The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh, and stopped there beside a large rock. The people cut up the cart for wood and sacrificed the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord.
“Take it, and Your Majesty can use it to make offerings as you think best,” Araunah told David. “Here are the oxen for burnt offerings, and here are the threshing boards and the yokes for the oxen for firewood.
David built an altar to the Lord there, and presented burnt offerings and friendship offerings. The Lord answered his prayer for the country, and the plague on Israel was stopped.
Elisha left him, took his pair of oxen, and slaughtered them. Using the wood of the oxen's yoke as fuel, he cooked the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate it. Then he left to follow and serve Elijah.
Make me an altar of earth, and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and peace offerings, your sheep, goats, and cattle. Wherever I decide to be worshiped, I will come to you and bless you.
Then build an altar to the Lord your God in the proper way on this hilltop. Using the wood of the Asherah pole you cut down as firewood, take the second bull and present it as a burnt offering.”
Right then Saul was coming back from plowing a field with his oxen. “Why is everyone so upset?” he asked. They told him what the men from Jabesh had said.
He told me, ‘Please let me go, because our family is having a sacrifice in the town and my brother told me I had to be there. If you think well of me, please let me go and see my brothers.’ That's why he's absent from the king's table.”
The gold rats represented the number of Philistine towns of the five rulers—the fortified towns and their surrounding villages. The large rock on which they placed the Ark of the Lord still stands to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh as a witness to what happened there.