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1 Samuel 6:9
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7 Now therefore, make aa new cart, take two milk cows bwhich have never been yoked, and hitch the cows to the cart; and take their calves home, away from them.  
8 Then take the ark of the Lord and set it on the cart; and put athe articles of gold which you are returning to Him as a trespass offering in a chest by its side. Then send it away, and let it go.  
9 And watch: if it goes up the road to its own territory, to aBeth Shemesh, then He has done us this great evil. But if not, then bwe shall know that it is not His hand that struck us—it happened to us by chance.”  
10 Then the men did so; they took two milk cows and hitched them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home.
11 And they set the ark of the Lord on the cart, and the chest with the gold rats and the images of their tumors.
12 Then the cows headed straight for the road to Beth Shemesh, and went along the ahighway, lowing as they went, and did not turn aside to the right hand or the left. And the lords of the Philistines went after them to the border of Beth Shemesh.  
13 Now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their awheat harvest in the valley; and they lifted their eyes and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see it.  
14 Then the cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh, and stood there; a large stone was there. So they split the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord.
15 The Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the chest that was with it, in which were the articles of gold, and put them on the large stone. Then the men of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices the same day to the Lord.
16 So when athe five lords of the Philistines had seen it, they returned to Ekron the same day.  
17 aThese are the golden tumors which the Philistines returned as a trespass offering to the Lord: one for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for bGath, one for Ekron;  
18 and the golden rats, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both fortified cities and country villages, even as far as the large stone of Abel on which they set the ark of the Lord, which stone remains to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh.
19 Then aHe struck the men of Beth Shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord.1 He bstruck fifty thousand and seventy men of the people, and the people lamented because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter.  

The Ark at Kirjath Jearim

20 And the men of Beth Shemesh said, a“Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? And to whom shall it go up from us?”  
21 So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of aKirjath Jearim, saying, “The Philistines have brought back the ark of the Lord; come down and take it up with you.” 
Book Notes:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Book Notes

I & II Samuel

THE FIRST AND SECOND BOOKS OF SAMUEL. The two were, by the ancient Jews, conjoined so as to make one book, and in that form could be called the Book of Samuel with more propriety than now, the second being wholly occupied with the relation of transactions that did not take place till after the death of that eminent judge. Accordingly, in the Septuagint and the Vulgate, it is called the First and Second Books of Kings. The early portion of the First Book, down to the end of the twenty-fourth chapter, was probably written by Samuel; while the rest of it and the whole of the Second, are commonly ascribed to Nathan and Gad, founding the opinion on I Chronicles 29:29. Commentators, however, are divided about this, some supposing that the statements in I Samuel 2:26; I Samuel 3:1, indicate the hand of the judge himself, or a contemporary; while some think, from I Samuel 6:18; I Samuel 12:5; I Samuel 27:6, that its composition must be referred to a later age. It is probable, however, that these supposed marks of an after-period were interpolations of Ezra. This uncertainty, however, as to the authorship does not affect the inspired authority of the book, which is indisputable, being quoted in the New Testament (I Samuel 13:14 in Acts 13:22, and II Samuel 7:14 in Hebrews 1:5), as well as in many of the Psalms.

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