During the second millennium b.c., nomadic herders face the dry heat of the Egyptian delta. A family gathers to pack the remains of their patriarch into a hollowed wooden box. Decades of physical labor and forced migration wear heavily on the muscles of the survivors. They seal the joints of the heavy timber to prevent the dampness of the river valley from rotting the bones inside. Men stand watch with bronze tools, guarding against the theft of their ancestral remains. The sheer weight of the wooden coffin promises a grueling eventual transport back to the rocky hills of Canaan, yet it offers final rest for an exhausted leader.
Simeon dies at 120 years of age. His sons construct an ark of heavy timber to hold his body. They prepare to carry his bones out of Egypt to the burial caves in Hebron. This action secures their legal claim to the ancestral land. The brothers know the local rulers actively hide the remains of foreign leaders to harness their perceived power. To ensure their survival as a distinct people, the sons of Simeon must protect this heavy wooden box. They wait for a future priest from Levi and a ruler from Judah. According to the patriarch, this future king will deliver both the twelve tribes and every Gentile. The Lord of Hosts himself will execute this plan.
The heavy wooden coffin acts as a physical deed to a distant piece of real estate. Men do not drag hundreds of pounds of dead weight across a desert simply for sentiment. The box forces a fractured family to look forward toward a shared geographic destination rather than assimilating into the fertile river valley around them. A rotting body sealed in timber demands a return to the dry stone tombs of the fathers.
A heavy load carried together keeps a group from scattering in the wilderness.
The sons of Simeon eventually buried the box deep in the caves of Hebron alongside the early patriarchs. The thick timber rotted away into the limestone, leaving only bone fragments to mark the permanent territorial claim.