Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

One of the things you may notice as we drop into Chronicles from time to time is that things

aren't always in the same order. It can be confusing and frustrating sometimes, but remember that

there won't be a quiz at the end of this. Being able to follow the timeline is super helpful,

but our main focus is to see who God is. Besides, most of the time it isn't actually confusing at

all. It just requires a little mental adjusting if the storyline moves backward a step instead

of forward.

We open today with David making plans to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, the newly

seized, newly named capital of the nation of Israel. You may recall from back in 1st Samuel 4 that

the Philistines stole the ark in a battle, and when Eli the priest heard the news, he fell over and died.

God plagued the Philistines as long as they had the ark, so they decided to get rid of it by

sending it away on milk cows. According to 1st Samuel 6, the cows went first to the Israelites

in Bess Chamesh, but they mistreated the ark and several of them died. So they sent it to the home of a man

named Abinadab in Kiryeth Jerram. It remained there as long as Saul was king, probably because

Saul didn't understand its value to the people of Israel. It was considered the earthly throne of God,

after all. David does see its value, though. He seeks counsel from God, other leaders,

and even the people as he plans to bring the ark to Jerusalem. He decides to assemble the entire

nation for this event. But there is one problem from the start. David has a lot of zeal in this,

but fails to yield to God's rules for how the Ark should be

treated. First of all, the Ark is only supposed to be moved by the Levites, but David

disregards that rule. And second, the Ark isn't supposed to be moved on a cart. Remember,

it's supposed to be moved on poles. The decision to move it on a cart may not be

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