10 So the people did what the priests and men who predicted what would happen in the future told them to do. They made a cart and hitched two cows to it. They took the calves from their mothers. 11 They put in the cart Yahweh’s sacred chest and the box with the models of the gold rats and the tumors. 12 Then the cows started walking, and they went straight toward Beth-Shemesh. They stayed on the road, and were mooing all the time. They did not turn to the left or to the right. The five kings of the Philistia area followed the cows until they reached the edge of Beth-Shemesh.

13 At that time, the people of Beth-Shemesh were harvesting wheat in the valley outside the city. When the cows came along the road, they looked up and saw the sacred chest. They were extremely happy to see it. 14,15 The cows pulled the cart into the field of a man named Joshua, and they stopped alongside a large rock. Several men from the tribe of Levi lifted from the cart the sacred chest and the box containing the gold models of the rats and the tumors, and they put them all on the large rock. Then the people smashed the cart and kindled a fire with the wood from which the cart had been made. They slaughtered the cows and burned their bodies/carcasses on the fire to be an offering for Yahweh that would be completely burned. That day the people of Beth-Shemesh offered to Yahweh many sacrifices that were completely burned, and other sacrifices.