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superstition and profanity would entail judgment at His Hand. What the peculiar
desecration or sin of the Beth-shemites may have been, either on that day of almost
unbounded excitement, or afterwards, we cannot tell.^59 Suffice it that it was
something which the people themselves felt to be incompatible with the "holiness"
of Jehovah God (ver. 20), and that it was punished by the death of not less than
seventy persons.^60 In consequence the ark was, at the request of the Beth-shemites,
once more removed, up the heights at the head of the valley to the "city of forest-
trees," Kirjath-jearim, where it was given in charge to Abinadab, no doubt a Levite;
whose son Eleazar was set apart to the office of guardian, not priest, of the ark.^61
Here this sacred symbol remained, while the tabernacle itself was moved from
Shiloh to Nob, and from Nob to Gibeon, till David brought it, after the conquest of
Jerusalem, into his royal city (2 Samuel 6:2, 3, 12). Thus for all this period the
sanctuary was empty of that which was its greatest treasure, and the symbol of God's
Personal Presence removed from the place in which He was worshipped.
(^)