암소의 울음
7–9. An experiment is set up to test out whether or not the Lord had been responsible for the plagues, for they might have happened quite by chance. Every effort was to be made to do the reverent thing: the cart was to be new and the cows unyoked. Since the cows were unused to pulling a cart, and had calves dependent on them, all their instincts would be to turn back. If, contrary to expectations, they pressed ahead with the precious load, that would be proof that the Lord had been responsible.
10–12. Contrary to nature, the cows made no attempt to return to their calves, though they lowed after them, so fulfilling the sign that the Lord had been afflicting the Philistines.
Then the cows headed straight for the road to Beth Shemesh, and went along the highway, lowing as they went, and did not turn aside to the right hand or the left
The diviners and priests directed the Philistines to send the ark back to Israel for two purposes: first, to remove the deadly object—and thereby Israel’s deity—from their territory; and second, to determine the true origin of the Philistines’ recent societal upheavals. To accomplish both ends simultaneously, the ark along with a chest containing the Lord’s guilt offering were to be placed on “a new cart” (v. 7) pulled by “two cows” that had calved and had “never been yoked” and who had been forcefully separated from their unweaned calves. If a team of cows that had never been trained or yoked could work together to pull the cart straight for a stretch of several miles, all the while ignoring their maternal instincts to respond to the cries of their unweaned calves, then Yahweh would indeed be accepted as the source of “this great disaster.” However, if the cows failed to pull the cart “as far as the border of Beth Shemesh,” then the whole series of recent Philistine catastrophes would be understood to have happened “by chance” (v. 9).
Having set up the test according to the diviners’ guidelines, the Philistines observed that “the cows went straight up toward Beth Shemesh, keeping on the road and lowing all the way” (v. 12). Not once did the untrained cows “turn to the right or to the left.” In convincing fashion Yahweh had demonstrated that the Philistines’ troubles were no accident of nature. To the Philistines their troubles were thus interpreted as the deliberate actions of an angry foreign deity
