Today's reading: 2 Samuel 6; 2 Corinthians 8
2 Samuel 6 is one of those infamous passages that people like to use to attack the bible without any real context or understanding of what is going on. As David is having the Ark of the Covenant brought up to Jerusalem, the oxen pulling the cart it is on stumble and one of the men leading them, Uzzah, steadies the ark and is immediately struck down by the Lord. People point to how senselessly violent and entirely unnecessary it was for God to kill him for protecting the ark from falling, and use that to attack God's goodness, justice, love, etc. But is that really what's happening here?
Obviously not, or I probably wouldn't be writing a post about it...
What we have to realize as we read this account is that basically everything they are doing with the ark is wrong. The Ark of the Covenant was the symbol of God's presence among His people, and as such was the holiest item in the tabernacle. When the tabernacle and the ark were built, God gave very specific instructions as to how it was to be transported. If you remember back to when we read Numbers earlier this year, Numbers 4 included the instruction that when Israel was ready to set out, Aaron and his sons (i.e. the priests) were to cover the Ark of the Covenant with three layers of cloth (the sanctuary veil, a goat skin, and a blue cloth), and then put in the poles for carrying it. Then, once everything was covered, the Kohathites (one specific family of the Levites) were to come and pick it up by the poles, with the explicit note that they were not to touch any of the holy things lest they die. In fact, in Numbers 7, Moses gives carts to the different Levitical families for carrying all the objects of the tabernacle, but it specifically says that no carts were given to the Kohathites because the holy things had to be carried on their shoulders.
But what is happening in 2 Samuel 6? The sons of Abinadab, none of whom are Levites, put the Ark of the Covenant on a cart, uncovered, and started leading it up the road, and then, on top of all that, one of them reaches out and touches the most holy thing which not even the Levites were allowed to touch. Uzzah touching the ark was not the first thing they did wrong, it was one of many, but it was the final straw and God, true to His word back in Numbers 4, struck him down for touching it.
1 Chronicles 15 also gives us more info about the second time David went to get the ark and it tells us that he went to the priests and Levites that time and told them that God broke out against them the first time because he didn't have the Levites carrying it and they weren't doing it according to God's rules. So David knew what God had said about the ark back in Numbers 4, he and those with him had simply chosen to ignore God's instructions and do it their way, ultimately resulting in Uzzah's death.
I think 2 Samuel 6 is something of a warning shot from God to David. David loves God and wants to follow Him, but he wasn't being careful to follow God in the way God said He was to be followed. If David was going to be a good and faithful king, leading Israel to faithfulness to Him as His covenant people, then it was important for him to lead the people in the ways God had declared, and not according to his own ways or wisdom.
We don't get to pick how God is to be worshipped. We don't get to decide which of His instructions we like and want to follow and which ones we don't. God is God, not us. We can choose not to follow Him, we have that choice, but we can't say we are going to follow Him and then do it in a way that is opposed to His express commands, that's just not how it works. Either we follow God the way He says we are to follow Him, or we are following a religion of our own creation.
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