5. Make models of your tumors and your mice which are destroying the country, and give glory to the God of Israel. Maybe he will no longer be so hard on you, your gods, and your country.
6. Why should you be as stubborn as the Egyptians and their Pharaoh were? After he toyed with the Egyptians, didn’t they send the Israelites on their way?
7. Now get a new cart ready for two dairy cows that have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart. Take their calves away, and leave them in their stall.
8. Take the ark of the Lord, and put it on the cart. Put the gold objects which you’re giving him as a guilt offering in a box beside the ark. Send the cart on its way,
9. but then watch where it goes. If it goes up the road to its own country toward Beth Shemesh, then this disaster is the Lord’s doing. But if not, we’ll know it wasn’t his hand that struck us, but what happened to us was an accident.”
10. The people did this. They took two dairy cows, hitched them to a cart, and shut the calves in the stall.
11. They put the ark of the Lord and the box containing the gold mice and the models of their hemorrhoids on the cart.
12. The cows went straight up the road to Beth Shemesh. Continually mooing, they stayed on the road and didn’t turn right or left. The rulers of the Philistines followed them to the border of Beth Shemesh.