Lives of Scripture

Abinadab lived at Kiriath-jearim, and after the ark of the covenant caused plagues among the Philistines who had captured it, they returned it, and the men of Kiriath-jearim brought it to his house. His son Eleazar was consecrated to guard it there, and it remained for about twenty years while Israel "lamented after the LORD" (1 Samuel 7:1-2). Years later, once David had become king and united Israel, he resolved to bring the ark to Jerusalem. David and thirty thousand men went to Abinadab's house on the hill and set the ark on a new cart, with Abinadab's sons Uzzah and Ahio driving it and walking alongside (2 Samuel 6:3-4; 1 Chronicles 13:7). Along the way, the oxen stumbled, Uzzah reached out to steady the ark, and God struck him dead on the spot for touching it -- a shocking judgment that frightened David and halted the procession (2 Samuel 6:6-9). The ark was diverted to the house of Obed-edom for three months before David tried again, this time carrying it properly on the shoulders of Levites as the Law required, rather than on a cart (1 Chronicles 15:2, 13-15). Abinadab himself performs no independent action in the account -- his significance is that his household, quietly and faithfully, sheltered Israel's most sacred object for a generation, at the center of one of Scripture's sharpest warnings about approaching God's holiness on His terms, not on convenient human terms.