What happened to the Ark of the Covenant?

The Ark of the Covenant was the gold-covered chest that held the tablets of the Ten Commandments and stood in the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle and later of Solomon's temple. When Solomon dedicated the temple, "There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone" (1 Kings 8:9). The last clear mention in the history books comes around 622 BC, when King Josiah told the Levites, "Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel did build" (2 Chronicles 35:3). When the Babylonians destroyed the temple in 586 BC, 2 Kings 25:13-17 lists the bronze, gold, and silver items they carried away, but the ark is not named, and the Bible never tells us its fate. Several explanations have been offered. Many historians think it was destroyed or taken as plunder by the Babylonians, or possibly lost even earlier, when invaders such as the Egyptian king Shishak "took away the treasures of the house of the LORD" (1 Kings 14:26). The book of 2 Maccabees in the Apocrypha (2:4-8) preserves a tradition that Jeremiah hid it in a cave on Mount Nebo. Jewish tradition in the Talmud says it was hidden beneath the temple grounds. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes the ark rests in a chapel in Aksum, guarded by a single monk, though no outsider has been allowed to see it. These are traditions, not Scripture. The Bible itself points beyond the earthly ark: Jeremiah foretold a day when "they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the LORD" (Jeremiah 3:16), and John saw in heaven "the ark of his testament" (Revelation 11:19).

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