In today’s post, I would like to draw attention to one of the aspects of the functionality of the Ark of the Covenant, which was the ability for the Israelites to talk to the Lord. According to the Bible, the Lord/Creator appeared to the Israelites above the upper plate closing the Ark and between the cherubim placed on it. As a result of the error, two high-ranking priests were killed by the Ark.
Aaron, the brother of Moses, appointed by the Lord as high priest, and his sons who had the rank of priests, had the exclusive right to “serve the Ark of the Covenant”, to maintain it, carry it and place it at each stop in the Tent of Meeting, in the Holy Tabernacle.
According to the Book of Exodus, Chapter 25, the Ark served as a kind of portable communicator that allowed the Israelites to contact the Lord:
19 Let one cherub be on the one side, and the other on the other.
20 Let them cover both sides of the propitiatory, spreading their wings, and covering the oracle, and let them look one towards the other, their faces being turned towards the propitiatory wherewith the ark is to to be covered.
21 In which thou shalt put the testimony that I will give thee.
22 Thence will I give orders, and will speak to thee over the propitiatory, and from the midst of the two cherubims, which shall be upon the ark of the testimony, all things which I will command the children of Israel by thee.
However, in order to “contact” with the Lord, certain procedures had to be followed – in this case, the priests had to light a special mixture of herbs in the most holy place, the composition of which they had received from the Lord. Then, in a cloud of burning herbs, between the herubs, the Lord “appeared” and “answered (or) gave instructions” to the Israelites.
Failure to follow these procedures had consequences – Aaron’s sons, the priests Nadab and Abihu, be burned alive in front of the other priests, who were inside the Tent of Meeting.
Book of Leviticus 10:1-2
1 And Nadab and Abiu, the sons of Aaron, taking their censers, put fire therein, and incense on it, offering before the Lord strange fire: which was not commanded them.
2 And fire coming out from the Lord destroyed them: and they died before the Lord.
To summarize the above, two important questions arise:
1. Could the improper mixture of herbs used by Aaron’s sons, combined with the power of the Ark of the Covenant, have produced such a large fire that it burned two adult men?
2. Was the Ark of the Covenant, in addition to its ideological form, storing the tablets of the 10 commandments, also a device of unknown power that allowed verbal communication with extraterrestrial beings?
As always, I will leave the attempt to answer to each individual.
Related posts:
Is the Old Man the Israelites’ manna machine?
Were the Israelites involved in a collective sighting of an unidentified flying object on Mount Sinai?
Was the biblical Elijah taken alive from the earth by representatives of an extraterrestrial civilization?
Is the story of Cain and Abel an interpretation of much older Sumerian accounts, providing evidence of extraterrestrial interference in the development of Homo sapiens?