Israel's leaders had a remedy. “Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that when it cometh among us, it may save us out of the hand of our enemies.” Mark the word “it,” twice repeated. It is true that the ark went before them when they crossed the Jordan and also went with them when they compassed the walls of Jericho, but was it the ark that wrought for them on those occasions, or was it GOD? God was now forgotten, and a mere symbol had taken His place in their wayward minds. The ark was to them a mere charm or mascot.
A terrible evil is before us in this record. God displaced by an outward and visible sign—the very essence of idolatry! Even the light of the gospel has not preserved Christendom from this folly and sin. Baptism and the Lord's Supper, precious ordinances of divine institution, blessedly suggestive to the spiritual mind, are the very real dependence of multitudes in our day. Not these only. “Sacred” images and pictures have been brought forth on many a day of disaster (such as a volcanic eruption or an outbreak of disease) and have been paraded through the streets in order to ward off that which the people feared. Oh, the horror of it to Him who has made Himself known in the person of His Son, and who has withal given to men His written Word.
Israel added to the evil by bringing among them Hophni and Phinehas. These vile men were in charge of the sacred vessel, an affront which an indignant God was not slow to avenge.
Israel's shout of exultation when the ark arrived, and the dismay of the Philistines when they heard of it, testified that neither the one nor the other had any sense of the reality of having to do with God. The Philistines said, “God is come into the camp.” They forthwith reminded themselves how Israel's mighty God had broken the might of the Egyptians, and they nerved themselves to fight as they had never fought before. But upon their own showing they were now going to fight God! In their superstitious ignorance they mistook a symbol for the very Deity itself! Only Israel's frightful condition explains the second victory, when “there was a very great slaughter; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen.” Philistine defiance would have met its just due had not God's own people needed to be taught a terrible lesson. The ark in which they trusted was taken, “and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain.” In Asaph's 78th Psalm, it is recorded, He “delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy's hand” (verse 61). The disaster was overwhelming. Could Moses and Aaron ever have believed that “the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth” (Joshua 3:11) could have become the spoil of a pagan foe?