They Went Bellowing

There's something disturbing about a bellowing cow. While the mooing of cattle is a peaceful sound associated with the quietness of country life, a bawling cow is unsettling. Something isn't right when a cow bellows.

Job expressed it thus:

Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? or loweth the ox over his fodder? (Job 6:5)

Contented cows don't bellow; hungry or suffering cows do. Anguished cows.

There is a fascinating story in the Bible of the Ark of God being returned to Israel, months after they lost it in battle to the Philistines. The Philistines suffered for handling the holy with profane hands; terrible physical suffering, not to mention the breaking and humiliation of their favorite idol before the Ark of the Most High God, led them to realize they must return the sacred Box to its rightful land and people.

Still, they wanted to make sure it was a God thing – that their suffering minds weren't playing tricks on them. So they came up with a test.

That's where the cows came in...

They reasoned that if they were to put the Ark on a cart, then hitch the cart to two cows who had recently calved and and never known a yoke before, they could find out if the God of the Israelites was really dealing with them. If the cows started off on their own, pulling the Ark all the way back to Israel without anyone pointing them or driving them, then they would know Jehovah was involved.

The Scriptures tell the story so vividly:

And the kine took the straight way to the way of Bethshemesh, and went along the highway, lowing [lit. "bellowing"] as they went, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left; and the lords of the Philistines went after them unto the border of Bethshemesh. (1 Samuel 6:12)

The cows performed precisely as they should if God was involved: they started off, on their own, and literally made a "beeline" to the highway that led to Beth-Shemesh, in Israel. They didn't stop, either, until they got there...

But they didn't go quietly. They went bellowing. Bawling.

What must the people along the way have thought – looking up from their work in the fields, or rushing to their window, or pausing their own journey to turn their heads and look after two unattended, yoked cows, doing their job and doing it with "anointing," ...but bellowing their lungs out all the way?

How could they know why the cows were so distressed? If God hadn't directed their story to be written down, how could we have known their story?

How could a cow explain the terrible anguish they felt as every step took them a little farther from those they most loved? That they didn't want to leave them; they hadn't planned to leave them; that their very small calves had been torn from them by hands that didn't fear God, that didn't care what happened to them, that thought only of themselves?

Would their young ever know the true story? Would they even care if they learned some day? "It wasn't supposed to be this way; I love you more than my own life. I never stop thinking of you; if it had been up to me, I would have never journeyed to another land without you"? That they didn't have a choice – that, as Ezekiel described so aptly,

So the spirit lifted me up, and took me away, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; but the hand of the LORD was strong upon me. (Ezekiel 3:14)

Who could know the breaking, crushing pain in a cow's heart every time it saw another beast nuzzling its calf in a field along the way, and realized that such a tender, happy moment would never be experienced by this cow...ever again? That its heavy udder needed to give nourishment to young who weren't there? That any and every calf's bleat tore its heart out? That everything it saw was seen through the dark clouds of unresolved grief...grief for its own loss; grief for those it had lost – what would become of them; would they even remember their mother, in time? Would they even survive?

But they trudged on. They had to...the hand of the Lord was strong upon them. But they couldn't help bellowing...at every step.

Could they know that what they were doing was necessary; that they bore the Testimony of the Lord to a desperately needy people? That the godless people that watched it happening would have proof –  by the illogical, unnatural act of obedience of a couple of dumb cows – that there was, indeed, a God in Israel?

And there was no rest in sight...indeed, the only relief from their anguish came at the end of their journey – when the knives tore their necks and spilled their blood, and offered them to God upon the very wood they had used to carry His Testimony to a lost and lonely people.

Maybe this is stretching it a bit. After all, the Scriptures don't outright tell us; we can't really know...

But I think I do.