I was there when Uzzah died.  A tragic accident, and something that should never have happened.

King David is a wonderful king over Judah and Israel, and he was a magnificent leader even before that, but in this case, he was probably the one who made the mistake.

What a responsibility to bear!  A king has so many people depending on him, and any mistake he makes can cost individuals so much.

Don’t take this to be a criticism of David.  He is very much a man after God’s own heart, and I owe him everything good that I have in life.

I couldn’t have done any better myself, because at the time I knew no more than anyone else about how Yahweh’s ark should be treated.  Now, though, I think that I know everything God has ever told his people about what they should do for his ark.  In fact, I might know more than any natural-born Israelite.  You see, I didn’t want to die like Uzzah, or the men of Beth-shemesh, or my countrymen before them.

Yes, many people have died over the years because they have been careless with Yahweh’s ark.  But as far as I can tell, no-one has ever been hurt if they have been careful to obey the instructions that God has given about it.  I am not an Israelite, but I have done my best to obey his rules in life – and particularly in regard to the ark of his covenant with Israel.

I first met David in my hometown, Gath.  Saul, the king of Israel, was persecuting David in a way that just didn’t make sense.  In fact, it made so little sense that we in Gath used to call him “Crazy Saul” because of the way he behaved.  One of the things that impressed me about David when I first got to know him was that he wouldn’t ever use that name, or let us use it either.  Imagine that, a foreign visitor who insisted that his hosts treat their enemy – and his – with respect!  Yet David didn’t seem to be worried that we might be suspicious of his motives or think that he was really on Saul’s side.  He had his standards and he didn’t care who knew what they were.

Later I found that he was not quite as straightforward a character as I had thought, but he always had moral reasons for what he did.  He didn’t do things just for convenience or self-aggrandisement.

When David came to Achish at Gath, I was in Achish’s army, and very suspicious of this wonder-boy from Israel.  It seemed to me that he was probably a spy, sent to find out information about our army.  But even if he wasn’t a spy, he was still a real threat to those of us who were fighting for Achish.  He was already famous for his bravery and remarkable leadership, so what would happen when he and his men joined our army?  I wasn’t the only one who was worried that he and his men would take all of the best jobs in Achish’s army.

We tried to resist his influence, chip away at his credibility, question his behaviour, do anything that we could to slow him down and, if possible, get rid of him.

But as I got to know him, I liked what I saw.  He turned out to be more religious than any other man I know, but he was religious in a practical sense.  He didn’t spend all of his time in temples worshipping; instead, he lived what he believed.

He was a virtuoso on any instrument he picked up: music just oozed out of him, and he could make a lyre sound as if it had suddenly realised what music was all about.  There didn’t seem to be any style of music that he couldn’t make irresistible.  Watching him play was a joy in itself, and hearing him sing his amazing poetry was beyond description.

Some soldiers do have skill with music, but on the whole, our words and music tend to be crude and clumsy – the sort of thing you might expect from people who are normally under the influence of wine when they make music!

David used music as a tool of exquisite sensitivity, and his tunes made even the best work of our Philistine composers seem heavy and ungainly.  On an instrument, his hands moved with a gentleness, an airy caress that seemed completely at variance with the picture of a strapping war hero who had violently planted a rock between the eyes of Goliath, our greatest champion, and then hacked off the man’s head with his own colossal sword.

Yet it was neither the tunes nor the rhythms that made David’s music so beautiful – it was the words he matched with them, and the perfect balance he achieved between joy and melancholy, praise and hope.

Even the most beautiful scene you have ever marvelled at is cold and empty without the haunting delight of David’s exquisite melodies as he alone can coax them from a harp.  Yet even with such ethereal music filling your heart with wonder, it is only with the addition of his poetry, sung in a throat-catchingly beautiful tenor, that you really begin to understand what is missing in life.  David alone is able to show us how great a yearning man can have for fellowship with the eternal God of creation.

All of this, David could do, and I was blessed to meet him and learn from him about Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one.  David has convinced Hittites, Cushites, Ammonites, Jebusites and many others to believe in the one true God.  It’s just part of him, and he has never told us that we’re not good enough to worship God.  Some of his countrymen think that they are so special because God chose Israel, but David isn’t like that at all.  He talks of the promise God made to Abraham that God’s people would be a blessing to all nations, and he really believes it.  He wants us all to believe in Yahweh and love his laws.

While David was still living with Achish in Gath, I managed to wangle a position on his staff.  By that time, I was convinced that Dagon and our other gods were nothing compared with Yahweh, and being in David’s camp made it easier to avoid the religious festivals that I no longer felt comfortable with.  It made things easier with my family too, because they wouldn’t accept that I thought of Dagon as nothing but a lifeless idol.

When David moved to Ziklag, I went with him and was glad to cut off my connections with Philistia.  I was sad to leave my family behind completely, but they hadn’t given me any choice.

But I’d better skip over the years we spent in Ziklag and Hebron, and David’s conquest of Jebus, or I’ll never get to the part that really matters – and why it matters.

I stayed with David through all of that time, but I was really getting a bit old for fighting in the army, so when he moved to Jebus (and called it Jerusalem again), I took the opportunity to settle down.  Since I knew from David that Jerusalem is special to God, it seemed the best place to live, and just living in the same city as David is encouraging anyway.

Then David came up with this plan of bringing the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem and putting it in a tent near his palace.  It seemed a beautiful plan to me.  As a Philistine – even before I got to know David – I had a great respect for the ark, since my people had tried to take it away from Israel as a trophy and thousands had lost their lives as a result.

I didn’t know it then, but when God told Moses to build the ark, it wasn’t just an ark that he was to build.  He was also to build a tent for the ark to live in.  The ark was to be the centrepiece of the whole tabernacle, which was really a portable temple for the Israelites to use in the wilderness while they were travelling to the promised land of Israel.  The tent was to stand inside a curtain-walled courtyard, while the ark would stay inside an inner room of the tent.  Only one man – the High Priest – was ever allowed to go into that inner room.  That information alone should have shown everyone that they had to be very careful with the ark – it wasn’t just a gold-plated box with some poles attached!

But the people of Israel had not looked after the ark properly at all – I know that now.  They had used it more as a good-luck charm or a talisman, in the hope that it would win them battles.  They had removed the ark from the tent and taken it to a battlefield, but, far from giving them good luck, Israel had lost the battle so badly that my people, the Philistines, got their hands on the holy ark.

It wasn’t long before they wished they hadn’t!

At that time my father was just a few years old and my grandfather was fighting in the army of the king of Gath.  Over the next seven months, Yahweh attacked Dagon our god and brought such terrible plagues on my people that finally everyone was almost certain that the plagues couldn’t be happening just by chance.

However, we all know that unusual things can still happen by chance, so somebody had the bright idea of putting the ark on a cart as a test.  The clever bit was to yoke to the cart two cows that had never worn a yoke before, and were also still feeding their calves, which were locked up back in their stalls.

Ordinarily, utter confusion would result, as the two cows would have no idea how to pull together in a yoke, and anyway, they would both be fighting to get back to their calves!