Introduction

Perhaps the most famous of all religious artifacts is the ark of the covenant. This mysterious device, kept at first under a tent and later in Solomon's temple, was considered the throne of the LORD because he appeared there when Moses would go in to speak with Him.

Today, most of the fascination with the ark seems to revolve around finding it, because it was lost at some point and then never mentioned again in the bible. However, this article is not about finding it, it's about learning more about it, because it's one of the most obvious uses of technology found in the bible. Technology which could effect face-to-face meetings with the LORD as well as darker things like killing people. We'll get into that later in this article.

What is the ark of the covenant?

The ark of the covenant is a gold-plated acacia wood chest measuring about 5 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet deep, with lifting staves on the sides (which were never to be removed) and a solid gold lid referred to as "the mercy seat", with two cherubim (angels) on top, positioned facing each other with their wings outstretched towards each other, forming a sort of roof over the ark. It was under this roof, between the two cherubim that The LORD was said to appear and speak with Moses. The bible calls this spot "the mercy seat", because it was seen as the throne of the LORD. It is unclear whether the mercy seat was the lid of the Ark, or merely sat on top of the Ark, possibly with the Ark having a cover beneath it:


Notice in the Leviticus passage, the LORD says he will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat. The cloud was the result of incense that was to be burned there as this verse explains:

So what we have here sounds like a projection device that needed the 'cloud' of incense to function, much as we use smoke with lasers today, where the smoke in the air is what allows us to see the laser beam.



Notice the end of the verse: "that he die not". The reason given for the incense cloud was to partly obscure the perfect image of God, thus nullifying the law that anyone who sees God would die. But as is the case so often in the Old Testament, one suspects that this reason was not the real reason for the cloud. The real reason may have been to allow the image to be seen.

Many may be asking at this point: Why would anyone who saw the LORD's face die? The LORD himself told this to Moses, but didn't explain it:

Did he want to keep his appearance a secret? If so, why? Or was it because, as some commentaries suggest, our mortal bodies could not take the shock. We simply don't know, but there are dozens of verses that attest to this concept. To see a list of these verses, visit Death Due To God's Presence.

Why is it called the ark of the covenant?

The word ark just means a chest or box used to house and preserve something. Covenant means contract or agreement. This contract was simple: if you keep my commandments, I will be your God and protect you. The ten commandments were written upon two stone tablets which the LORD gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. The ark was intended to be the home of these tablets, hence the name ark of the covenant.

What else was in the ark?

In addition to the two stone tablets, the ark also contained Aaron's rod and a golden pot of manna. Both Moses and Aaron had rods that were endowed with miraculous power during the Plagues of Egypt, and it was in fact Aaron's rod that, when cast down on the ground in Pharaoh's court, became a snake. Later, during the exodus, Aaron's rod became the target of another miracle: The people had been grumbling against Aaron, a Levite, being made a high priest, so Moses placed a rod from each of the twelve tribes into the tabernacle (tent) with the ark. The next morning, Aaron's rod (and only his) had budded, blossomed, and yielded almonds. Moses hoped this would stop the grumbling against Aaron and ordered the rod to be kept in the ark.




What kind of technology—if it is technology—could produce this effect? Could this same technology heal the sick, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf?

The Holy Anointing Oil

Curiously, instruction was also given to anoint the tent, the ark, and all the vessels in the tent (incense utensils, etc) with the mysterious Holy Anointing Oil, which oil was to be used strictly by the priests alone. Interestingly, the primary component was Myrrh, one of the gifts brought by the Magi to baby Jesus. And Frankincense is Myrrh resin. So it seems that the Magi were providing the ingredients of a Holy Anointing oil to Jesus.



Back to the Old Testament, no one knows why the LORD required his priests to use this oil, but it was serious business: any non-priest caught wearing this oil was to be put to death.

The golden pot of manna

The reason for keeping the golden pot of manna in the ark remains mysterious, partly because no one knows what the manna really was. There are some tantalizing clues, however. Psalms declares it to be angels' food and seems to marvel that man was given the opportunity to eat of it:

And the Homily of the Papyrus of Turin declares the manna to be the flesh in which divinity resides: In this excerpt, Mary, pregnant with Jesus, is seen as the new ark because within her was "the true manna", the baby Jesus:

In The Mt. Sinai Event, we presented evidence that the manna may have been a form of a recently re-discovered miraculous substance known as The White Powder of Gold, a room-temperature superconductor, something that mainstream science today believes is impossible. This substance was observed to have supernatural qualities such as negative weight and the ability to vanish and re-appear during heating and cooling. When Moses, in his wrath, saw the golden calf, something remarkable happened: he used fire to somehow convert the gold to a powder (the White Powder of Gold is not metallic due to the high spin state of the atoms). He then mixed that powder with water and made the Israelites drink it.

