CHAPTER SUMMARY

The Aron was in Plishtim’s possession for seven months, after which time the leaders of Plishtim consult with their priests and magicians, asking how to properly remove it from their midst. The priests mention that in order to be healed, they will need to send a sacrifice along. When asked what is the proper sacrifice, they reply that they should send 5 golden models of the plague that was sent them and 5 golden rats (it is because of this suggestion that Rashi and Hazal assume that the plague involved rats invading the Plishtim’s bodies and eating out their insides), and sending them to God. To support their recommendation, they implore the leaders not to harden their hearts as the Egyptians hardened their hearts when God punished them back during the time of the Exodus. They then say to take the entire offering and the Aron to put it on a new carriage, and then to send it on its way. Should the cows leading the Aron go straight along the border to Beit Shemesh, they say, the Plishtim will then know that God had done this to them; if not, then it wasn’t God.

The leaders did so, and the cows headed straight to Beit Shemesh (with no digressions at all), lowing all the way. When the people of Beit Shemesh see the Aron, they celebrate, take the wood from the carriage, and sacrifice the cows to God. The leaders of Plishtim, who had been watching, now saw that their sign had been fulfilled, and went home to Ekron. The Navi then notes that the Plishtim had sent five golden models of the plague (as suggested by their priests), but had sent a golden rat for each of the cities of Plishtim.

The people of Bet Shemesh, who had originally celebrated the return of the Aron and had kept it in the field of a man named Yehoshua, soon learned to fear it. Verse 19 tells us that they, too, were stricken, with perhaps fifty thousand people dying in the plague, and the people mourned God’s having struck such a mighty blow in their midst. The decide, therefore, that no one can tolerate God’s presence in their midst, and send a message to the people of Kiryat Yearim to come and take the Aron off their hands.

7 MONTHS IN PLISHTIM—A DIFFICULT LESSON

The chapter opens by noting that the Aron was in Plishtim for seven months, which seems a rather long period of time for them to realize that they were supposed to be sending it back to the Jews. Indeed, even after they send it back, they seem continuingly uncertain as to whether these events were wrought upon them by the Master of the Universe. It is only after 7 months, for example, that they consult with their priests and sorcerers (to the extent that they had them, their spiritual leaders).

The reply those leaders give reveals their awareness that the leaders were not yet convinced that this came from God. Thus, the priests include an exhortation in their suggestion for an asham, an offering, to send with the Aron. They say (verse 6), "Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians did," in order to urge them to indeed return the Aron, an exhortation that only seems necessary if they had some doubt as to whether the leaders of Plishtim were really going to do so. Since the leaders’ question had been how to send it back, the sorcerers’ need to urge them to indeed return it suggests that they knew the leaders were still wavering.

In addition, the sorcerers suggest a test to see whether or not these plagues had really come from God. Considering that the leaders were already planning on sending the Aron back, this is odd. (Malbim offers an explanation that doesn’t ring true for me, that the sorcerers were trying to investigate whether the Aron’s capture was the sole reason for their troubles). If the leaders were still not sure of where the troubles came from, however, we understand the sorcerers’ suggestion perfectly (note that the leaders indeed watched the cows pull the Aron all the way until it got to Bet Shemesh, also pointing towards their not having been sure, even til the end, that all of this came from God).

What is it about this message that was so hard for the leaders of Plishtim to absorb? Wouldn’t a week of plague in each of three different cities coinciding exactly with the arrival of the Aron have been enough to draw the connection?

THE ART (NOT SCIENCE) OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

Part of the answer to this question, I think, lies in the general difficulty we have in establishing direct causation. There are many "causes" that we know but cannot fully prove—think, for example, of how long it took the tobacco companies to admit that smoking causes cancer. While they obviously had a stake in the other position—something we will come back to in a moment—it is still true that they were able to say that science had not yet "proved" that smoking causes cancer.

Many causes work this way. Had it been true that every citizen of each of these cities was stricken the moment the Aron entered the city, and that their plagues immediately ceased the moment the Aron left, it might have been incontrovertible evidence of the Aron’s role in the plague. Indeed, in that circumstance we might imagine the Plishtim doing a "scientific" experiment, repeatedly bringing the Aron into and out of a city to see what happened.

But the plague didn’t work that way. We know, for example, that in Ashdod the plague did not start until after a few days of the Aron’s being in the House of Dagon. It may also be true that after the Aron left a city, the plague continued to rage. We have already seen commentators who suggested that the Aron was left in an open field for a while and the plague continued to rage. There was thus at least some room for the Plishtim to doubt God’s role in the event.

