The Israelites generally understood that with the arrival of the ark, the Lord would fight on their behalf and thus a victory over the Philistines was almost guaranteed. To their minds, seeing as the ark was the place from which the Lord ruled and was intimately connected to him, the Lord would have been forced to protect his honour. He would never allow the ark to be captured, because if he did, then he would have been shown to be weak and unable to protect his people.1 The coming of the ark was thus an attempt by the Israelites to manipulate the Lord into giving them battle victory. They wanted to compel the Lord to help them and were confident of success.2
5 As soon as the ark of the covenant of the LORD came into the camp, all Israel gave a mighty shout, so that the earth resounded.