8. Put the Ark of the Lord on the cart and the gold models for the penalty offering in a box beside the Ark. Then send the cart straight on its way.
9. Watch the cart. If it goes toward Beth Shemesh in Israel’s own land, the Lord has given us this great sickness. But if it doesn’t, we will know that Israel’s God has not punished us. Our sickness just happened by chance.”
10. The Philistines did what the priests and magicians said. They took two cows that had just had calves and hitched them to the cart, but they kept their calves at home.
11. They put the Ark of the Lord and the box with the gold rats and models of growths on the cart.
12. Then the cows went straight toward Beth Shemesh. They stayed on the road, mooing all the way, and did not turn right or left. The Philistine kings followed the cows as far as the border of Beth Shemesh.
13. Now the people of Beth Shemesh were harvesting their wheat in the valley. When they looked up and saw the Ark of the Lord, they were very happy.
14. The cart came to the field belonging to Joshua of Beth Shemesh and stopped near a large rock. The people of Beth Shemesh chopped up the wood of the cart. Then they sacrificed the cows as burnt offerings to the Lord.
15. The Levites took down the Ark of the Lord and the box that had the gold models, and they put both on the large rock. That day the people of Beth Shemesh offered whole burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the Lord.
16. After the five Philistine kings saw this, they went back to Ekron the same day.