The Precursors of the Ark

The Hebrew is garbled. Literally it means “for the ark of God on that day and the Israelites.” Perhaps ובני “and the sons” is a scribal error for לפני “before,” as per the LXX text (ἐνώπιον). Whatever the case, the point is clear.

Arieh Bartal, “‘כי היה ארון האלהים ביום ההוא ובני ישראל’” [‘For the Ark of God was with the Israelites at that Time’ (1 Sam. 14.18)], Beit Mikra 26.3 (1980), 305–308. David T. Tsumara, The First Book of Samuel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 365–366.

καὶ εἶπεν σαουλ τῷ αχια προσάγαγε τὸ εφουδ ὅτι αὐτὸς ἦρεν τὸ εφουδ ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ ἐνώπιον ισραηλ.

This may have been influenced by the LXX text, with which Josephus was familiar.

For more on divination in the Bible, see Jonathan Stökl, “Ancient Israelite Divination: Urim ve-Tummim, Ephod, and Prophecy,” TheTorah (2018).

See for example Henry Preserved Smith, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Samuel, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1899), 111; Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg, I&II Samuel – A Commentary, Old Testament Library (London: SCM Press, 1964), 113; P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., I Samuel Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980), 237.

For example, Stephen Hre Kio, “What Did Saul Ask For: Ark or Ephod?” The Bible Translator 47 (1996): 240–246; McCarter, I Samuel, 5-11; Tsumara, The First Book of Samuel, 10. For discussions of the textual problems with MT Samuel versus other versions, see Philippe Hugo and Adrian Schenker, eds., Archaeology of the Books of Samuel: The Entangling of the Textual and Literary History, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 132 (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

For similar arguments see Philip R. Davies, “Ark or Ephod in 1 Sam. Xiv, 18,” Journal of Theological Studies 26 (1975), 82–87.

Leonhard Rost, Die Überlieferung von der Thronnachfolge Davids (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1926; Trans. as The Succession to the Throne of David, Sheffield: Almond Press, 1982), 4-47. According to Rost, the ark narrative was a separate literary unit within the Deuteronomistic History, that was copied by the editor with very few changes, with the purpose of adding justification for the establishment of David’s rule in Jerusalem.

Philip R. Davies, “Ark or Ephod in 1 Sam. Xiv, 18,” Journal of Theological Studies 26 (1975): 82–87; idem, “The History of the Ark in the Books of Samuel,” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 5 (1977): 9–18.

In Davies’ reconstruction, the story of the capture of the ark and its transportation to Kiryat-yearim and then to Jerusalem was invented in order to justify the favored position of the Zadokite priesthood over the Elides, who lost the ark.

This text appears in Tosefta Sotah (7:18), also in the name of R. Judah ben Lakish, as well as in Sifrei Numbers §82, without attribution to any specific sage.

Yoel Bin-Nun, “ארון הברית ומעמדו בספר שמואל” [The Ark of the Covenant and its Status in the Book of Samuel], in, בעקבות ארון ה': לקט מאמרים ומקורות על נדודי הארון בשפלת יהודה [In the Footsteps of the Ark of the Lord: A Collection of Essays and Sources on the Wanderings of the Ark in the Judean Shephelah], ed. Israel Rozenson (Elkana: Orot Israel College, 1998), 21­–24. For a look at this same distinction from a source critical perspective, see Tzemah Yoreh, “The Two Arks: Military and Ritual,” TheTorah (2020).

For more views along these lines, see Ephraim Jehudah Wiesenberg, “Problems Connected with the Ark of the Covenant,” in, ספר היובל תפארת ישראל: לכבוד ישראל ברודי למלאת לו שבעים שנה [Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday], ed. H.J. Zimmels, J. Rabbinowitz and I. Finestein (London: Jews’ College and Soncino Press, 1967), 1.107–128 [Hebrew]; Eitan Shandorffy, “האם יצא ארון הברית למלחמות ישראל” [Did the Ark of the Covenant go out to Israel’s Wars?], Merhavim 6 (1996), pp. 56-106 (Heb.).

William R. Arnold, Ephod and Ark: A Study in the Records and Religion of the Ancient Hebrews, Harvard Theological Studies 3 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917). Following this, Karel Van Der Toorn and Cees Houtman proposed the Deuteronomistic editor of Samuel changed references to those “arks” to “ephods,” so that in the end, the ark that arrived in Jerusalem became the one true ark. Along the way, the theological legitimacy of Saul’s arkless reign was also brought into question. Karel Van Der Toorn and Cees Houtman, “David and the Ark,” Journal of Biblical Literature 113 (1994), pp. 209–231.

Note that the Targum translates as if it said YHWH while the text reads אלהים.

Alternatively, the Targum may understand this as a second attempt to query God, first with the ark and then with the ephod. The former interpretation seems to be the thinking of the Jerusalem Talmud as well. Above, we quoted the passage in which the Talmud uses Saul’s request for Ahiyah to bring the ark as a proof of R. Judah ben Lakish’s view that there were two arks. The Talmud then attempts to explain how the rabbis would read the text (j. Sotah 8:3):

מַאִי עָֽבְדִין לֵיהּ רַבָּנִין. הַגִּישָׁה אֵלַי הַצִּיץ.

What do the rabbis make of this? [What Saul actually said was] “Bring me the headplate.”

Alternatively, this could be translated “bring the fringe (tzitz)” and be a reference to the priest’s cloak, upon which would be the ephod. Either way, like Josephus, the Talmud imagines the priest putting on his clothes to perform the divination, and that these items were stored in or with the ark.

