5. Therefore you will make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land. And you will give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps He will lighten His hand from off you, even from off your gods and from off your land.
6. Why then do you harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When He dealt severely with them, did they not let the people go, and they departed?
7. “Now therefore make a new cart, and take two milk cows on which there has never been a yoke. Then tie the cows to the cart and bring their calves home, away from them.
8. Then take the ark of the Lord and set it on the cart. And put the images of gold, which you return to Him for a guilt offering, in a box by the side. And send it away, that it may go.
9. See, if it goes up by the way of His own territory to Beth Shemesh, then He has done us this great evil. But if not, then we will know that it is not His hand that struck us; it was by chance that it happened to us.”
10. The men did so. And they took two milk cows, tied them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home.
11. And they set the ark of the Lord on the cart, as well as the box with the mice of gold and the images of their tumors.
12. Then the cows took the straight way to the way of Beth Shemesh, and went along the highway, lowing as they went. They did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left with the lords of the Philistines walking after them to the border of Beth Shemesh.
13. Now Beth Shemesh was reaping their wheat harvest in the valley. And they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark, and they rejoiced to see it.