There ran a man of Benjamin out of the army, and came to Shiloh the same day, with his clothes torn, and with earth on his head.
The implications of the loss of the ark were indeed profound.  By the use of the same terminology ("the ears ... shall tingle") in his prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah equated the loss of the ark and the destruction of Shiloh with the fall of Jerusalem and the deportation of the Chosen People to Babylon  (Jeremiah 19:3).  Keil described the significance of the ark's loss thus: