Why uzzah died

Context Crossref Comm Hebrew. Verse Click for Chapter. So Uzzah died right there beside the Ark of God. American Standard Version And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God. And God prescribed specific guidelines for how to use it, move it, and store it. Does that seem a bit severe? Then let me ask you this: which was the most severe, unnatural death of all the deaths in the Bible?

Of all the deaths mentioned above, and an additional list of others that make you cringe, none of these comes close to the most severe, unnatural death in the Bible. God the Son died on the cross. It would have been natural for God to allow a world of sinners to pay our own price of justice, to be judged by his holy wrath forever, and to be separated from God and all his blessings. Instead, God came and died for us. He paid the price that his own justice demanded.

Jesus became your substitute. His words could not be seen as voluntary before all of Israel, even though He gave them space to get it right. Uzzah touching the Ark was the last straw. Recall what happened when Nadab and Abihu offered unauthorized fire before God and fell dead. Does He have some sort of spiritual OCD? That sets him apart from anyone else. You could in some sense say that the sun is holy. But the closer you get to the sun, the more intense it gets.

The power and goodness that allows for all this life is also extremely dangerous. And in the same way, God in his holiness has created and sustains all life. But if you approach God in the wrong way or in an impure state, His presence is also very dangerous.

We see this when Moses draws near to the burning bush. In his book God Behaving Badly , author David Lamb points out that the Ark was to be carried on a litter, which is a conveyance with a throne on it. It is also what we have done with the creation and heavenly intent of God; we don't follow it, but rather the vast majority of people would rather live in the concession God permitted because of their hardness of heart. But when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out toward the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen nearly upset it.

And the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence; and he died there by the ark of God. Most likely what Uzzah did, he did with every good intention; but he had allowed himself to be placed in a position where his every good intention was against the will of God.

And if God allowed Uzzah to touch the ark and live, then everyone else would come to think that they, too, could touch the holy things of God, and the whole service to the Lord would become a trivial thing. The way he died doesn't mean that he didn't go to heaven.

As his heart was, so he will be with the Lord. Uzzah died so that the others would realize their mistake, repent, and treat God with the holiness and respect He deserves. And David became angry because of the Lord's outburst against Uzzah, and that place is called Perez-uzzah to this day. So David was afraid of the Lord that day; and he said, "How can the ark of the Lord come to me?

David has a reason to be afraid; as we should be when we do things in our own pride, but say that they are for the Lord. Many people do this very same thing when they ask God to bless a meal containing the tortured remains of animals, when God's intent was that we eat only plant foods. And people do the same thing today, when they ask God to heal them and their loved ones from the diseases they contracted as a direct result of our society's practice of farming and eating animals.

He's not seeking to bring the ark of the Lord to Jerusalem so that all Israel can come to one spot and worship God.