The reason for this is never explained, but it would seem he believed it would have a positive effect on them. This idea fits nicely with the idea that the manna was the flesh in which divinity manifests. In the New Testament, Jesus declares himself to be the true manna from heaven which, if a man eats, he will not die. The eucharist is based on this idea.

So why was a golden pot of manna kept in the ark? No one knows. But it's clear that the manna was not just bread, because bread would decay and rot quickly. If this was indeed the White Powder of Gold, then one might reasonably conclude, given its miraculous properties, that it had something to do with the functioning of the ark. That's about as far as we can take it.

When was it built and by whom?

During the first of Moses' two stays on Mt. Sinai with the LORD, the LORD commissioned him to build the ark, giving him detailed instructions. When he returned down the mountain, Moses commissioned a skilled craftsman, Bezalel, to build it. The name Bezalel name is composed of two parts: Bezal (in the shadow of i.e., "under his protection"), and el (of God).

Where did they get the gold for the ark?

The construction of the ark required a large amount of gold. But from where did the Israelites get the gold? As it turns out, the LORD had instructed each and every one of them to borrow jewels of silver and gold from their Egyptian neighbors just prior to their exodus:

which is interesting for two reasons: 1) we're told the Israelites had been slaves, yet they were apparently on good enough terms with their Egyptian neighbors that they could borrow gold and silver from them, and 2) It would appear that the LORD had always intended to have the ark built since he instructed them to borrow the gold for it prior to their exodus from Egypt.

The golden calf

While it was the LORD's plan to use the gold to build the ark, the Israelites had developed other plans. It turns out that because Moses had been gone for so long in the mountain, his people below had become impatient, perhaps imagining that he might be gone for good, so they took matters into their own hands and used the gold to build the golden calf:

The phrase which shall go before us isn't explained, but when the ark was built, it's written that the ark itself went before them during their journeys to find them a good place to camp and to scare off or kill their enemies in advance:

Back to our story. Moses comes down from the mount and sees merriment, hears singing, and sees the golden calf. He destroys it and then, presumably, uses the gold from the calf to build the ark of the covenant.

The pillar of cloud

Each time Moses went into the tent to speak with the LORD, the famous pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night appeared at the door to the tent. One wonders if this column of light had a facilitating role in enabling the ark to project the image of the LORD:

Recently, the image below, and many more like it, made the rounds of the internet, purporting to be mysterious, but were easily debunked: the beam is an artifact of a rolling shutter camera, the type found on iPhone 6 or greater. The photo is taken during a lightning strike. Nevertheless, the image serves well to illustrate what the pillar of cloud by day may have looked like. At night it would be glowing, hence the term pillar of fire.

The ark kills Aaron's sons on the spot

One of the first signs that the ark was more than it appeared was when it killed two of Aaron's sons. Aaron, who was Moses' brother and right hand man, had delegated to his sons the task of burning incense in the tent where the ark was. Apparently they had been drinking (this is inferred from what Moses later spoke on this incident). And whereas they were supposed to use the coals from the altar of incense in the tabernacle ^{Lev 16:12}, they used coals from some other fire. For this seemingly minute transgression they were killed on the spot:

We get more and remarkable detail about exactly how they were killed from the Midrash (rabbinical commentary on the Torah): Two threads of "fire" (perhaps we should read "light"), one for each son, emanated out from the mercy seat, and then each thread was forked into two threads, and entered into their nostrils, burning them from the inside while leaving their clothes untouched:

This raises a lot of questions. First, why the nostrils? Given that incense is related to the nose (scent), was this an intentional act of the LORD intended to make the point that the smell offended the LORD? Or were the nostrils simply the easiest way for the threads to get into the body?

Moreover, this punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime. How could such a seemingly small error exact a punishment of death? Could this have been unintentional? If so then we're left to speculate that their error triggered a machine malfunction. Hard to say, but there is another similar incident with the ark killing someone for the most trivial of reasons, mentioned later. Search for "Uzzah" below.

