everything is good the ark is back where it needs to be. And they headed back home to Ekron. And then it goes through a list in verse 17 and 18 of basically what the offerings were for. So the golden tumors were a guilt offering for the five cities that we've talked about before, the pentapolis of the Philistines. And then the mice were the same thing. They were for the cities of cities of the Philistines and for the five lords of the philistines and it says that stone where they set the ark of the covenant was a witness to this day in the field of joshua the beth shemite so at this point everything looks like it's going to be okay right ark is home philistine lords have seen with their own eyes

that they made the right decision so they head back to their country the ark is seemingly at a you know an okay place uh there's nothing negative that's said about the town so far that they offer sacrifices and they receive the offerings and then everything falls apart yeah you might wonder you know you might want to you might you might be tempted to peek inside the ark just to make sure that you know the philistines didn't take out anything or you know they don't want to they want to make sure this isn't a trojan horse or right you know who knows what if it was an empty ark that wouldn't be good yeah or maybe they put some something else in there you know you want to make sure so i can see why you might be tempted to look uh but you might not want to

do that no no evidently they they they have never seen the movie right yes right they don't know what happens when you mess with the mess with the ark of the covenant well uh verse 19 and 20 describes exactly what what happened so it the ark leaves the philistines to go to the israelites and then the israelites act like a bunch of philistines and they suffer the fate of the philistines it says that god struck down some of the men of that town because they had looked into the ark of the lord and it says he struck down a whole lot of people 50,070 men and the people mourned because the lord had struck the people with a great slaughter so if you if you look at back in chapter 5 at verse 6 it says that when the ark was in the land of the philistines that

the lord's hand was heavy against them and he ravaged them and smote them with tumors it just so happens the same verb that's used there for smite is now used here for strike the people with the great slaughter in other words they were they were acting like philistines and so they got treated like philistines yeah this is interesting uh it's interesting that the language here says that god struck down some men and then you find out that it was 50 000 you're like well that is some uh that is a lot of guys that you that you struck down uh you know if you just guys struck down some men because they looked in the ark you think a couple of guys went and looked in the ark No, 50,000 people is what happens.

The other thing that's interesting is that we don't have any reason to believe that this is a move the Philistines made. Like, we don't know that they looked in it. No. I think we talked about that last time after the podcast, that there's no evidence that they cracked that thing open. Yeah, lifted the lid. What do we got in here?

I mean, in some ways, you're almost like, were they more reverent than the Israelites were? Were they like, look, the one thing you wouldn't do, because this is a god after all, is you wouldn't go peek in there? Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. I mean, if you look at the whole story, the Philistines, even though they are, you know, uncircumcised Philistines, there are several redeeming features they have, you know? they're actually they acknowledge the ark when it comes to the camp of the israelites and they don't demolish it right when they capture it they don't say oh we're gonna take care of this we're gonna smash this thing up and no they they actually take it not just as a war

trophy but uh as another god basically to add to their pantheon so they're i mean they're yes i know they're not they're not orthodox they're not israelites but they are at least religiously speaking acting with great respect for the ark they do for real believe in the god of israel yeah i mean obviously they do right now they don't believe in him exclusively um they don't they don't they don't have uh the biblical definition of faith uh in him uh as the one true god uh but to say that they are they're not they're not unbelievers in the in the total sense they certainly believe

they believe enough that two plagues in they're like I'd rather not get to three and I definitely don't want to get to ten so let's get this thing out of here this god we're interested in him being with us he is not interested in being with us and so

we gotta get him out of here we would gladly add him to our pantheon but obviously he does not want to be added so let's send him back where he came from yeah and uh yeah did you have these you know i can understand why you'd want to look uh but it just is interesting to me that that the philistines didn't uh and i would assume the reason they did the only reason not to is even though they haven't been told not to is that they just believe that's not a good idea

yeah yeah exactly so uh but unfortunately for the israelites and bet shemesh they They did not follow the lead of the Philistines there. So there was this great slaughter. And here's their reaction. Verse 20, who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God, and to whom shall he go up from us? It's kind of strange because it's not really a confession of sins. They didn't like admit that they had done something wrong. well you could really stay who is able to stand before the lord this holy god well for starters

people who don't look into the ark yeah that'd be a good place to be a good least first initial answer to this uh so they're yeah of course they're they're uh they're they're they're struck to the heart by this happening but instead of really reacting the way they should they're just amazed and more or less exclaim well you know who's able to stand well not us And so they do kind of follow the lead of the Philistines in their subsequent action, because what do the Philistines do? Well, they took it to one city where the Temple to Dagon was at, and it was causing all kinds of problems there. So they moved it to another city, and then that city got plagued, and so they moved it to another city. Well, the Israelites are going to do the same thing here, because they contact the people of a nearby city called Kiriath Yarrim.

