1 Samuel 6:1

Ch. 1Sa_6:1-9. The Philistines resolve to send back the Ark

1. The Sept. adds, at the end of the verse, “And their land swarmed with mice,” probably an explanatory gloss in anticipation of 1Sa_6:4.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Sa 6:1 And the ark of the LORD was in the country of the Philistines seven months.

Ver. 1. And the ark of the Lord was in the country.] Heb., In the field of the Philistines: whence some have thought, that being plagued for it while in their houses, they set it in the open fields, and were thereupon plagued with mice and moles, that turned up their fields and devoured their grain.

Seven months.] Not four months only, as Josephus, falsely. This was a long while for God’s people to be without that visible pawn of his presence and glory; so that they might seem to be as forlorn and forsaken of him. Such a misery may befall any people, to be bereft of God’s ordinances; or any soul, to be for a time without the sense of his gracious presence and light of his countenance. But God hath promised to his to be "a little sanctuary unto them," {Eze 11:16} and "not to leave them," or if he do so, yet "not to forsake them," {Heb 13:5} provided that they look upon all other comforts as so many Ichabods, till he return unto them in mercy and lovingkindness.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Sa_6:1

And the ark of God was in the country of the Philistines.

Terrible aspects of Gods character

At last the ark leaves the land of the Philistines. For seven terrible months it had spread among them anxiety, terror, and death. Nothing but utter ruin seemed likely to spring from a longer residence of the ark in their territories. Glad were they to get rid of it, golden emerods, golden mice, new cart, milch kine, and all. It is a solemn truth that there are aspects of Gods character, aspects of the Saviours character, in which He is only a terror and a trouble. These are the aspects in which God is seen opposed to what men love and prize, tearing their treasures away from them, or tearing them away from their treasures. It is an awful thing to know God in these aspects alone. Yet it is the aspect in which God usually appears to the sinner. It is the aspect in which our consciences present Him when we are conscious of having incurred His displeasure. And while man remains a sinner and in love with his sin he may try to disguise the solemn fact to his own mind, but it is nevertheless true that his secret desire is to get rid of God. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Sa 6:1. The ark was in the country of the Philistines seven months — So long they kept it, as being loath to lose so great a prize, and willing to try all ways to keep it.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

RETURN OF THE ARK TO KIRJATH-JEARIM, Samuel 1Sa_6:1 to 1Sa_7:1.

1. Seven months — “So enfeebled and debased was Israel by their sins, that they durst not or would not attempt to recover it. God displayed his own power by bringing back the ark, not by the hands of Israel, but by those of his enemies.” — Wordsworth.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—

1Sa_6:1. “Country,” literally the field. It probably signifies the cultivated plain.

1Sa_6:2. “Diviners.” “That is, the organs of the Deity, who reveal His counsel and will through the mantic art, and whose decision is final. After it had been determined in the council of the princes (1Sa_5:11) to send back the ark to the Israelites, the priests and soothsayers are to tell how it shall be sent back.” (Erdmann).

1Sa_6:3. “Trespass-offering.” Asham, literally guilt, then a gift presented as compensation for a fault. The gifts appointed by the Philistines as an asham were to serve as compensation and satisfaction to be rendered to the God of Israel for the robbery committed upon Him by the removal of the ark, and were therefore called asham, though in their nature they were only expiatory offerings” (Keil).

1Sa_6:4. “Five golden mice,” etc. “It was a prevalent custom in heathen antiquity to make offerings to the gods expressive of the particular mercy received. Those saved from shipwreck offered pictures of the shipwreck in the temple of Isis; slaves and captives, in gratitude for the recovery of their liberty, offered chains to the Lares; retired gladiators, their arms to Hercules; and in the fifth century a custom prevailed among Christians of offering in their churches gold or silver hands, feet, etc., in return for cures effected in those members.… A similar custom still prevails among the heathen in India” (Biblical Commentary). The offering of the Philistines was not, however, a thank-offering, it was rather a talisman or charm. “From the ancient writers of Arabia we learn how a talisman, or charm of this kind, was composed. They held that all earthly things are but shadows of heavenly things, and that the celestial forms have an overruling influence on all earthly forms of life. Thus, for instance, if they wished to give a man a talisman that would make him safe against the bite of serpents, they got the exact moment of his birth. Their books told them what planet “ruled his birth,” what planet was then in full lustre. They waited for the moment when this planet was “out of combustion,” i.e., was not shining at its strength—the moment in which, thus shorn of its strength, it entered into the constellation which they called the Serpent. The favourable moment having arrived, they made a tiny stone or metal image of a serpent, engraved certain mystic letters upon it, and here was the talisman. So long as the man carried that about with him, no serpent could hurt him. Ancient literature is full of marvellous stories of the power of these talismans.… It is this talismanic method that is alluded to in this passage, for, instead of reading “Ye shall make images,” etc., we ought to read, “Ye shall make talismans of your emrods, and talismans of your mice.” (S. Cox.) “The Philistine astrologers could not but have heard that God had shown His Divine complacency with the brazen serpent, set upon a pole in the wilderness. This they, with their notions, would regard as a telesme (talisman), and as that image of a serpent was effectual against the plague of serpents, they might not unreasonably infer that similar images of their own inflictions might be equally effectual; indeed, there have not been wanting persons to suggest that the whole of this set of ideas regarding telesmes may have originated in a distorted view of this transaction.” (Kitto.)