The ark destroys snakes, scorpions, and thorns

This same mechanism—the laser-like beams of light that burned Aaron's sons to death—was also witnessed during their journeying. The ark went before them using these beams to destroy snakes, scorpions, thorns, as well as their enemies:

This begs the question: Who was controlling the ark such that it could locate and target these objects on the ground for destruction via its beams? Someone had to be able to see these objects and active the ark's beams. Was this done from above, or was the LORD's presence somehow inside the pot of manna as suggested by the Midrashim?

The ark stops the River Jordan to allow it to be crossed

One of the most famous miracles of the Old Testament was when Moses held up his rod to part the Red Sea, but another equally amazing and almost identical incident occurred later, but this time it was attributed to the Ark. As the Israelites were about to cross the River Jordon to come into Jericho, marking their coming into the promised land, the priests carrying the ark went first. The moment their feet touched the water, the river ceased flowing as if dammed upstream, and they could see the waters building up there, being held back. The priests then tarried to allow the people to cross over the dry river bed, then crossed over themselves. Once all were all across, the river resumed its flow.

The ark destroys the walls of Jericho

In the Battle of Jericho, the Ark was marched around the city once a day for seven days, preceded by the armed men and seven priests sounding seven trumpets of rams' horns (Josh. 6:4-15). On the seventh day, the seven priests sounding the seven trumpets of rams' horns before the Ark compassed the city seven times and, with a great shout, Jericho's wall fell down flat and the people took the city:

The ark kills thousands for merely gazing at it

During a battle with their enemy the Philistines, the Philistines captured the ark from the Israelites and kept it for 7 months. However, after 7 months, they gave it back in a hurry because an array of plagues befell them wherever they took the ark. At Ashdod it was placed in the temple of Dagon. The next morning Dagon was found face down, bowed down before it; and on being restored to his place, he was on the following morning again found face down and broken.



The people of Ashdod were smitten with hemorrhoids; a plague of mice was sent over the land. The affliction of boils was also visited upon the people of Gath and of Ekron. On advice from their diviners, the Philistines gave the ark back to Israel in the field of Beth-shemite, and the Beth-shemites offered sacrifices and burnt offerings. Out of curiosity the men of Beth-shemesh gazed at the Ark; and as a punishment, seventy of them (fifty-thousand and seventy in some manuscripts) were killed dead:

The ark kills an Israelite for merely trying to help hold it up

In this, the last incident we'll cover in this article, an Israelite named Uzzah put his hand on the ark as it was being transported in order to help stabilize it because the oxen were shaking it. For this transgression, he was killed on the spot by the ark:



Here we have another incident where the punishment does not appear to fit the crime. Recall the commandment that the lifting staves were never to be removed. The Midrash interprets this commandment to mean that the ark must be carried by men using the lifting staves, never carted by oxen. Why would this be important? Well, we see in this case that they were using oxen to cart the ark, and that the oxen shook the ark. Could it be that excessive shaking of the ark might produce a dangerous malfunction? If so, then it's at least possible that what happened to Uzzah was an accident (electrocution?) caused by the shaking of the ark.

Where is it now?

No one knows. It was either hidden prior to an enemy attack, or was captured by an enemy. But this may have been according to design, because the prophet Jeremiah revealed that the LORD had planned an end to the use of the ark, saying that while it was originally considered the throne of the LORD, Jerusalem itself will become the new throne of the LORD, and the ark will be forgotten:

Conclusion

Through twenty-first century eyes, when we read the story of the ark, we can easily imagine that this was a piece of technology. It seems to have been, among other things, a projection device by which Moses was able to have face-to-face conversations with the LORD. The use of smoke (incense) seems to have provided the medium in which the image of the LORD appeared, and the wings of the cherubim forming a roof over the mercy seat seem to be part of the design of this viewport. And while this device was built by men, one can't help but wonder if the angel of the LORD added some finishing touches to it, to account for the miraculous things it did.

Recently, scientists have speculated that the ark was a giant capacitor, a common electrical component having two electrically conductive plates separated by a gap, where one plate carries a positive charge and the other a negative charge. The ark could have functioned as a capacitor, they say, because each piece of wood was gold plated on the inside and the outside, and gold is best electrical conductor on the planet, better than copper. The wood in between provided the gap. They point out that the tips of each cherubim's wings did not quite touch each other, and from this gap, it is written, came the two laser-like beams that destroyed the snakes, thorns, etc, from before their path as they travelled. The LORD only knows the details of this technology, but we can see from the text that it certainly does sound like technology.