and they say hey uh you you got to really uh uh appreciate the the uh the politicking that goes on here this is not this is by no means straightforward speech they say the philistines have brought back the ark of the lord so why don't you come and take it up to you there's just there's like there's no mention there's not there's like no ps oh ps uh yeah 50,070 people of our city died so we really need this arc out here there's no mention whatsoever of what happened they're just like if you guys are interested in the arc the philistines have brought it to us so feel free to come and take it to your city so anyway they're giving you a gift like we'd love for you guys we just think it'd be we just think we think your city would be a great place for it to be

we're just such a small place just not really a good spot for the art but you would think they know how about this i mean how about come get this also i wouldn't look in it yeah a little warning yeah a little warning there's nothing come get it don't look at it all right that's all you gotta say so uh they they're gonna get rid of this as quickly as possible so that's what happens and we're jumping now from chapter six to chapter to chapter seven it says the uh so the guys from kiriath they came and they took the ark of the lord and they brought it into this guy's house named abinadab he lived on a hill and then they they consecrated his son whose name was eleazar to keep or to guard or to watch over that hebrew verb shamar can be translated a number of

different ways but they consecrated they uh made holy is the is the hebrew they're sanctified consecrated however you want to translate that they set them apart in other words to uh to keep the ark of the lord and it says that it from that day that it stayed at kediathia arim for quite a long time. It says for 20 years and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. So a couple things here. Well, this whole thing is a little bit strange. I mean, I guess it's just part of this whole period of time where things are happening that just aren't really what we'd expect. If you look, if you read the Torah as to how things should be happening, and then you read Judges or you read 1 Samuel, you end up scratching your head a lot because you're thinking,

this doesn't really seem to conform to the way things ought to have been so for one a question we should ask is why was the ark not taken to Shiloh I think that that is kind of an obvious question that we should be asking because of course Shiloh is where we started off in first Samuel Shiloh was where Eli was at and where the tabernacle was at that's where Samuel was raised and we're this is one of these in my mind strange absences from the biblical narrative because nothing more is said about shiloh for the rest of first and second samuel it's never mentioned again it comes up i was looking this morning i did a search for it it comes up in i think it's first kings 14 anyway it comes up later in kings but it comes up a lot in the book

of Jeremiah. Jeremiah refers to it as an example. He's like, hey, remember what the Lord did at Shiloh? Don't let that same thing happen to Jerusalem. So it appears as if what happened with Shiloh is that there was some sort of destruction that took place there that we're never told about, at least not told about in narrative. So perhaps what happened was the philistines actually captured shiloh and destroyed shiloh about this same time we really don't know and uh i so far have not been able to figure out exactly what happened to the rest of the tabernacle either so i'm gonna anyway uh just thought i'd bring that up because i think it's interesting that the ark first of all goes to beth shemesh and then it goes to kiliaki irene

but it is never returned to the tabernacle never returned to shiloh in fact we'll never sit within the tabernacle again so that's one thing to keep in mind another is this uh it's kind of a fascinating history behind Kiriath Yadarim so if you remember way back in the period of the judges I mean of Joshua some guys tricked the Israelites they they came from cities close by and but they but they pretended like they'd been on a long journey remember they had like old ragged clothes and they the wineskins were dry and cracked and their bread was was dry and and crumbly and so they they gave every appearance of coming from a distant country but actually they were just right down the road they just didn't want to be destroyed by the israelites and so

what happened was the israelites made them into hewers of wood and drawers of water right made them into servants what turns out one of their cities one of their gentile cities was kithi Yahya Irene. So the history behind this particular city is that it's a Gentile city. It was later claimed by the tribe of Judah, so it sits within those tribal boundaries. But it seems as if the ark is going to be resting in a city that at least has a predominantly Gentile history, which is pretty fascinating. And it's made more fascinating by the fact that if you trace the history of the ark. Where it goes next is it ends up, when David tries to take it back to Jerusalem, it ends up in the house of a guy named Obed-Edom, who it says was from the city of Gath. That's a Philistine city.

