The ArK of the Covenant

While working on a new Daniel commentary, I came upon Daniel 1:2 where it says, "And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God: which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god; and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his god.”   Notice that it says that the "Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand."

This clearly means that God was allowing Judah to be punished.  Why? - Idolatry and disobedience.  Jeremiah speaks of this in detail in Jeremiah 25:1-9, 11-12; and 29:10-11, which we will discuss at length when we deal with the seventy weeks in chapter 9.  

Note also that it says that King Jehoiakim only took “part of the vessels of the house of God.” Obviously, things were left behind for one reason or another. The most obvious piece seemingly left was the Ark of the Covenant. That is a substantial piece to be left out of the narrative. Remember that it also originally contained the stone tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were written, Aaron’s rod that budded, and some manna which sustained the Israelites in the desert for forty years (Hebrews 9:4).

The last time Scripture mentioned it was forty years before the Babylonian invasion, which was somewhere around 622 BC, when King Josiah had returned it to the temple (2 Chronicles 35:3). 

So, what happened to it? There are many theories, including that it was simply not mentioned, it had been hidden in expectation of the capture by Jeremiah or some of the priests, or that it was possibly destroyed. 

Interestingly, the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees 2:4-8 suggests that it was the former and even says that Jeremiah hid it in a cave on Mount Nebo, which is modern-day Jordan, where Moses first saw the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 32:49). We have yet to find any archeological evident of that.

Others suggest that it was hidden beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem because there was not enough time to get it out of the city prior to the invasion. 

We do know that it will surface during the time of Jacob’s Trouble; i.e., Tribulation, because Daniel himself tells us that after the Antichrist breaks his covenant that he is going to make with the nation of Israel, the “sacrifice and oblation” will cease (Daniel 9:27).    

With that said, some would also argue that the finding the original ark is not really necessary, because a new one could be made according to the dimensions as given in Exodus 25.