The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright 2020 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

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Chapter 88 

The Ark —
Burned, Babylon, or Buried?

After the Babylonian invasion, the Ark of the Covenant was never again mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures.

So how important was the Ark, anyway?

Well, it was almost like it was the throne of God or something.

The Ark led Israel through the wilderness, it led Israel across the dammed up Jordan River, and it led Israel around Jericho when that city was de-walled. The Ark, where the cloud of Yahweh’s presence rested in the Holy of Holies, was enormously important. Yet after Babylon conquered Judah and destroyed Solomon’s Temple, nothing more is said about that Ark.

What happened to the Ark?

Was it destroyed by the Babylonians?

Was it carried away by the Babylonians?

Or was it hidden from the Babylonians?

By Josiah’s time, the book of the law – amazingly! — was lost.

Hezekiah’s father Ahaz was a godless reprobate. Hezekiah’s son Manasseh filled Judah with wickedness, until he was captured and repented. Hezekiah’s grandson Amon was perverse in his ways. Needless to say, those bad guys did not take care of the Temple.

Then came Hezekiah’s great-grandson Josiah. From his youth, he was a God seeker.

2Chr 34
1) Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign; and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem.
2) He did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh, and walked in the ways of David his father, and didn’t turn aside to the right hand or to the left.
3) For in the eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek after the God of David his father; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the Asherim, and the engraved images, and the molten images.

Josiah began to seek God and he knew that idols were wrong. To some extent, though, he didn’t really know what he was seeking, because nobody knew where the book of the law was. So Josiah was trying to be obedient — without knowing exactly what to obey.

Then Hilkiah found the book of the law.

2Chr 34
14) …Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of Yahweh given by Moses.

Who was Hilkiah?

Hilkiah was the father of the prophet Jeremiah.

Jer 1
1) The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin:
2) to whom the word of Yahweh came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.
3) It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, to the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, to the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.

Hilkiah was high priest during Josiah’s reign, and Jeremiah began to serve as a prophet at the same time.

So Hilkiah found the book of the law, and that book was originally placed by the Ark of the Covenant.

Deut 31
24) It happened, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished,
25) that Moses commanded the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, saying,
26) “Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of Yahweh your God, that it may be there for a witness against you.

Josiah was the fifteenth of nineteen kings over Judah. By his time, the four centuries old Temple was ignored, neglected, and in disrepair; and no one could even remember where the book of the law was. Even the high priest didn’t know where it was!

So Josiah had workers repair and clean the Temple. In that process, Hilkiah found the book of the law.

Where was it when Hilkiah found it?

Elliott’s Commentary for English Readers:
Josephus makes Hilkiah find the book in the treasure-chamber of the Temple which he had entered to get gold and silver for making some sacred vessels. According to Rabbinical tradition it was found hidden under a heap of stones, where it had been placed to save it from being burnt by king Ahaz.

Some “rabbis” said the book of the law was hidden during Ahaz’ time. But Ahaz was Hezekiah’s father, and Hezekiah knew the laws that Yahweh had commanded Moses.

2Kgs 18
6) For he joined with Yahweh; he didn’t depart from following him, but kept his commandments, which Yahweh commanded Moses.

One of the first things that Hezekiah did was to return to keeping the Feasts. That means that Hezekiah knew the law, so either he had the original book of the law, or a copy. So it does not seem that the book of the law was hidden in Ahaz’ time. It must have been lost after Hezekiah’s time.

Hezekiah’s son Manasseh filled Judah with wickedness. Then his son Amon followed the evil part of Manasseh’s life and not the good part after Manasseh’s repentance. Somehow during the reign of those two evil kings between Hezekiah and Josiah, the book of the law and much of the knowledge in it was lost. Josiah did not know to keep the Feasts that his great-grandfather Hezekiah had restored, among other things.

When Josiah ordered the cleaning and restoring of the Temple, that’s when Hilkiah rediscovered the book of the law.

But where was the Ark of the Covenant?

After the Temple was repaired, Josiah told the Levites to put the Ark in the Temple.

2Chr 35
3) He said to the Levites who taught all Israel, who were holy to Yahweh, “Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel built. There shall no more be a burden on your shoulders. Now serve Yahweh your God, and his people Israel.

At some point the Ark had been moved out of the Temple.

Why?

First, the Ark may have been removed simply because the Temple was being repaired.

Bullinger’s Companion Bible says that the Ark “had probably been removed during the reparation of the Temple.”

Barnes’ Notes says “The ark of the covenant may have been temporarily removed from the holy of holies while Josiah effected necessary repairs.”

That’s quite logical. They took the Ark out of the Temple during their work, and put it back when they were done.

Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible agrees with that, but brings up another possibility.
…these put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel did build; which some think was removed from thence by Amon, and an idol put in its room, which is the greater trespass he is said to be guilty of, 2 Chronicles 33:23 others, that it was privately removed by the high priest in idolatrous times, and laid up in some secret place for the preservation of it; but rather the truth is, that it had been removed by the order of Josiah, for the sake of the repairs of the most holy place; and this being done, he orders it to be replaced…

The Bible does not say why the Ark was removed from the Temple.

Notice Josiah’s words again.

“Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel built. There shall no more be a burden on your shoulders.”

That does not sound like they recently removed the Ark while working on the Temple. Josiah’s words seem to indicate the Ark had not been in the Temple for some time. If the Levites had only moved the Ark to make way for the workmen, it doesn’t seem as if they would have been carrying the Ark around, other than to move it out and in. Out and in would not have been a lengthy burden on their shoulders.

When Hilkiah found the book of the law, no mention is made of the Ark.

The Temple was defiled in the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, the two kings between Hezekiah and Josiah.

John Trapp Complete Commentary, 2 Ch 35:3
“Under Josiah’s direction, Hilkiah the priest recently had found the copy of the Law of Moses in the temple. Now we learn that under the apostate administrations of the previous kings, Manasseh and Amon, apparently the holy ark had also been removed from the temple. Now, King Josiah directed that it be returned to its rightful place.

i. It shall no longer be a burden on your shoulders indicates that the ark was not at “rest” in the holy place of the temple. The time was long overdue to return it to its rest.

ii. “The Hebrews tell us, that the priests in those idolatrous times had carried the holy ark out of the temple – that it might not stand there among those heathenish idols – and conveyed it to the house of Shallum, who was uncle to the prophet Jeremiah, and husband to the prophetess Huldah.”

Manasseh made major changes in the Temple, to say the least.

2Chr 33
3) For he [Manasseh] built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down; and he reared up altars for the Baals, and made Asheroth, and worshiped all the army of the sky, and served them.
4) He built altars in the house of Yahweh, of which Yahweh said, “My name shall be in Jerusalem forever.”
5) He built altars for all the army of the sky in the two courts of the house of Yahweh.

Manasseh’s