8. "Then put the ark of the Lord on the cart. Put the gold models in a chest beside the ark. Send them back to the Lord as a guilt offering. Send the cart on its way.
9. "But keep an eye on the cart. See if it goes up toward Beth Shemesh to its own territory. If it does, then it's the Lord who has brought this horrible trouble on us. But if it doesn't, then we'll know it wasn't his hand that struck us. We'll know it happened to us by chance."
10. So that's what they did. They took the two cows and tied the cart to them. They put the calves in a pen.
11. They placed the ark of the Lord on the cart. They put the chest there along with it. The chest held the gold models of the rats and of the growths.
12. Then the cows went straight up toward Beth Shemesh. They stayed on the road. They were mooing all the way. They didn't turn to the right or the left. The Philistine rulers followed them all the way to the border of Beth Shemesh.
13. The people of Beth Shemesh were working in the valley. They were gathering their wheat crop. They looked up and saw the ark. When they saw it, they were filled with joy.
14. The cart came to the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh. It stopped there beside a large rock. The people chopped up the wood the cart was made out of. They sacrificed the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord.
15. Some Levites had taken the ark of the Lord off the cart. They had also taken off the chest that held the gold models. They placed them on the large rock. On that day the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings to the Lord. They also made sacrifices to him.
16. The five Philistine rulers saw everything that happened. On that same day they returned to Ekron.