not let the people go, and they
departed? Now therefore make a new cart, and take two milch kine, on
which there hath come no yoke, and tie the kine to the cart, and bring
their calves home from them: and take the ark of the Lord, and lay it
upon the cart; and put the jewels of gold, which ye return him for a
trespass offering, in a coffer by the side thereof; and send it away,
that it may go. And see, if it goeth up by the way of his own coast to
Beth-shemesh, then he hath done us this great evil: but if not, then we
shall know that it is not his hand that smote us; it was a chance that
happened to us.

And the men did so; and took two milch kine, and tied them to the cart,
and shut up their calves at home: and they laid the ark of the Lord upon
the cart, and the coffer with the mice of gold and the images of their
emerods. And the kine took the straight way to the way of Beth-shemesh,
and went along the highway, lowing as they went, and turned not aside to
the right hand or to the left; and the lords of the Philistines went
after them, unto the border of Beth-shemesh. And they of Beth-shemesh
were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley: and they lifted up their
eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see it. And the cart came into the
field of Joshua, a Beth-shemite, and stood there, where there was a great
stone: and they clave the wood of the cart, and offered the kine a burnt
offering unto the Lord.

And the Levites took down the ark of the Lord, and the coffer that was
with it, wherein the jewels of gold were, and put them on the great
stone: and the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed
sacrifices the same day unto the Lord.--1 Samuel vi, 1-5.

SAUL AND DAVID.

And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that
the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved
him as his own soul. And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no
more home to his father's house.

Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own
soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and
gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow,
and to his girdle.

And David went out withersoever Saul sent him, and behaved himself
wisely: and Saul set him over the men of war, and he was accepted in the
sight of all the people, and also in the sight of Saul's servants.

And it came to pass as they ca