‘ And when they came to the threshing-floor of Nacon, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled.'
But as they were coming to the threshing-floor of Nacon (or ‘a certain threshing-floor') a misfortune occurred. The oxen stumbled on the no doubt rough road. There is in fact no suggestion that the Ark was in danger of falling off the cart, although it may well have moved slightly from its place. But what we can be sure of was that initially all Uzzah's attention would be on the oxen, for he was driving the cart.
Thus his reaching out to the Ark was not the involuntary action of someone who was walking beside it and did not want it to fall off. That would have been far better accomplished by the people surrounding the cart, even though they were probably avoiding touching even the cart, because they recognised the holiness of the Ark. Rather Uzzah's act was almost proprietary, as though God needed him to look after Him. It seems clear that through familiarity he had lost his awe of the Ark, and probably had the same attitude towards God, for he reached out, possibly to set it back in its place, as though it had just been a common object. He was treating it as if it was his own possession. Indeed he was probably the only one in the large excited crowd who was not totally in awe of it. And that was his undoing. What he should have done, of course, if the Ark needed adjusting, was to call for the travelling poles which were normally used for bearing the Ark (which must have been used in order to put the Ark on the cart and would be required at the end of the journey). But everyone without exception knew that it was forbidden to touch the holy furnishings of the Tabernacle, including the Ark. Thus he was without excuse.
Note that the attention of the writer (and the future listener) was concentrated on those fatal words, ‘Uzzah reached forth to the ark of God, and took hold of it'. He was not interested in any other detail. His whole attention was on the awfulness of what Uzzah had done. To him it would have been almost unbelievable, and whenever those words were read out later the listening crowds would have shuddered.
It is difficult in modern times to even begin to appreciate what his action must have meant to all who saw it. Touching the Ark was something that was, and had always been, strictly forbidden. No priest or Levite would ever have dared to touch it (Numbers 4:15). Even the act of curiously and sacrilegiously gazing on it while uncovered had brought great suffering on those who did so (1 Samuel 16:19; compare Exodus 19:21). Yet this was an even greater act of sacrilege. Indeed it was so great an act of sacrilege, that all who saw it must have been stunned to silence at what they saw. They would have considered that it was treating the Holy One of Israel with undue familiarity. And apart from everything else it suggested that the living God could not look after Himself. It was to treat Him like a helpless image. But even worse it was to desecrate the most holy object of Israelite worship with the defiled fingers of man, and behave towards it as though it was a common thing. It was to trivialise God. And it was unquestionably done deliberately, as Uzzah's position as driver makes clear.
God had clearly seen it as of great importance that man should recognise the barrier between man and Himself. He had demonstrated this at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:12; Exodus 19:24). To trespass on the holy meant death. It was a vital lesson. Man has always been too prone to think that God can be treated lightly, and at such an important moment the lesson had to be taught that God had to be feared as well as loved. This was why such a thing as this happened. It made clear to all the absolute holiness and ‘otherness' of God. It is a reminder that there are times in history when what could at other times be treated more leniently must be treated with the utmost severity. For this was not just some private mistake. It had occurred openly before all the people, and to an object seen as so holy that none apart from the High Priest would ever look on it again, and even he only in a darkened room. As YHWH's ‘mercy seat' (His propitiatory) it represented the presence of God Himself. It was as close as man could ever physically get to physically approaching the living God. It bore the holy Name of YHWH.
We do not know what went through Uzzah's mind when he did it (the realisation of what he had done may well have been what gave him the stroke from which he died), but one thing is clear and that is that it revealed that he had lost his supreme awe of the Ark. His act of reaching out and touching the Ark unquestionably demonstrated that. It was the act of one to whom the Ark had become just another object, of one who had lost the realisation that God was fully represented there. It may well be that he wanted the people to see that he himself was on especially good terms with the Almighty. Or he may have wanted them all to be in awe of him as ‘the man who could touch the Ark'. But it was certainly not just the involuntary action of an innocent man. The holiness of the Ark (and of all the Temple furniture) had been too deeply imbued into God's people for that to be a probability. No other would even remotely have considered the possibility of touching the Ark. Had it fallen off the cart they would have drawn back to avoid it, not tried to save it. So to do what Uzzah did required someone who had grown grossly careless about spiritual things.