6. Why be stubborn like the Egyptians and Pharaoh? After God had dealt harshly with them, didn’t they send the Israelites on their way?
7. So get a new cart ready along with two nursing cows that have never been yoked before. Harness the cows to the cart, but take any of their calves that are following back home.
8. Next, take the Lord’s chest and put it in the cart. Set the gold items that you are giving God as a compensation offering in a box next to the chest. Then send it on its way.
9. Then watch what happens: If the cart goes up the road to its own territory toward Beth-shemesh, then Israel’s God has brought this great disaster on us. If the cart goes another way, then we’ll know that it wasn’t God’s hand that struck us. It happened to us randomly."
10. The rulers did just that. They took two nursing cows and harnessed them to the cart, penning their calves up at home.
11. They put the Lord’s chest on the cart along with the box containing the gold mice and the images of their tumors.
12. The cows went straight ahead, following the road to Beth-shemesh. They kept to one route, mooing as they went, without turning right or left. The Philistine rulers followed them as far as the territory of Beth-shemesh.
13. Now the people of Beth-shemesh were harvesting wheat in the valley. When they looked up and saw the chest, they were overjoyed at the sight.
14. The cart entered the field belonging to Joshua of Beth-shemesh and stopped right by a large stone. They chopped up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as an entirely burned offering to the Lord.
15. The Levites unloaded the Lord’s chest and the box that was with it that contained all the gold items, and they set them on the large stone. That very day the people of Beth-shemesh offered entirely burned offerings and made sacrifices to the Lord.
16. When the five Philistine rulers witnessed this, they went straight back to Ekron.