2 Samuel 6

After this, David assembled all of his best soldiers once again. There were 30,000 of them.

He led them to the city of Baalah in Judah so that they could bring the sacred chest from there to Jerusalem. People call that chest “The Box of God, the Commander of the Heavenly Armies.” God himself is invisibly present between the statues of the winged creatures on top of it. \*

They went to the hilltop house of Abinadab. They used a new cart to carry the chest from there. Two oxen were pulling the cart, and Abinadab’s two sons Uzzah and Ahio were guiding them.

In order to bring the sacred chest from Abinadab’s hilltop house, Ahio walked in front of the cart{, while Uzzah walked alongside it}.

David and his soldiers and a large crowd of other Israelites were singing and dancing in God’s presence. People were playing musical instruments to accompany the singing and dancing, including wooden instruments, harps, lyres, tambourines, rattles, and cymbals. \*

But when they came to the place in the area of Nacon where people threshed grain, the oxen tripped. {Because that made the cart tilt so that the sacred chest might have fallen off of it,} Uzzah put his hand on the sacred chest to steady it.

God immediately became very angry with Uzzah for touching the chest. God killed him right there next to it. \*

David became angry because God had punished Uzzah. David called that place Perez Uzzah, and that has been its name ever since.

Then David became afraid of {what else} God {might do to punish them}, and he said, “It is too dangerous for me to try to bring the sacred chest to where I live in Jerusalem!” \*

So David decided not to bring the sacred chest to the City of David where he lived. Instead, he had the people take it into a house that was there by the road. A man whose name was Obed Edom the Gittite lived in that house.

The sacred chest stayed in the house of Obed Edom for the next three months. During that time, God made good things happen for him and his whole family. \*

After that time, people told King David, “Because Obed Edom is taking care of the sacred chest, God is making good things happen for his family and all of his servants!” When David heard that, he {gathered many of the Levites and} went to Obed Edom’s house. Together they very joyfully brought the sacred chest from there to the City of David.

On the way, once the Levites who were carrying the sacred chest had taken their first six steps, David had them stop. Right at that place, David killed a bull and a fat calf and offered them to God as sacrifices. \*

David was wearing just a plain linen robe. He danced to honor God, leaping as high as he could and whirling around fast.

David and a large crowd of Israelites brought the sacred chest to Jerusalem, shouting loudly and blowing ram’s horns. \*

While they were bringing the sacred chest into the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul{, his wife, was on an upper floor of her house. She} looked through a window down onto the street. She saw {her husband} King David leaping and whirling to honor God. That made her feel disgusted with him {because she did not think a king should dress and act that way}.

David had put up a tent for the sacred chest, and the Levites carried the sacred chest into it and set it up there. Then David made some offerings to God that he completely burned on an altar. He made other offerings whose meat the people could share at a meal to celebrate this happy occasion. \*

When David finished offering those sacrifices, he asked God, the commander of the heavenly armies, to do good things for the people.

Then he gave special gifts of food to all the Israelites who had come for the celebration. To each man and woman he gave a loaf of bread, a date cake, and a raisin cake. Then they all returned to their homes. \*

Then David went home to ask God to do good things for his family. {His wife} Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him. She told him, “As the king of Israel, you should not have acted so disgracefully today! You took off almost all of your clothes, and you let the female servants of your officials see you that way! Only immoral men take off their clothes in public as you did.” \*

David replied to Michal, “I danced in that simple way in order to honor God! He chose me instead of your father or any member of his family to be the king of the Israelite people, who belong to him. I was celebrating to honor God!

And so I am willing to act even more humbly than that. I will do things that seem undignified. But those female servants you were talking about will respect me {as a king who serves God devotedly}!”

Michal daughter of Saul did not have children for as long as she lived. \*