The only things inside the Ark were two stone tablets that Moses had put in the Ark at Mount Sinai. That was where the Lord made his agreement with the Israelites after they came out of Egypt.
Now give yourselves completely to obeying the Lord your God. Build the holy place of the Lord God; build the Temple for worship to the Lord. Then bring the Ark of the Agreement with the Lord and the holy items that belong to God into the Temple.”
Then Moses took the blood from the bowls and sprinkled it on the people, saying, “This is the blood that begins the Agreement, the Agreement which the Lord has made with you about all these words.”
Moses stayed there with the Lord forty days and forty nights, and during that time he did not eat food or drink water. And Moses wrote the words of the Agreement—the Ten Commandments—on the stone tablets.
He said, “Take this Book of the Teachings and put it beside the Ark of the Agreement with the Lord your God. It must stay there as a witness against you.
When I went up on the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets with the Agreement the Lord had made with you, I stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights; I did not eat bread or drink water.