He's a Gittite. So a Gittite is from the city of Gath. So the point I'm trying to make is that two times the ark ends up in a predominantly Gentile city, at least a city with Gentile history, and then it ends up in the home of Obed-Edom, who was from a Philistine background. So twice the Ark of the Lord ends up in more or less a non-Israelite kind of environment, which I think is fascinating in kind of the big picture, because often you have the Lord showing favoritism, as it were, to Gentiles in order to create jealousy among his own people. And I think this is one of these instances here where they are his his own ark ends up in a place that even though it's controlled by the israelites is mainly a gentile city and then it ends up in the home of a guy who has joined

the israelites but his own heritage is a gentile a gentile heritage so anyway uh that's uh that's where it ends up it's there it says for 20 years don't understand this 20 years though as like the total beginning and end of its time there. It's 20 years from the time the Ark is returned until the next event, which we're about to get to. So 20 years elapses between the Ark's return and then what's about to happen at this next battle. Because it turns out the Ark was there

a lot longer than just 20 years. It was there all during the reign of Saul, for instance. It was never moved. So it was there probably, if you add up the whole timetable, it's probably close to anywhere from 70 to 90 years something like that which is this place which is pretty remarkable um and you you have to think that this this episode with peeking into it and then all these guys dying um really made it to where they did really didn't want this thing it's off the philistines whatever but they were they were like we're just

gonna leave that over there and since we're not dying let's just do that you know it seems like that's that's working um yeah but but it is and what is interesting about this too is that this gap that happens when samuel comes comes back onto the scene which he's about to obviously he seems like like he is uh he's certainly stating that israel isn't in like the greatest of shape spiritually speaking yeah uh right so there's also this sort of yeah the ark is just sitting in this place and people don't seem concerned that it's sitting in this place and it's not in the temple or or anything like that but it seems that maybe people are uh are not that concerned with god in general uh for you know as samuel's about to come out and say i know it's

hard to be hard to believe uh for the listener but it seems as though the ark a little bit disregarded and possibly some other gods have come and stolen away the affections of israel i know this is difficult i know this is difficult that it could happen this quickly but it seems that this is unprecedented i mean you're literally talking about i know what we'll do in this battle we'll bring the ark out because that's how we'll win okay so obviously this is your god that doesn't happen uh that goes into captivity comes out a bunch of guys die they shove it away off into a corner somewhere and 20 years later what do you got going on that's just some idolatry yeah yeah it's like the same same record on repeat yeah time after time after time again

which lets you know when when uh when you don't have god front and center you know when when he's not in his rightful place then you just find some other god that israel never goes around godless do they no they've always got they usually have several gods in their pocket yeah i mean they're either they're either worshiping god or they're worshiping some other god like they're never like you know what we're going atheist yeah it's never the case no it never is and i mean that that is that's that's characteristic not only of the israelites but that's that's humanity right yeah i mean to be human is to be religious so it's always just a question of which particular religion religions gods gods you happen to be happening worshiping at the time because you

as a human being you can't not be religious that's that's kind of a it's a pet peeve of mine that i don't i don't really i mean i will use these categories sometimes but i don't like these categories of sacred and secular. It's because I think that all of life is in some way or other sacred. Now, it might be sacred in a really bad way, but there is no part of our life that is secular, that is non-religious, because that would be like saying part of our life is non-human. You can't have a human without having also someone who is intensely, who is inherently religious just a question of where that religion happens to be happens to be focused and uh i think it was maybe it was last year's or the year before maybe this year before at here we still stand or

uh dave's all commented that you know the problem with with people today it was not that they're not religious enough they're they're too religious in all the wrong ways yeah too many too religious about too many things yeah too religious about too many things exactly all right so uh let's figure out what happens here. We're going to leave behind Kiriath Arim and the Ark and see what's going to happen here with Samuel. So he is, yeah, he is, as you mentioned, he's re-entering the scene after being absent for three chapters. And he emerges as sort of a new Moses slash Joshua. There is kind of this continuity between those three figures. Moses gives way to Joshua, and And then Joshua, after a long absence, really gives way to Samuel, because these three are the preeminent leaders early on of Israel.