1Sa_6:6. “As the Egyptians.” “Another testimony from the heathen to the truth of the Pentateuch, and a proof that God’s judgments on Egypt were not without salutary effects on idolaters.” (Wordsworth.)

1Sa_6:7. “Make a new cart,” etc. “The new cart and the young cows, which had never worn a yoke, corresponded to the holiness of the ark of God. To place it upon an old cart, which had already been used for all kinds of earthly purposes, would have been an offence against the holy thing; and it would have been just the same to yoke to the cart animals that had already been used for drawing, and had had their strength impaired by the yoke. The reason for selecting cows, however, instead of male oxen, was no doubt to be found in the further object which they hoped to attain.” (Keil.)

1Sa_6:9. “Bethshemesh.” “House of the sun,” an Israelitish priestly city on the border of Judah and Dan (Jos_21:16.) about twelve miles from Ekron.

1Sa_6:13. “Though it was a priestly city the inhabitants of Bethshemesh are expressly distinguished from the Levites.” (Erdmann.) “Wheat harvest.” Therefore about May or June.

1Sa_6:14. “Field of Joshua.” “One who bore the same name as he who had brought Israel and the ark into Canaan.” (Wordsworth.) “A burnt offering.” “It was lawful to offer the sacrifice here, because wherever the ark was offering might be made.” (Erdmann.)

1Sa_6:18. “The Philistines offered as many golden mice as there were towns and villages in their five states; no doubt because the plague of mice had spread over the whole land, whereas the plague of boils had only fallen upon those towns to which the ark had come.” (Keil.) “Great stone of Abel.” Great stone is not in the original. Abel means mourning, and some commentators think the stone was so named because of the lamentation mentioned in 1Sa_6:19. Keil, Erdmann, and others, however, for Abel read Eben or Aben—a stone, as in 1Sa_6:14-15.

1Sa_6:19. “Fifty thousand,” etc. In some Hebrew manuscripts the statement reads seventy men, fifty thousand men. Some do not contain the words fifty thousand, and Josephus speaks of only three score and ten. These considerations, added to the unlikelihood that Bethshemesh had so many inhabitants lead commentators to reject the words fifty thousand as an interpolation, or to read (as Patrick and others) seventy men; fifty out of a thousand.

1Sa_6:21. “Kirjath-jearim,” i.e., city of woods or forests (Psa_132:6), in the territory of Judah (Jos_9:17; Jos_18:25-26), generally identified with the present Kuryet-el-Enab. “It was the nearest large city to Bethshemesh, on the way to Shiloh, to which, perhaps, they supposed that the ark ought to return.” (Wordsworth.) “The inhabitants belonging to the Hivite tetrapolis were the sacred servants of the sanctuary, and, therefore, the proper parties to whom, in the emergency, the custody of the ark should be committed. Bethshemesh, being in a low plain, and Kirjath-jearim on a hill, explains the message, ‘Come ye down, and fetch it up to you.’ ” (Jamieson.)

NOTE.—“After the transaction recorded in this chapter, we hear no more of any attempts among the Gentile nations to join the Jewish worship with their own. They considered the God of Israel as a tutelary deity, absolutely unsociable, who would have nothing to do with any but his own people, or with such particularly as would worship him alone, and, therefore, in this respect, different from all other tutelary gods, each of which was willing to live in community with the rest.” (Warburton.)

