The Ark of the Covenant is one of the holiest artifacts of the Hebrew Bible.
So holy that looking at or touching it could be deadly.
But what actually is it, and what is it for?
Here’s the untold truth of the Ark of the Covenant.
The Ark of the Covenant, also sometimes called the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God,
is not to be confused with the other famous ark in the Bible, which was a boat.
The word "ark" comes from the Latin word arca, meaning "big box."
Just as Noah's Ark was a big floating box for him to put animals in, the Ark of the
Covenant was apparently a big box full of things important to God that would represent
his presence among the people of Israel as they wandered through the desert after escaping
slavery in Egypt.
The Jewish Encyclopedia describes the Ark as a movable sanctuary for the Israelites,
a place for God to sit until they arrived in the promised land and could establish a
temple there.
The Ark was not to be touched or looked at when uncovered.
On the move, the Ark was always covered by skins and cloths, hidden even from the priests
who carried it.
When stationary, it was held up by poles so it wouldn't touch the ground.
Even the high priest was forbidden from being in the place of the Ark except when it necessary
to perform certain rituals and ceremonies.
And as the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry explained, the top of the Ark was
known as the mercy seat, a lid of pure gold placed on the Ark and put within the Holy
of Holies behind the veil of the Tabernacle, where God himself actually showed up and the
High Priest would go once a year to sprinkle blood as a sacrifice to calm God down for
another year.
“Yeah, the Ark of the Covenant, the chest the Hebrews used to carry around the Ten Commandments.”
In Exodus Chapter 25, after God has given Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai,
he gives him detailed instructions about building the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle
to house it in.
The whole thing is covered in gold, with a gold ring at each corner for acacia wood rods
to be placed through for carrying and holding the Ark off the ground.
But what goes inside it?
In various places in the Hebrew Bible, the Ark is said to hold the tablets on which the
Ten Commandments were carved, and a pot full of manna, the miraculous food God provided
for the Israelites to eat as they wandered the wilderness.
The Christian Epistle to the Hebrews, however, also mentions it contained a staff belonging
to Moses's brother Aaron, which miraculously grew flowers and almonds in the Book of Numbers.
While the Israelites marched through the desert, the Ark usually led the way, but whenever
they set up camp, it was placed within a temporary shelter known as the Tabernacle.
According to Exodus, the Tabernacle was basically a tent made up of layers of curtains, veils,
and skins.
Nobody really knows what animal those skins come from, though.
The Hebrew word is tachash, but comparison of different translations of Exodus shows
tachash is variously rendered as goat, porpoise, badger, manatee, dolphin, or seal skin.
However, another theory suggests that the tachash was actually an enormous wild animal
with a single horn, that was covered with skin of six colors.
Does this mean that the special tent for the Ark of the Covenant was made of the skin of
an enormous rainbow unicorn?
We can only hope.
The Ark of the Covenant was no ordinary box.
The Bible shows it to possess a great power to destroy the enemies of God or remove obstacles
that stand in the way of his chosen people.
In the Book of Joshua, when Moses's successor Joshua led the Israelites into the Promised
Land, the Ark parted the waters of the Jordan River so that they could cross.
And when the Ark was carried around the city walls of Jericho, the walls came tumbling
down.
The sacred nature of the Ark is no joke, either.
The Book of Samuel records that somewhere between 50 to 70 thousand people died immediately
having just looked at the Ark out of curiosity.
Even those with good intentions weren't spared, as 2 Samuel tells the story of a guy who reached
out to steady the Ark when it was about to topple off of an ox cart.
Despite trying to be helpful, he was struck immediately dead by divine fire.
The Jewish Encyclopedia also reports that the Ark not only protected the Israelites
from their human enemies within the Promised Lands, but from natural obstructions found
within the desert on their way there.
The story goes, sparks would form in between the two cherubim of the mercy seat and basically
fire lasers that cleared the path of snakes, scorpions, and thorn bushes.
Furthermore, the smoke produced by these lasers reportedly smelled like sweet perfume that
alerted people to the presence of God's chair.
The Ark is also mentioned in the Quran, and other Islamic sources discuss it as well,
including one that adds to the contents of the Ark Moses's hat, robes, and shoes.
Perhaps most interestingly, however, comes the story recorded in the book Sudanese Memoirs,
which tells of how the Ark contained a ruby statue that looked like the head of a cat
with two wings.
The cat, despite being a statue, was vocal, and meowed like the roaring of the wind.
When it cried out, it caused the Ark to rush toward God's enemies and assured victory for
the Israelites.
The Ark of the Covenant features heavily in the Hebrew Bible from the time of Moses through
the eras of King David and Solomon, and even into the time of the Divided Kingdom, but
it basically disappears from the record around the time of the prophet Jeremiah.
What happened at that time that might account for such an important artifact disappearing
from history altogether?
"Where is the Ark?"
Well, Jeremiah lived at the end of what is known as the First Temple period.
