The superseding of the ark.
Along with the denunciations and painful descriptions which Jehovah has put into the mouth of the prophet, there now begins to be mingled a gracious, evangelical element. God's severest condemnations are meant to pave the way for return, repentance, reconciliation, and a reception of still more abundant gifts than before. Far and wide Israel has been scattered, but scattered only to be brought together again. Though there be but one in a city and two in a nation, God will find out the isolated ones and draw them back to him. Then, with pastors after God's own heart, what can there be but increase and multiplication of the flock of God? And then comes what is evidently meant to be considered as a great blessing, though at first it seems to point to another sad apostasy, and to forgetfulness of one of the holiest and most precious treasures of the past. The ark of the covenant, with the tables of the Law deposited within, was the very center of religious associations to the nation. But now it is to be no more spoken of. God, indeed, trusts that the memory of it was to pass away. Reading such a verse as this, how one is made to feel the importance of time as an element necessary to the proper understanding of things! Such words as these spoken by Israel at an earlier date would have been a very bad sign, but spoken at the time when all was ripe for them, they become just as much a sign for good. The ark of the covenant—the literal ark with the literal tables of stone—could not be a permanent institution. For centuries it had been holy—holy not in word only, but also in deed. Consider how God honored it, when for a time it was lodged in Philistia; consider the calamities that came upon the men of Bethshemesh and upon Uzziah, for their thoughtless handling of the ark. Much thus happened to make the Israelite very careful how he dealt with it. David and Solomon in particular were very solicitous to honor the ark to the utmost of their power. This is seen not only in the bringing of the ark up into the city of David, and the putting of it into the temple by Solomon, but perhaps even more in the conduct of Solomon to Abiathar, when Abiathar was implicated in the offence of Adonijah. Solomon spared the man he would otherwise have slain, because he had borne the ark of the Lord God before David (1 Kings 2:26). But there can be no doubt that as generation succeeded generation, the general feeling would become so mixed with superstition as to do more harm than good. The people had said, "The ark of the covenant of the Lord," but their saying had not amounted to much. The ark had been remembered, but the writing on the stones within had been forgotten. The longer it stood as the central object of a unique ritual, the more it became a symbol of separation from other nations. That which had been given so that one set of thoughts should be associated with it, thoughts to help in making pure, reverent, and watchful, had ended in having quite another set of thoughts associated with it. And so both the object itself seems to have vanished, and at the same time its dominion to have ceased. It is surely a very remarkable thing that all through the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah there is no reference to the ark. The vessels of God's house are mentioned, an altar was set up and offerings made, and in due time a temple built; but there is no word of the ark. Its work was done, and we are not so much as told what became of it. We know that the brazen serpent was declared Nehushtan, but the withdrawal of the ark God manages in complete silence. So true it is that—
"God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
—Y.