The Lost Ark of the Covenant

You may have seen the lost Ark of the Covenant melt the face of a Nazi archaeologist in a certain movie a few years back. You may not have realized that Hollywood's vision isn't that far off--the real Ark was said to be a very dangerous thing.

The Bible contains a detailed description of the Ark of the Covenant and its construction. It was a wooden chest covered inside and out with gold, roughly 50 inches long, 30 inches wide, and 30 inches high. The top of the Ark was adorned with two cherubim, facing each other, their wings stretched out over the top of the chest. The sides had rings through which gilded poles were threaded. When the tribes of Israel were on the move, priests carried the Ark at the head of their procession.

The Book of Exodus says that the Ark was constructed to hold the stone tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. Afterward, it remained a point of intersection with the divine. Tradition says that when Moses needed to speak with God, he entered the tabernacle, where the Ark was kept, and heard a voice issuing from a cloud between the cherubim.

Clearly the Ark was more than just a container, and its carriers considered it a very powerful object in its own right. They believed they were able to destroy the high walls of Jericho by carrying the Ark around the city for seven days while blowing horns. When they went to war, they brought the Ark with them in the hope that God's power would come along with it.

It didn't always work the way they hoped. In a war with the Philistines, the Israelites were beaten so badly that the Ark fell into enemy hands. But the Bible says the Philistines got more than they bargained for--wherever they took the Ark, misfortune, disease, and plagues of mice followed. After seven months of trouble, they sent it back.

The Israelites believed the Ark could be equally dangerous to them, so they kept it carefully covered to protect innocent bystanders. On one occasion, the Bible says, seventy men lost their lives simply by looking into it. Another time, King David was having the Ark carried on a wagon to Jerusalem. The oxen stumbled, and one of the drivers reached out a hand to steady the Ark. He was immediately struck dead. The accident startled David so badly that he left the Ark in a nearby house for three months.

The Ark finally did make its way to Jerusalem, though. When David's son Solomon built a temple in the 10th century BC, the Ark of the Covenant was given a place in it.

There it stayed for hundreds of years--perhaps until 586 BC, when the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Solomon's Temple and looted its treasures. Many experts think the Ark was carried away then, though it's not among the Bible's list of Babylonian plunder.

Could the Ark have been missing when the Babylonians arrived? Some argue that someone else had already stolen it. Others believe it was hidden before Nebuchadnezzar's invasion. In any event, when Jerusalem's Second Temple was built seventy years later, there was no mention of the Ark of the Covenant. As far as we know, it has never reappeared.

Recently, a number of would-be raiders have set out to find the lost Ark. Competing theories have it hidden in Jerusalem, Egypt, Ethiopia, or even Ireland. On two occasions, men have claimed they saw the Ark: first inside a cave beneath Temple Mount (now the site of the Dome of the Rock), and later beneath the spot where Jesus was crucified. Both times the alleged discovery was left unexcavated and unverified. The legends pile up, but the Ark remains as lost as ever.

Mark Diller
March 9, 2005