Perhaps more importantly (and returning to our example of tobacco company executives), Plishtim had a strong interest in denying that this was God’s handiwork. In their multi-god system, they certainly would have believed that Hashem had some power, but their victory in battle, in their minds, would have meant that their god was more powerful. Admitting that these plagues were a result of the Aron’s presence in their midst would force them to admit that battle-victory did not offer any proof of the relative power of the deities worshiped by the two peoples, and, of course, that God was more powerful than their god. Faced with such a bitter pill, the Plishtim were able to deny that truth for seven long months, with all the accompanying consequences of that denial.

THE MEMORY OF EGYPT

Although it is almost a side comment in the chapter, I would stress the sorcerers’ reference to Egypt when they were trying to convince them to return the Aron. We already saw the Plishtim, at war with the Jews, remember Egypt, and here it happens again. That this other people (one not involved in the original events) had such a strong memory hundreds of years later strikes me as important information for Jews to keep in mind; the Exodus was not only our event, it was huge world news, and left an impact lasting generations.

We might also pay some attention to the sorcerers’ immediate readiness with an idea of how to properly appease God for having taken, and mistreated, the Aron. That suggests that the mystery of God was not how to worship Him—since the sorcerers knew that—but people’s need to worship Him alone. It wasn’t non-Jews disbelief in God that set them apart from the Jews, it was their belief in other gods as well; dispelling that belief, among themselves and others, that was the mission of the Jewish people at the time.

The remedy the sorcerers offer, giving gold images of the plagues and rats that had struck them, focuses on the cause and effect question we mentioned previously. Granted that a gift involves a precious metal, why shape it into the image of a plague (a hemorrhoid, of all things!) or a rat? The answer, I believe, is that in doing so, the Plishtim clarify to themselves and to God, their understanding of the source of their problems—the plagues are being sent back, in golden form, with the cause of those plagues, the Aron.

THE MIRACULOUS COWS

When the cows are sent on their way, to either prove or disprove the question of the plagues’ source, the verse tells us that they went straight on the road, walking and lowing. Rashi and Metsudot David read their lowing as an expression of their longing for their children (these are nursing cows); in that reading, it is a mark of their being controlled by a higher power, since on their own they would have gone to find their calves.

The gemara in Avodah Zarah 24b, punning on the word va-yisharna (they went straight) sees them as singing shirah, recording a discussion about which shirah they sang. Regardless of which song they sang, this gemara sees their calling out as part of their announcing the miracle to all. At a more peshat level, even if we do not see the cows as having physically sung, their calling out would still have drawn a lot of attention. As they went along the road, then, their lowing would have insured that many people saw their progress and discussed the event.

THE ARON IN BET SHEMESH—ANOTHER FAILURE

We might, from the events of the last two chapters, assume that the Plishtim were punished for having taken the Aron from the Jews; the tribulations of the Jews of Bet Shemesh show that that was not the sole issue. When the Aron arrives, the people of Bet Shemesh do something wrong, although the commentators argue over exactly what. Rashi sees their simhah as having led to their treating the Aron with less than the respect due to it. Radak believes they actually opened the Aron to see what was inside, out of their great joy (as in last week’s discussion, think of what happens to those who open the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark). For both of these commentators, then, the lesson of the people of Bet Shemesh is that even proper joy must be controlled and channeled. It is, in that sense, a separate lesson from the one taught to Plishtim.

Malbim, however, suggests that the people’s joy stemmed from motives other than the pure simhah of being able to return the Aron to its rightful place among the Jewish people. Noting the verse 13’s mention that they were harvesting wheat, Malbim suggests that they did not stop that activity when they saw the Aron. Rather, they were happy at the sight, and continued harvesting.

Whether we accept that reconstruction of events or not, it does suggest that the people of Bet Shemesh also did not know how to care for the Aron (as is shown in verse 20, when they send it away, saying that no one can stand before this great and mighty Aron). If so, Plishtim might have been being punished for their actual treatment of the Aron (as the mark of one god among many, for example) rather than the simple fact of their having taken it as spoils of war.

In any case, the people of Bet Shemesh cannot cope with the Aron, and send it off to Kiryat Yearim, who, as we will see after Sukkot, are able to properly care for it. Shabbat Shalom, Gemar Hatimah Tovah, and Hag Sameah.