The First Temple was constructed by King Solomon, possibly with the assistance of a horde of
enslaved demons, based on the plans of his father, David.
After seven years of work, the great temple was completed and the Ark of the Covenant
placed inside, in a new, more permanent Holy of Holies that was not made of rainbow unicorn
skin.
The end of the First Temple period came several centuries later after Israel split into two
nations.
The Northern Kingdom of Israel fell in 722 BCE, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, where
the temple was, was conquered by the Babylonian Empire in 587 BCE, the temple was destroyed,
and the people of Judah were sent into exile.
So what actually happened to the Ark?
Was it taken to Babylon or hidden in ruins?
No one really knows.
But there are some pretty fascinating theories about where it might be.
One proposed location of the Ark of the Covenant comes from the book Second Maccabees, one
of a group of Greek Jewish texts thought by Christians to take place between the Old and
New Testaments, and often referred to as the Apocrypha.
The books of the Maccabees describe the conflicts of the Jewish people with the Greek successors
of Alexander the Great and how a great military leader named Judah Maccabee, also known as
"the Hammer", and his brothers led a successful revolt that led to the restoration of the
Second Temple, and ultimately to the Jewish people enjoying autonomous rule until the
Romans showed up.
The Maccabees are pretty great reads, full of armies of ghosts and a dude so mad at the
Greeks he literally threw his own intestines at them.
Anyway, chapter two of Second Maccabees is a flashback to the time of the Babylonian
siege, and tells how the prophet Jeremiah, applying the kind of foresight unique to prophets,
grabbed the Ark, the Tent of Meeting, and the temple altar, and absconded with them
to Mount Nebo, currently in the country of Jordan, to be hidden there until such time
as God decides to reveal it.
Not everyone agrees with the theories claiming that the Ark was taken to Babylon, or hidden
in Jerusalem, or sealed in a cave on Mount Nebo.
Namely, Ethiopian Christians have claimed for centuries that the Ark of the Covenant
is, in fact, in the Ethiopian city of Aksum.
Per Smithsonian, the Christians of Ethiopia claim the Ark came to Aksum nearly three millennia
ago and has been fiercely guarded by a succession of virgin monks ever since, who dedicate their
lives to keeping watch over the Ark in the chapel and are forbidden to step foot outside
once anointed to this duty.
The Ethiopian chronicle known as Kebra Nagas, or "The Glory of Kings", records when the
Queen of Sheba went to visit Solomon to consult his fabled wisdom, she got pregnant with his
son, named Menelik.
When Menelik later visited his father, some Israelite nobles accompanied him on his return
trip.
Unknown to Menelik, these nobles had stolen the Ark and replaced it with a fake.
Since Menelik had borne the Ark all the way to Ethiopia without being destroyed, he knew
it had to have been God's will.
And allegedly, the Ark has been in Aksum's Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion more or less
ever since.
Since no one but the Ark's guardian is allowed to see it, who can dispute this version of
events?
There's no biblical artifact so famous someone won't claim it was recovered by the Knights
Templar and taken from the Holy Land back to Europe somewhere.
"The Holy Grail."
As Crusader History explains, the Templars, not satisfied with having attained the Holy
Grail, apparently removed the Ark of the Covenant from the ruins of Solomon's temple and took
it back to the French Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres.
The theory is that the Templars, in their roles as master stonemasons, on top of being
bodyguards for Crusaders, were the ones to rebuild Chartres Cathedral as an exquisitely
carved Gothic cathedral after it had burnt down, the intention being that it would be
a great storehouse for holy relics and wisdom.
The evidence of this can be found in reliefs depicting the transportation of the Ark.
However, The Leamington Courier reports that British author Graham Phillips writes that
the Templars took the Ark not to France, but to Britain.
In Phillips's reconstruction of events, the Templar leader Ralph de Sudeley found the
Ark among the hidden stash on Mount Nebo and carried it back to his estate in Warwickshire
meaning that it's now somewhere in England.
Anything is possible, right?
One of the most recent claimants to being the location of the Ark of the Covenant is
the alleged tomb of Alexander the Great on the Greek island of Thasos.
According to the Huffington Post, in 2012 an amazingly sketchy archaeological outfit
announced they'd uncovered the final resting place of one of history's greatest conquerors,
and they allegedly found the Ark of the Covenant inside as well.
Thasos, which is near Macedonia, where Alexander was from, has long been rumored to be where
The Great One was buried, so the announcement of finding his tomb there was not entirely
unexpected.
But why would the Ark of the Covenant be buried with him?
Well, according to Jewish historians, Alexander did in fact go to Jerusalem, where he was
shown a copy of the Book of Daniel, which prophesied that a great Greek leader would
conquer the Persians.
Seeing this, he was apparently satisfied and left Jerusalem alone.
However, there was no mention of Alexander the Great taking one of the holiest items
of all time, which had been missing for centuries since the destruction of the First Temple.
Whether or not this really happened is anyone's guess.
But it goes without saying that the Ark of the Covenant remains one of the world's most
interesting mysteries.
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