The story of Uzzah

Maybe you’ve never heard the story of Uzzah, and how God struck him down for trying to rescue the ark. It’s a strange story, and it can seem to have no relevance at all for us today. It does — and the reason may surprise you. Let’s take it step by step.

The Story

Before Israel’s first king, Saul, was enthroned, Israel was at war with the Philistines and decided to bring the ark of the covenant into battle so that they would win. The ark was where God resided in the Old Testament, and Israel assumed God would never let their enemy win the battle and capture it. They were wrong — God does not allow himself to be manipulated like that.

The Philistines captured the ark and set it up in the house of their god as a sign of their triumph. But God turned this around and the Philistines decided to send the ark back. Their priests put it on a cart with a gift, drawn by two cows. It arrived at the house of Abinadab and stayed there for many years.

Later David, the next king, wanted to bring the ark to Jerusalem. Two sons of Abinadab went with it: Uzzah and Ahio. The ark was put on a cart drawn by oxen. When the oxen stumbled, Uzzah reached out to stop the ark from sliding off the cart. And God struck him down for it.

David is shaken by this, and it takes him three months before he tries again — this time, differently.

What is going on?

To make sense of this, we need to go back a bit further in the story. When God gave instructions for the ark and the sanctuary, he was very clear about how it should be transported, back in the days of the Exodus, when the tent was constantly on the move.

The innermost furnishings were to be carried only by the Levites, consecrated for this purpose on behalf of all Israel. The ark was where God lived, and he had no interest in being hauled around by an animal — he wanted to stay in physical contact, on the journey, with his own beloved people.

By the time the ark came back from Philistine territory, the Philistines could be forgiven for not knowing better and setting it on a cart. Israel had no such excuse, and Uzzah least of all — the ark had sat at his father’s house for roughly 20 years.

God, it seems, wanted to break out of this arrangement by letting the ark slide off the cart. Uzzah stopped him, and God punished him for it.

And today?

Even today, God looks for ways to come close to us. And we, in turn, have plenty of ways of boxing him in and keeping him at arm’s length.

God wants to break out of those boxes, but we often do our best to stop him — for what we tell ourselves is his own good. As this story shows, God is willing to break something we consider precious in order to draw near to us, and it turns out we were wrong to hold onto it so tightly.

In Revelation

The ark stood behind a curtain. Only the high priest went in there, and only once a year. When Jesus died, the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

Revelation shows what that means. When the seventh trumpet sounds, “God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple”. What was hidden is now in the open. What this sight means depends on who sees it. For those who belong to Jesus, the way to God is open, and he is present with his people. For those who fight him, the same nearness comes with lightning, thunder and earthquake.¹

And at the end there is no curtain, no box and no temple at all: “the dwelling place of God is with man”. That is where the story of the temple and the presence of God was heading all along.

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