Pleasant Stone Devotional Meditation: November 12

“And when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again … And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man into his tent” ~ 1 Samuel 4:5, 10a

Here is a “many-colored” passage which seems contradictory at first glance. We will, of course, not attempt to step into the scholar’s domain and fit it into context in the historical progress of Israel toward God. But there seems to me [Eugenia Price, the author] to be a definite word for us in it. One which we might very easily miss.

“When the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout … [but] the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled.”

Have you been in a predicament from which you cried out with a “great shout” to heaven for help, and even after your “great shout” and declaration of faith, the enemy still ran you down? Did you still yield to that temptation? Did you still fail? Did it seem as though God didn’t hear you at all?

Do you think it seemed that way to the Israelites too, as “they fled every man into his own tent”? But what did the account say they did? They shouted with a “great shout … when the ark” came in! We do not condemn them. Christ had not come. The veil over the holy of holies had not yet been torn from the top to the bottom.

But I could not help making application to myself as I read of their apparent lack of response. Had they perhaps been shouting at the ark and not at God? Do we sometimes almost superstitiously cry to heaven instead of to God Himself?

“Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with HIM is plenteous redemption. Come unto ME. If any man thirst, let him come unto ME and drink.”