The gold-covered acacia-wood chest, two and a half cubits long, that Moses is told to build to hold 'the testimony' — the stone tablets — and over which God promises to meet and speak with him from between two cherubim (Exodus 25:10–22, already on these pages). It travels through the wilderness and into the land, sits at the center of Israel's worship for centuries, and then simply disappears from the biblical record somewhere in the ruin of the first temple, never described as destroyed and never described as recovered. A later Jewish tradition (2 Maccabees 2:4–8, outside the canon this project translates) has the prophet Jeremiah himself hide it in a cave on Mount Nebo before the Babylonian destruction, sealing the entrance and declaring that its place would 'remain unknown until God gathers his people together again.' The New Testament's ONE mention of the ark answers that tradition's exact shape without citing it: John sees 'the ark of his covenant' inside the temple IN HEAVEN, opened for the first time (Revelation 11:19, already on these pages) — the object was never destroyed and never merely lost, only ever looked for in the wrong building.