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE CHAPTER

THE RETURN OF THE ARK

I. No change is needed in God to effect a change in His dealings with sinful men. The physician is as good when he is inflicting pain as when he is giving pleasure. It does not need a change of disposition in him to cause him to cease from giving pain to his patient; the change must be in the sick man himself. When a sinner feels that matters are not right between him and his God, he thinks that he should be in a better position if he could only change God’s disposition towards him; but no change is needed on the part of God. It is in the character and disposition of the sinner that the change must be made, if he is to have rest and hope in his relation to God. When the Philistines felt that the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them, they changed the place of the ark, thinking thereby to pacify God’s displeasure, and change His disposition towards them. But what was needed was not change on the part of the Eternal God, but change in their relations towards Him.

II. Divine blessings may be turned into curses if men get into wrong relationship to them. Sunlight is intended by God to be a blessing to men. But the light of the sun brings pain to a man whose eyes are diseased. The suffering comes from his eyes and the sun not standing in that relation to each other which God intended they should do. Fire is a great blessing to man while it is kept in its right relation, while it is used as God intended it should be used, to minister to his bodily comfort. But if fire lays hold of his raiment, or his dwelling, a good gift of God becomes a curse, by getting into a wrong relation. And as it is with the material gifts of God, so it is with His spiritual gifts. All the Divine ordinances are intended as means of blessing and sanctification to the heart of men. Yet to some that which was ordained to bless becomes a curse—that which ought to be a savour of life becomes a savour of death. Men through ignorance or indifference do not put the Divine ordinances to a right use—get into a wrong relationship to them, and thus that which was designed to bless becomes a curse. The ark of God was designed by Him to be a means of grace and blessing to Israel by helping them to realise the presence and favour of the unseen God. It would also have become a blessing to the Philistines if they had considered the lessons which the fall of Dagon before it was designed to teach them. But the heathen disregarded the voice of God which spoke to them, and thus the presence of His ark became the means of judgment, because they stood in a wrong relation to it. And its return to Israel, which ought to have been an occasion of unmixed joy, was marked by a judgment upon the men of Bethshemesh, because of the thoughtless irreverence of their conduct—because they lacked a right conception of the holiness of the God whose presence the ark symbolised.

III. The human conscience testifies to the need of an atonement for sin. The heathen, ignorant as they are of the revelation of God, offer gifts and sacrifices to their deities. The Philistines here thought it expedient to try and make some expiation of their trespass against the God of Israel, and such a feeling of the need of atonement is found in almost every people in the world. And this feeling does not grow weaker in proportion as men possess the revelation of God. The conviction of the great distance between the holy God and sinful man increases as men grow in their knowledge of Him—the nearer view men have of His purity and greatness, the more are they disposed to exclaim with the men of Bethshemesh, “Who is able to stand before this Holy Lord God?” It is when the artist places his most finished work beside the real landscape that he realises how very far short he has come—the more closely they are compared the more clearly does he see the perfection of the one, and the imperfections of the other. And the more men know of God—the more they become acquainted with Him by the manifestations of His power and moral attributes, the more deeply convinced do they become of their own imperfections, and the more do they cry out for some atonement. When the Bethshemites, on the return of the ark, “offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices the same day unto the Lord,” they were not only obeying the Levitical law, but they were acting in conformity to a law written in their hearts, and written with more or less distinctness in the hearts of all men. The offering of the Lord Jesus Christ is not only said to be “offered to God,” but also to the conscience of man (Heb_9:14; Rom_5:11). The return of the ark also reminds us—

IV. That the enemies of God’s Israel are not always to retain the portion of His children. A battle was fought in Eden, and the great enemy of God and man took from man his God-given inheritance. And from that day until now the “kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” have been held by Satan (Luk_4:5-6). This earth is still, to a great extent, in the hands of the enemies of its rightful possessor. But it is being won back. Each generation sees drawing nearer the day when there will be “great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ” (Rev_11:15). And this earth will be given back to men who have themselves been redeemed from the bondage of Satan. As Israel lost their ark so the world has been lost to man by his own sin; but it will not be always in the hands of his enemies—those who have returned to their allegiance to their rightful sovereign will one day inherit a redeemed earth.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

1Sa_6:1. This was a long while for God’s people to be without that visible pawn of His presence and glory; so that they might seem to be as forlorn and forsaken of Him. Such a misery may befall any people, to be bereft of God’s ordinances; or any soul, to be for a time without the sense of His gracious presence and light of His countenance. But God hath promised to His, to be a “little sanctuary unto them” (Eze_11:16), and “not to leave them,” or if He do so, yet “not to forsake them,” (Heb_13:5), provided that they look on all other comforts as so many Ichabods, till He return unto them in mercy and loving-kindness.—Trapp.

