But what, in this disaster, became of Jahweh himself? How fared or fell the Sacred Stone in the ark, the Rock of Israel, in this general destruction of all his holiest belongings? Strange to say, the Hebrew annalist never stops to tell us. In the plaintive catalogue of the wrongs wrought by the Babylonians at Jerusalem, every pot and shovel and vessel is enumerated, but “the ark of God” is not so much as once mentioned. Perhaps the historian shrank from relating that final disgrace of his country’s deity; perhaps a sense of reverence prevented him from chronicling it; perhaps he knew nothing of what had finally been done with the cherished and time-honoured stone pillar of his ancestors. It is possible, too, that with his later and more etherealised conceptions of the cult of his god, he had ceased to regard the ark itself as the abode of Jahweh, and was unaware that his tribal deity had been represented in the innermost shrine of the temple by a rough-hewn pillar. Be that as it may, the actual fate of Jahweh himself is involved for us now in impenetrable obscurity. Probably the invaders who took away “the treasures of the house of Jahweh, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon, King of Israel, had made,” would care but little for the rude sacred stone of a conquered people. We may conjecture that they broke Jahweh into a thousand fragments and ground him to powder, as Josiah had done with the Baalim and the Ashera, so that his very relics could no longer be recognised or worshipped by {222}his followers. At any rate, we hear no more, from that time forth, of Jahweh himself, as a material existence, or of the ark he dwelt in. His spirit alone survived unseen, to guard and protect his chosen people.