OVERREACTION?

GOD AND THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT

2 SAMUEL 6:1-11

1 Once again David assembled the select warriors of Israel, thirty thousand strong. 2 David and all the troops who were with him set out for Baalah, which is Kiriath-jearim of Judah, to bring God's chest up from there—the chest that is called by the name of the Lord of heavenly forces, who sits enthroned on the winged creatures. 3 They loaded God's chest on a new cart and carried it from Abinadab's house, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, Abinadab's sons, were driving the new cart. 4 Uzzah was beside God's chest while Ahio was walking in front of it. 5 Meanwhile, David and the entire house of Israel celebrated in the Lord's presence with all their strength, with songs, zithers, harps, tambourines, rattles, and cymbals.

6 When they approached Nacon's threshing floor, Uzzah reached out to God's chest and grabbed it because the oxen had stumbled. 7 The Lord became angry at Uzzah, and God struck him there because of his mistake, and he died there next to God's chest. 8 Then David got angry because the Lord's anger lashed out against Uzzah, and so that place is called Perez-uzzah today.

9 David was frightened by the Lord that day. "How will I ever bring the Lord's chest to me?" he asked. 10 So David didn't take the chest away with him to David's City. Instead, he had it put in the house of Obed-edom, who was from Gath. 11 The Lord's chest stayed with Obed-edom's household in Gath for three months, and the Lord blessed Obed-edom's household and all that he had.

INSIGHT AND IDEAS

I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theater in the summer of 1981. I was four, almost five. While I consider Raiders one of the greatest pieces of art ever projected on a giant screen, and while it runs 115 minutes (five minutes short of two hours, and 37 minutes shorter than The Dark Knight), I had a hard time making it through the entire movie. I snoozed through significant chunks of it. A couple years later, my family got cable television; and we caught Raiders on one of the movie channels. Again, I had trouble staying awake for the entire 115 minutes.

So I didn't really appreciate the cinematic masterpiece that is Raiders of the Lost Ark until I was older. But two scenes stuck with me from those early viewings:

• The opening scene in which swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones retrieves a golden idol from a Peruvian temple, only to trigger a booby trap and narrowly avoid being crushed by a giant boulder. (Everyone remembers that scene.)

• The scene toward the end when the Nazis who have confiscated the ark of the covenant from Dr. Jones take the ark to an island in the Aegean Sea and decide to open it, wanting to test their prize before taking it back to Hitler in Germany. (Raiders is set in the 1930s, so the Nazis are the principle antagonists.) Opening the ark proves to be a mistake.

If you've seen the movie, you know what happens when the Nazis (led by French archaeologist-for-hire René Belloq) remove the lid from the ark. They find that the shattered remains of the tablets that once bore the Law given to Moses have been reduced to sand. Then they find something else: death. Light fixtures surrounding the ark explode; the Nazi soldiers' guns go off; and a storm (with lightning and everything) erupts within the ark. Spirits, possibly seraphim, descend on those gathered, eliciting awe and then terror. A flame emerges from the ark and the fire of God strikes dead all of the soldiers who were foolish enough to watch as the ark was opened.

Then the major players—Belloq and the Nazi leadership, including Major Arnold Toht—get theirs. The divine fire melts them like a nine-year-old boy with a fire fetish melts his plastic action figures. Indiana Jones and his partner and love interest, Marion Ravenwood, survive by shutting their eyes and turning away from the ark.

The moral of the story: The ark of the covenant is not to be trifled with.

THE ARK: DANGEROUS NOT ONLY FOR NAZIS

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (the producer and director, respectively, of the Indiana Jones films) didn't come up with the idea that the ark is deadly for those who don't respect it. We find it in the Old Testament, 2 Samuel 6:1-10.

The ark makes its first appearance in Exodus 25 when Moses meets with God atop Mount Sinai, or Horeb. (Mount Sinai and Mount Horeb are two names for the same mountain.)

While God dictated to Moses the Law and the terms of the covenant between God and Israel, God gave Moses instructions for building an ark—a box made of acacia wood—to hold the tablets on which the Law is written. God told Moses the dimensions of the ark, how to decorate the ark (where to place the depictions of winged heavenly creatures), and how to transport the ark. The transportation instructions were simple: "Make acacia-wood poles and cover them with gold. Then put the poles into the rings on the chest's sides and use them to carry the chest. The poles should stay in the chest's rings. They shouldn't be taken out of them" (Exodus 25:13-15).

The Israelites carried this sacred box through the wilderness of Sinai for 40 years and into their new home in Canaan. The ark went before them during their conquests under Joshua and when they settled the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. We don't read about the ark in the Book of Judges, but we know that it spent some time in Gilgal before finding its way to the city of Shiloh during the time of the prophet Samuel. The neighboring Philistines captured the ark for a time but couldn't hold it, and it wound up in Kiriath-jearim. It stayed there until the reign of King David, who decided to bring the ark to his new capital, Jerusalem.

The story of King David's finally bringing the ark of the covenant (the one that would melt so many Nazi faces) into Jerusalem comes up frequently in youth ministry curriculum. David was so overcome with joy that he danced "with all his strength before the Lord" (2 Samuel 6:14), accompanied by "shouts and trumpet blasts" (verse 15). David's wife Michal (daughter of his predecessor and rival, King Saul) watched her husband dance "in a linen priestly vest" (verse 14) and lost "all respect for him" (verse 16). But David was not ashamed.

This story is great for youth because 1) it shows dance as a form of worship, and the idea of praising God through dance is a welcome one for young people who have trouble staying awake during more staid expressions of worship; and 2) David dances before God boldly and without embarrassment.

The events that precede the ark's triumphant arrival in Jerusalem and David's celebration don't come up nearly as often. When David assumed the throne as Israel's second king, the ark resided in Kiriathjearim. It ended up there because the people in its previous home, Beth-shemesh, couldn't handle it. God killed seventy Beth-shemites as punishment for looking into the ark (1 Samuel 6:19-20). (Unfortunately for them, they hadn't seen Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

David decided that the ark belonged in Jerusalem. Getting it there proved...