And there's a lot of similarity, a lot of parallels between the three of them. But if you compare what he's about to say with what Joshua says in chapter 24 of the book of Joshua, you'll see parallels between what they are calling the Israelites to do. So Samuel speaks to the whole house of Israel, and here's what he says. If you return to the Lord with all your heart, remove the foreign gods and the Ashtarot, come back to that, the Ashtarot, from among you and direct your hearts to the Lord and serve him only or alone, and he will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines. And Sons of Israel, it says, remove the Baals and the Ashtarot and served the Lord alone. so this is the language of repentance i've commented before that the hebrew word for the hebrew verb that's commonly translated repent is actually shuv is the is the word so s-h-u-v you might write it that is also the word for return or turn or turn back so when you

repent you shuv so you turn you turn back you you return so when it says that when samuel says if you return to the Lord, he says, if you are shooving, that if you were returning, if you are repenting to the Lord with all your heart, then here's what you need to do. You get rid of all these foreign gods, get rid of the idols, and then he specifies the Ashtarot. So this is not the same is Asherah. It's very similar. It's a Canaanite deity, very common deity in this whole part of the world, known by a number of different names. Ashtarte in Greek, and a more common way of saying the name is Ashtarat. Now, there's a little hidden Hebrew insult in this word. So if it was written in Hebrew, the way that we would expect it to, based upon extra-biblical

evidence we have, then it would be written as Ashtarat, A-S-H-T-A-R-T. But it's not written that way. When it's in the singular, it's written as Ashtoret. So the A's are substituted with an O and an E. What's going on here is the same thing, probably, we don't know 100% sure, but probably the same thing going on here is what happens with the names of other idols so the the vowels from the word for shame shame is bullshit so the o and the e from shame are inserted into this particular hebrew name so it becomes an insult so instead of calling this goddess ash taught it she's called ash taught it and by changing those vowels it's the it's the israelite hebrew way of basically saying this is a shameful deity now this happens also and you this is a little bit easier to see

so if you look at other parts of the scripture sometimes you'll have people called uh ish baal which is which means like a man of baal but sometimes that name will be the same person but their name will be changed in other contexts to ish boshet because boshet means shame so the same so each ball each ball will become we call each bullshit so it goes from a man of bail to a man of shame this is a this is the same thing going on here with this particular uh goddesses goddess's name anyway uh hopefully that makes sense it's a little bit harder to explain just uh verbally it's easy if i could just write it on a board and explain it that way so he's calling uh samuel's calling them to get rid of all the foreign gods and to direct their

hearts to the lord and serve him him alone and remarkably that's what they do verse four says the israelites remove the bales and they removed these goddesses these astaroth and they served the lord alone you know what you know what israel you know what israel's really experienced at doing removing bales they're like if you if you had if you had a bunch of bales and you were trying to to figure out how to get rid of them what you need to do is contact israel and say hey got a bunch of bails that i need to get rid of i know that no one has gotten rid of more bails there's you guys you guys are pro at getting and getting rid of bails like i mean how many times they're good at both right how many times have you got rid of bails like i mean you talk about

like just i mean hey i relate like you want to talk about making the same mistake over and over and over again though like how many times have you been told like well you need to get rid of those bails if you uh if you don't if you want things to go okay for you yeah yeah it'd probably be a good idea if you got rid of that foreign god or if you if you stopped worshiping this particular uh false deity whatever whatever it might be yeah it would be a good idea and if we could only do that consistently our life would be much better yeah a whole lot better if i didn't give in to uh greed and jealousy and lust and desire for power and all those all those nasty things right all those that whole pantheon of deities who lives within my own heart they'd be

it'd be great yeah then and that's just kind of the constant uh battle of the christian right that's why the spirit every day shoves the old adam back under the water yeah until the bubbles stop coming up and then the next day he does the same thing again it's a cycle of a cycle of repentance yeah maybe that's why maybe that's why we like the old testament so much it's autobiographical in so many ways yeah you're like you're like i know what it's like to do the same stupid thing over and over again and you know who else knows about this israel knows about this yeah yeah yeah i i have a lot of a lot of experience in this uh in this category all right so they do that what's going to happen well verse five says that samuel gathered everybody at

