David Fetches the Ark – Jehovah kills Uzza

With God, the letter of the law is most important

One day king David was thinking about war and killing lots of people when he remembered the Ark of the Covenant. It used to be this cool thing that the Israeli armies carried with them, and if they were righteous, they would be able to kill more people than normal. The Ark hadn’t been used this way for many years, but David decided that it would be nice to keep around anyway.

So David got a huge group of people together to fetch the thing from Kirjathjearim and take it to the City of David. They put it in a brand new cart and everybody was walking alongside singing, dancing, and making music. It was a huge party. Everyone was having a fabulous time; until one of the oxen pulling the cart stumbled. The cart lurched and the ark started to fall. It looked like the trip was going to end in complete disaster; but then, a hero arose. One of the cart drivers, Uzza, reached out and grabbed the ark. He kept the ark safe. It didn’t fall. The day was won.

Just one problem though; God doesn’t like people touching the ark. When Uzza touched the sacred ark, God became angry. He reached forth his sacred arm, and smote the life right out of poor Uzza. As you can imagine, King David wasn’t very happy about God killing Uzza but there wasn’t really anything he could do about it other than name the place Perez-uzza in his honor. After the smiting incident David decided the ark was too dangerous to have around and left it with his buddy Obed-edom the Gittite.

Ref: 1 Chronicles 13

Moral: never touch God's junk.