One of the reasons the Israelites saw the Philistines as more than just a formidable enemy was related to the time the Philistines captured and kept the ark under their control (1 Sam. 4-6). Hebrews 9:3-4 states clearly, "Behind the second curtain [of the tabernacle] was a tent called the Holy of Holies. In it stood the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which there were a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. . . ." Yet the verses from Kings and Chronicles clearly state that only the tablets of the law were in the ark at the time when Solomon put the ark into the temple. What happened to the jar of manna and Aaron's staff? Did the Philistines steal or destroy both the jar of manna and Aaron's staff? Why didn't Solomon refer to those two items when he placed the ark in the temple?

To answer this question, we need to go back to Exodus and Numbers, where both the jar and staff are discussed.

Exodus 16:33 states that the jar was to be kept before the ark "throughout your generations," and Numbers 17:10 states that the staff was to be kept before the testimony "as a warning" for rebels. The Numbers passage does not state explicitly that this warning was to be kept for generations, but the Hebrews 9 passage does make it clear that the staff was not only before the ark, but was within it. The tablets of stone bearing the Ten Commandments were also placed in the ark (Exod. 25:16, 21). The presence of the staff would have been especially important for the descendants of Aaron as proof that the Lord God had chosen them to be the priests. Its loss was a problem for Israel.

One illustration of this problem is recorded in 1 Kings 2. Upon assuming the kingship, Solomon had two priests, Abiathar and Zadok. According to verse 35, one of Solomon's first duties as king was to remove Abiathar, since Abiathar had earlier supported Adonijah to be the next king after David. Imagine the role the staff of Aaron could have played in the conflict if Zadok could have carried it while he anointed Solomon as the king. Zadok, evidently, was related to Aaron through Eleazar, the oldest son of Aaron. Abiathar was related to Aaron through Ithamar, the younger son (1 Chron. 24:3-6). Eleazar had been the successor of Aaron. Possession of the staff could have cemented the case that Zadok was the proper priest in the line of Aaron and therefore had the right to anoint the next king. Alas, "There was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone. . . ."

After the Exodus and Numbers citations, the text of the Old Testament does not mention again either the gold urn of manna or Aaron's staff. Accounts of when Israel broke camp and moved towards the Promised Land make no mention of these two objects, leading one to assume that, at least while the people were on the move, the urn and the staff were placed in the ark. Then come the Kings and Chronicles passages, which state that the ark contained nothing but the two tablets of stone. The only break in the religious tradition of the ark between Israel's time in the desert and the time of Solomon occurred when the ark was captured by the Philistines. It was later returned to Israel but was ignored until David attempted to move it to Jerusalem.

So what happened to the urn of manna and the staff of Aaron? It is possible that they were lost to Israel when Israel lost the ark to the Philistines. Even if the two objects were not in the ark but were placed "before" the ark and had been left behind in the tabernacle in Shiloh (which was soon to be destroyed by the Philistines), a significant intrusion occurred in the way Israel worshiped God when the ark was captured. The urn and the staff no longer played a role in the nation's worship. Directly or indirectly, the Philistines were responsible for this loss, a crucial element in Israel's enduring hatred of the Philistines.⁶