Coffer

A coffer in the UPDV is a chest — a contained receptacle distinct from the sacred ark it accompanies. The term surfaces in two settings: the Philistines' return of the captured ark, where a coffer carries the trespass-offering of gold beside it, and the Tyre lament, where chests of cedar appear among the city's merchant wares.

The Philistines' Coffer Beside the Ark

The umbrella's primary witness is the Philistine return narrative in 1 Samuel 6, where the coffer is paired three times with the ark of Yahweh. After seven months of plague the Philistine priests and fortune-tellers prescribe that the ark not be sent back empty: a trespass-offering of five golden tumors and five golden mice is to accompany it (1 Sa 6:3-5). The instruction for transport names the coffer specifically as the container for that offering: "and take the ark of Yahweh, and lay it on the cart; and put the jewels of gold, which you⁺ return to him for a trespass-offering, in a coffer by its side; and send it away, that it may go" (1 Sa 6:8).

The placement is deliberate. The ark sits on the cart; the coffer sits "by its side." The two objects travel together but are not conflated — the holy ark is one thing, the receptacle of restitution beside it another. When the men carry out the instruction the same pairing is preserved: "and they put the ark of Yahweh on the cart, and the coffer with the mice of gold and the images of their tumors" (1 Sa 6:11).

At Beth-shemesh, where the kine bring the cart into the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite, the unloading is also described as a pair: "And the Levites took down the ark of Yahweh, and the coffer that was with it, in which the jewels of gold were, and put them on the great stone" (1 Sa 6:15). The coffer here is opened evidence — its contents, the jewels of gold, are visible to the Beth-shemites and laid out with the ark on the great stone, the same stone that the surrounding narrative marks as a memorial "to this day in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite" (1 Sa 6:18). The trespass-offering is thus a settled transaction, deposited in a named place.

Across these three verses the coffer functions as the vehicle of restitution. It is not itself the holy object; it is the means by which the Philistines' acknowledgment of Yahweh's hand — "Five golden tumors, and five golden mice, [according to] the number of the lords of the Philistines" (1 Sa 6:4) — is delivered alongside the ark they had taken.

Chests of Cedar in the Tyre Lament

The same umbrella term gathers a different setting in Ezekiel's lament over Tyre, where the "chest" sense is rendered in UPDV as plural "chests": "These were your traffickers in choice wares, in wrappings of blue and embroidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords and made of cedar, these were your merchandise" (Eze 27:24). Here the chests are merchant goods — cedar containers, bound with cords, holding rich apparel — listed among Tyre's traffickers' wares. The picture is of commerce rather than ritual restitution: a chest as a manufactured trade item, valued for its contents and its construction.

Between the two settings the coffer/chest is a contained vessel that carries something of worth — gold offerings beside the ark in 1 Samuel, fine apparel among Tyre's merchandise in Ezekiel. The word marks the container, not what it contains.

Related

See also Treasury for the broader sense of stored or kept valuables.