mizpah mizpah evidently was a place that was a common gathering site for israel remember back in Judges, those real dark stories at the end, a couple different times the Israelites gathered at Mizpah. So whatever reason, that happens to be the place where they like to gather as the totality of the tribes together. So he gathers them together, and he says, now this is interesting. He says, I will pray to the Lord for you. It's interesting because if you look back in chapter 2, verse 25 this is in the context of Eli and his and his wicked sons and Eli says to his sons if one man sins against another God will mediate for him but if a man sins against the Lord who can intercede for him the same word for intercede that's used there is used here in chapter 7 verse

five so it's almost like an answer to that rhetorical question of of eli he's like yeah if you sin against god who's going to intercede for you samuel stepped up and raises his hand i will yeah i i got this i will palal i will intercede for the people of israel so they uh they get together at mizpah and something strange happens it's strange in only the sense that we don't have any other evidence that i'm aware of anyway we don't have any of evidence of this this kind of ritual action uh accompanying some sort of ceremony repentance what they do is they says they drew water and they poured it out before the lord and they fasted and they said we have sinned against the lord and it says samuel judged the sons of israel at

at mizpah so we don't i we don't know exactly what's going on here as to why this why this was done. And this is only a hypothesis, but I suspect the pouring out of the water is supposed to be a symbolic action to describe the pouring out of one's soul or one's heart before the Lord. And I say that because the word that's used there, the verb that's used there is shafak. And shafak is commonly used in books like Leviticus to describe the pouring out of blood or other liquids, but it's also used metaphorically for when a person pours out their soul before the Lord. In fact, I think it's what Hannah used when she was describing her prayer to the Lord in front of Eli. She said, I was pouring out my heart or pouring out my soul before him. So maybe this

pouring out of water is symbolic of this pouring out of one's sins, a pouring out of one's confession, of pouring out one's heart or soul before the Lord. Because that's what they do. They fast, and they make confession before God. I'm choosing to believe that they all just got baptized. That's probably what it was. We may have been accused before of finding baptism anywhere there's water. Samuel's like, I'll intercede for you.

I know what to do. We'll just all get baptized. I'm going to pour some water. We'll take care of this. I know how to deal with sin. Baptism. baptism yeah the only other the only other situation i know of with uh with worship in the old testament where water like this is involved is in connection with the feast of

tabernacles and you have you guys covered john in 30 minutes not yet nope not yet okay i didn't think you had so but in that chapter where uh jesus stands up at the at the feast of uh of tabernacles. And he says, you know, if anyone believes in me, these rivers of living water are going to come forth. Well, he does that in the context of water actually being poured out, because one of the things that happened at the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall was that they would gather water and they would pour it out before the Lord. And we're not exactly sure what the symbolism was. I mean, was it a reenactment of the water coming from the rock during the Exodus? Was it a way of supplicating God for rains to come?

Not exactly sure, but anyway, that's one ritual situation in which water was poured out before the Lord later on in Israel's history. So anyway, that's what happens to Mizpah. And then we have another battle coming up. This battle is going to be a mirror battle of the earlier one when they lost the ark. uh but things are going to things are going to happen differently this time and we'll uh we'll probably have to wait for for next episode to get into that but you know we're so we're at chapter

seven verse six and it's a it's a good it's a good stopping point because we got the ark back and we have samuel back on the scene who's kind of this new moses this new joshua we have him call them the people to repentance. They remove the idols. They have a ceremony of repentance, ceremony of fasting. And so everything at this point, anyway, is looking positive. It's looking like the people have been brought to the point to where they acknowledge the Lord alone. They've returned to Samuel, and now they have a battle coming up. And so we're going to find out in this next battle exactly if things are going to go better or worse for the Israelites, because this is a critical juncture for them yeah yeah we're gonna you're gonna get to see uh what happens when

you go into battle uh without consulting the word of the lord uh and when you go into battle with consulting the word of the lord so uh we'll we'll see we'll do some comparative work next episode guys uh don't forget to register for the online conference it's free uh just go to 15 17 and uh go to here we still stand and you can sign up for for nothing and join us for the live stream in october chad i'll see you next week all right see you here you