The Philistines captured the Ark of God and dragged it into the temple of their idol Dagon at Ashdod. They set it beside their god like a trophy. But the next morning, they found Dagon flat on his face before the Ark—prostrate, as if worshipping it. They propped him back up. He fell again. Then God struck the entire city with a plague so violent that people died before they could even cry out, their bodies destroyed from the inside. Swarms of mice devoured the crops. The land itself turned against its inhabitants.
So the Philistines passed the Ark from city to city—Ashdod to Ashkelon, Ashkelon to Gath, Gath to Ekron—and every city that received it suffered the same devastation. Five cities. Five plagues. The Ark exacted tribute from each one, as Josephus puts it, like a tax levied on those foolish enough to hold what did not belong to them.
Their wisest advisors finally suggested a plan: build a new cart, yoke two nursing cows to it, and lock their calves away. Place five golden images and five golden mice on the cart as guilt offerings. Then release the cows at a crossroads. If they walked toward Israelite territory on their own—abandoning their calves, defying every instinct—that would prove God's hand was behind the suffering. The cows walked straight to the Israelite village of Beth Shemesh, never turning aside.
The Israelites there rejoiced, sacrificed the cows, and placed the Ark on a great stone. But seventy men of Beth Shemesh approached the Ark without authorization—they were not priests—and God struck them dead. The people wept, sent word to the national council, and the Ark was moved to the house of Abinadab the Levite in Kiriath-Jearim, where it remained for twenty years.
During those decades, Samuel the prophet rallied the people. He gathered Israel at Mizpah, where they fasted and poured out water before God. The Philistines attacked. Samuel sacrificed a lamb and prayed. God answered with an earthquake that split the ground beneath the Philistine army, thunder that shattered their formations, and lightning that burned their faces. Their weapons flew from their hands. Israel pursued them all the way to Beth Car, and Samuel set up a stone monument he called Even Ha-Ezer—the Stone of Power—to mark where God had broken the enemy.