Now it chanced that this day the men in the valleys of Bethshemesh were in the fields reaping their wheat. It was near noon, and hot and still. And as, sickle in hand, they toiled on at their labour, they heard the lowing of cattle, and looked up; and they saw approaching them from the direction of Ekron a cart, brand-new and of strange workmanship, and drawn by two milch cows.

They marvelled at the sight, and hastened out to meet it, for though the beasts harnessed to it came on without pause, turning neither to one side nor to the other, nor stayed to graze, they were without reins, and no man sat above to drive them or walked at their heads to lead them on their way.

The cart came on until it reached the field of a man named Joshua, and there the beasts, as if at the biddance of a voice they had heard, came to a standstill, opposite a great flat-headed stone that was in the midst of the field.

Then the harvesters drew near to the cart. They lifted up the embroidered canopy and the sun in heaven smote down upon the outstretched wings of the cherubim within. It was as if a dazzling lamp had been kindled in the splendour of noonday. And they saw the Ark of the Lord and the coffer of wood containing the golden images which the princes of the Philistines had commanded should be set beside it. They were like men demented with joy and astonishment at sight of it, and sent off messengers far and wide to carry the glad tidings. And they themselves unharnessed the Philistines’ sacred cows, hewed in pieces the timber of the cart, and offered them up as a sacrifice to the Lord. The smoke of the sacrifice rose up in the windless air of the morning and was visible even to the Philistines who still watched from afar, on the towered walls of Ekron.

But the Philistines, though they had surrendered the Ark of the Lord, continued to oppress the Israelites and to hold them in subjection. And Samuel, who was now acknowledged throughout Israel as a prophet, and was made judge over Israel, mourned for Eli, and ministered no more before the Ark. A shrine was made for it in a house upon a hill that was appointed for its resting-place; and a Levite named Eleazar was sanctified to its charge. But Samuel returned to dwell in Ramah, in the house where he was born.