VIII. OBED-EDOM AND THE ARK

But there is another circumstance connected with this removal of the Ark of God to Jerusalem, which bespeaks, like the last, the fidelity with which the tale is told. It was the intention of David to have conveyed this emblem of God’s presence with his people from Kirjath-jearim (from Ephratah, where they found it in the wood [Ps. 132:6.] ) at once to his own city. An incident, however, of which I shall presently speak, occurred to shake his purpose and change his plan. “So David,” we read upon this, “would not remove the Ark of the Lord unto him into the city of David; but David carried it aside into the house of Obed-Edom, the Gittite.” [2 Sam. 6:10.] Now what regulated David in choosing the house of Obed-Edom as a resting-place for the Ark? Was it an affair of mere chance? It might be so; no motive whatever for the selection of his house above that of another man, is assigned—but this we are taught, that “when the cart which bare the Ark came to Nachon’s threshing-floor, Uzzah put forth his hand and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it—and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him there for his error, and he died by the Ark of God.” [2 Sam. 6:6.] It had been commanded, as we find in the seventh chapter of the Book of Numbers (v. 9.), that the Ark should be borne on the shoulders of the Levites—David, however, had placed it in a cart, after the fashion of the Philistines’ idols, and had neglected the Levitical precept. The sudden death of Uzzah, and the nature of his offence, alarms him, sets him to think, reminds him of his neglect, and he turns to the house of Obed-Edom, the Gittite. The epithet here so incidentally annexed to the name of Obed-Edom, enables us to answer the question, wherefore David chose the house of this man, with some probability of being right in our conjecture. For we learn from the Book of Joshua, that Gath (distinguished from other towns of the same name, by the addition of Rimmon [Joshua 21:24.] ) was one of the cities of the Levites; nor of the Levites only, but of the Kohathites (v. 20), the very family specially set apart from the Levites, that “they should bear the Ark upon their shoulders.” [Num. 7:9.] If, therefore, Obed-Edom was called the Gittite, from this Gath, as he doubtless was so called from some Gath or other, then must he have been a Levite; and more than this, actually a Kohathite; so that he would be strictly in his office when keeping the Ark; and because he was so, he was selected; David causing the Ark to be “carried aside,” or out of the direct road (for that is the force of the expression [See Num. 20:17, where the same Hebrew word is used, and 22:23.] ), precisely for the purpose of depositing it with a man of an order, and of a peculiar division of that order, which God had chosen for his Ark-bearers. Accordingly, we read in the fifteenth chapter of the first Book of Chronicles,—where a fuller account, in some particulars, is given, than in the parallel passage of Samuel, of the final removal of the Ark from under the roof of Obed-Edom to Jerusalem,—that the profane cart was no longer employed on this occasion, but the more reverential mode of conveyance, and that which the Law enjoined, was now strictly adopted in its stead (v. 15); and, moreover, that Obed-Edom was appointed to take an active part in the ceremonial (v. 18, 24).

This I look upon as a coincidence of some value—(supposing it, of course, to be fairly made out)—of some value, I mean, even independently of its general bearing upon the credibility of Scripture; for it is a touch of truth in the circumstantial details of an event which is in its nature miraculous. This it establishes as a fact, that, for some reason or other, David went out of his way to deposit the Ark with an individual of a family whose particular province it was to serve and bear the Ark. This, I say, is established by the coincidence as a fact—and here, taking my stand with substantial ground under my feet, I can with safety, and without violence, gradually feel my way along through the inconvenience which prompted this deviation from the direct path; this change in the mode of conveyance; this sudden reverence for the laws of the Ark; even up to the disaster which befel the rash and unconsecrated Uzzah, and the caution and alarm it inspired, as being a manifest interposition of God for the vindication of his honour; and when I find the apparently trivial appellation of the Gittite, thus pleading for the reality of a marvellous act of the Almighty, I am reminded how carefully we should gather up every word of Scripture, that nothing be lost; and I am led to contemplate the precautions, the superstitious precautions of the Rabbins, if you will, that one jot or one tittle may not be suffered to pass from the text of the Law, not without respect, as if its every letter might contain some hidden treasure, some unsuspected fount from which virtue might happily go out for evidence, for doctrine, or for duty.