This same interpretation appears in the commentaries of Ralbag and that attributed to R. Joseph Kara, both of whom reference only the Urim ve-Tummim, and say they were inside the ark. It also may be implied in Rashi’s commentary, though he only says that Saul wanted the Urim ve-Tummim and doesn’t mention explicitly that they accompanied (or were inside) the ark.

Many scholars have become convinced that little or nothing of the narrative in Samuel can reflect the historical reality of the pre- and early monarchal period. For a summary see, among others, Amihai Mazar, ‘Archaeology and the Bible: Reflections on Historical Memory in the Deuteronomistic History’, in Congress Volume Munich 2013 (ed. C.M. Maeier; Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 347-369. The recent excavators of Kiriat-yearim, for example, developed a hypothesis by which the so-called ‘ark narrative’ originally reflects an eighth-century BCE northern-Israelite reality, which was then worked into a seventh-century (“Josianic”) Deuteronomistic History. Others have gone even further, assuming a post-exilic date for the story. For example, Gösta W. Ahlström, “The Travels of the Ark: A Religio-Political Composition,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 34.2 (1984): 141–149 [p. 143], assumes that the writer is “the exilic D-historian.” An exilic or post exilic date for the narrative is also assumed in, Cynthia Edenburg, “The Radiance (of Yahweh) is Exiled: Reconsidering the Extent, Purpose and Historical Context of the Ark Narrative,” Fortgeschriebenes Gotteswort: Studien zu Geschichte, Theologie und Auslegung des Alten Testaments, Festschrift für Christoph Levin zum 70. Geburtstag [The Updated Word of God: Studies in History, Theology, and Interpretation of the Old Testament, A Festschrift for Christoph Levin on his 70th Birthday], ed. Reinhard Müller, Urmas Nõmmik and Juha Pakkala (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 153–174. However, in this story as in many others, we can see that the authors, or at least their sources, were indeed familiar with the geographical and social reality of pre-monarchic Israel.

For summaries of the Iron Age I settlement in the hill country see Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and Beth Alpert Nakhai, ‘A Landscape Comes to Life: The Iron I Period’, Near Eastern Archaeology 62 (1999): 62–92, 101–127 and more recently William G. Dever, Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 149–180.

On the relationship between the biblical picture of earliest Israel and the archaeological picture see Yigal Levin, “Conquered and Unconquered: Reality and Historiography in the Geography of Joshua,” in The Book of Joshua, ed. Ed Noort, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 250 (Leuven; Peeters, 2012), 361-370; ‘Ideology and Reality in the Book of Judges’, in The Ancient Near East in the 12^th-10^th Centuries BCE: Culture and History - Proceedings of the International Conference Held in the University of Haifa, 2-5 May 2010, ed. Gershon Galil, Ayelet Gilboa, Aren M. Maeir and Danel Kahn, AOAT 392 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2012), pp. 309-326.

Editor’s note: For an argument for early centralization, see Zvi Koenigsberg, “The Place(s) that YHWH will Choose: Ebal, Shiloh, and Jerusalem,” TheTorah (2019).

We do not know much about the religious life of the inhabitants, except for a few general statements in Judges about how, besides YHWH, they also worshipped the Baalim and Ashtaroth (for example Judges 2:11–13).

Even if there were arks made of wood or of gold, we would not expect to find them. The gold would have been looted long ago, and wood would have decomposed.

This site is just a few kilometers south of Beth-shemesh, east of Gath and southeast of Ekron, all sites associated with the ark in Samuel.

For one of the many publications of this site see Yosef Garfinkel, “Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Shephelah: Data and Interpretations,” in Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Shephelah: Papers Presented at a Colloquium of the Swiss Society for Ancient Near Eastern Studies held at the University of Bern, September 6, 2014 (ed. Silvia Schroer and Stefan Munger; Fribourg: Academic Press, 2017), 5–59 [31–37].

Their updated view is that these model shrines actually depict architectural details that can be compared with the biblical descriptions of Solomon’s Temple. For the earlier view see Yosef Garfinkel, Saar Ganor and Michael Hasel, עקבות דוד המלך בעמק האלה [Footsteps of King David in the Valley of Elah] (Tel-Aviv: Miskal – Yedioth Ahronoth and Chemed, 2012) 160­–163, but then see Yosef Garfinkel and Madeleine Mumcuoglu, “Triglyphs and Recessed Doorframes on a Building Model from Khirbet Qeiyafa: New Light on Two Technical Terms in the Biblical Descriptions of Solomon’s Palace and Temple,” Israel Exploration Journal 63 (2013): 135–163; Yosef Garfinkel and Madeleine Mumcuoglu, Solomon’s Temple and Palace: New Archaeological Discoveries (Jerusalem: Bible Land Museum Jerusalem – Biblical Archaeology Society, 2016), 126. Thus, in the English edition of the Footsteps book, the authors switch the terminology to “Temple Models.” See also, Madeleine Mumcuoglu and Yosef Garfinkel, “Reconstructing the Features of Solomon’s Temple,” TheTorah (2019).

For a list of such “shrine models” see Yosef Garfinkel and Madeleine Mumcuoglu, “A Shrine Model from Tel Rekhesh,” Strata: Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 33 (2015): 77-87.

This piece is based on Yigal Levin, “One Ark, Two Arks, Three Arks, More? The Many Arks of Ancient Israel,” in Epigraphy, Iconography and the Bible, ed., Meir and Edith Lubetski (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2021).