“And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and he struck him down because he put out his hand to the ark, and he died there before God.”  (ESV – read the chapter)

This is another of those hard verses in the Old Testament that we struggle to understand.  Why would God strike Uzzah down like this?  What exactly did he do that was so wrong it justified an immediate death sentence?  It sure seems like all he did was touch the ark.  Why was that such a big deal?

Well, the most honest answer here is: We don’t know.  That being said, there is some more we can say to help try and make sense out of this.

1. When God was giving the instructions for transporting the ark to Moses in Numbers 4, He told them specifically how it was to be carried and, more importantly, that it was not to be touched because it was holy.  Whoever touched it would die.  David and his crew were not transporting the ark according to the instructions in the Law.  Along the way the cart it was riding on (it was supposed to be carried by poles fitted through a set of rings built into the ark) hit a hard bump causing the thing to start to tip over.  Uzzah, not wanting the ark to hit the ground, reached out to steady it with his hand.  He touched it and he died.  Had they been doing with it what they were supposed to be doing with it in the first place, Uzzah would not have died.  If we make sure we are where we are supposed to be, doing what we are supposed to be doing, the way we are supposed to be doing it, this kind of thing won’t happen.
2. God takes His holiness very seriously.  It is one of the central elements of His character.  Throughout the Scriptures He does not stand for direct violations of it.  As parents you know that there are some rules with your kids that you absolutely have to keep and keep with an almost radical firmness–a firmness that in their minds may be wildly out of proportion to the act itself.  You do this, though, because breaking the rule could result in serious bodily harm or even death and you need for them to understand how serious breaking it could be.  So, you set an off-the-charts consequence for breaking it.  You must, by the way, follow through and enforce this consequence lest the rule and your authority over them generally become meaningless.  Don’t set consequences you aren’t willing to enforce.Well, for the people of Israel, while the ark was not an idol, it was the clearest, most important representation of the character and presence of God they had.  If they began seeing it as common, they would soon begin seeing God as common.  That would jeopardize their relationship with Him in a way that would spell disaster for their future.  Now, they struggled to remain faithful to Him anyway, which did indeed spell disaster for them, but that just serves to prove the point that they needed all the help they could get in taking their relationship with Him seriously.  Thus, this was a time where, though Uzzah’s sin seemed small (no doubt David’s anger mentioned in v. 14 was in part at what he perceived to be the injustice of God to respond with such force to such an apparently small sin), it demanded an immediate, overwhelming (though not unjust) response on God’s part so that the people were not allowed to begin thinking something about Him that would have caused them great trouble later on down the road.  He wanted them to take His holiness as seriously as He did so they would not grow lax in their relationship with Him.
3. This is another of those places where we have to get the character of God right if we are going to make any sense out of it and lean into that character extra hard for help in understanding.  God is just.  He never does anything that is not right.  And, He never acts in a way that is out of proportion to an event.  His actions are always perfectly measured to the situation.  If that seems to us not to be the case, the problem is with our understanding, not with God’s action.  If He does something that we don’t understand, we can rest assured He has a morally sufficient reason for doing whatever it is.  What’s more, He is not beholden to share that reason with us.  We need to examine His record of justice and faithfulness and trust in His character.In this particular case, Uzzah sinned, the penalty of sin is death, and he died.  Nothing unjust there at all.  In fact, what should really get our attention here is not Uzzah’s death, but the fact that everybody involved in moving the ark–including David–were sinning in how they were doing it and they were not all struck down on the spot as well.  We laser focus in on God’s judgment here, but the truth is that His mercy was much more clearly on display as it always is.

   What makes this act of immediate judgment so notable is that God usually extends patience and mercy and doesn’t give us the due punishment for our sins when we commit them.  Before the cross this was a special act of grace on His part.  On this side of the cross, Jesus has paid the price for our sins already and so in God’s patient mercy He is giving us plenty of time to accept His sacrifice on our behalf so that we can be forgiven and enjoy the life for which we were created.

The real question here is how we are going to respond to it.  Will we accept His offer of life that comes out of Jesus’ satisfaction of the demands of both His justice and His love, or will we continue trying to go it alone and work our way into a right relationship with God or whatever other higher power to whom we have committed ourselves, always coming up just a bit short in our efforts?  Seems a pretty easy choice when you put it like that.