It had wont to be a sure rule, wheresoever God is among men, there is the Church; here only it failed. The testimony of God’s presence was many months among the Philistines, for a punishment of His own people whom He left; for a curse to those foreigners who entertained it. Israel was seven months without God. How do we think faithful Samuel took this absence? How desolate and forlorn did the tabernacle of God look without the ark! There were still the altars of God; His priests, Levites, tables, vails, censers, with all their legal accoutrements; these, without the ark, were as the sun without light, in the midst of an eclipse. If all these had been taken away, and only the ark remaining, the loss had been nothing to this, that the ark should be gone and they left; for what are all these without God, and how all-sufficient is God without these!—Bp. Hall.

Greater dishonour is done to God by those who call themselves His people, yet continue to slight and abuse the singular advantages with which they have been long favoured, than by the attacks of his avowed enemies. Hence He may often seem as it were to desert His own cause, and suffer the declared enemies of His name to triumph for a time, rather than take part with hypocritical pretenders, who with their lips profess that they know and serve Him, but in works deny Him. Thus He permitted the sacred symbol of His own presence to fall into the hands of Philistine idolators, rather than to remain dishonoured by idolatrous Israelites.—Lindsay.

1Sa_6:2. They say not, “What shall we do with it,” for they were most of them resolved to send it home; but “What shall we do to it? How shall we send it home as it ought to be sent?” For they know that it is the manner that maketh or marreth an action. Sure it is that in divine matters men must look that not only the body of their service be sound, but that the clothes be fit.—Trapp.

1Sa_6:5. These sorcerers, like Balaam and Caiaphas, ignorantly spake the truth, and promoted God’s glory and honour. Peradventure.—Idolators are always at uncertainty, and walking in darkness, know not whither they go.—Trapp.

1Sa_6:6. Samuel himself could not have spoken more divinely than these priests of Dagon.… All religions have afforded them that speak well; these good words left them still Philistines and superstitious. How should men be hypocrites if they had not good tongues.… Who would think that wisdom and folly could lodge so near together that the same men should have care both for the glory of the true God, and the preservation of the false?—Bp. Hall.

The exact knowledge that the Philistine priests and soothsayers had of the punitive revelations of God against the Egyptians, and of the cause of them in the fact that the people hardened themselves against Him, is an eminent example of His government of the world, which was closely interwoven with the history of revelation in His kingdom, and in which he penetrated with the beams of His revealed light the darkness of heathenism which surrounded His people, and made preparation for the revelation of the New Covenant, which was to embrace the whole world. They were in such light to seek the Lord in their ways, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.—Lange’s Commentary.

1Sa_6:12. And the lords of the Philistines went after them. And so, as servants and pages, they attend upon the ark, which erst as conquerors they carried captive.—Trapp.

1Sa_6:19. As it is hard not to overjoy in a sudden prosperity, and to use happiness is no less difficult than to forbear it, these glad Israelites cannot see, but they must gaze; they cannot gaze on the glorious outside, but they must be, whether out of rude jollity, or curiosity, or suspicion of the purloining of those sacred implements, prying into the secrets of God’s ark. Nature is too subject to extremities, and is ever either too dull in want, or wanton in fruition; it is no easy matter to keep a mean, whether in good or evil.… There was no malice in this curious inquisition: the same eyes that looked into the ark looked also up to heaven in their offerings; and the same hands that touched it offered sacrifice to the God that brought it. Who could expect anything now but acceptation? Who could suspect any danger? It is not a following act of devotion that can make amends for a former sin.—Bishop Hall.

God had just vindicated His own honour against the Philistines; it must now be seen that He would be sanctified in them that come nigh Him (Lev_10:3). It is obvious to observe how the doctrine of atonement, and its necessity in the case of sinners, is taught in this and similar lessons as to the awful holiness of God.—Biblical Commentary.

1Sa_6:20-21. Many appear joyful at the revival of religion, and numbers unite in external observances, who have no inward reverence for the Divine majesty.… Instead of this reverence, the carnal heart substitutes a slavish fear; and when rebuked for presumption or contempt, or alarmed with discoveries of the justice and holiness of God, it will, with the Gadarenes, or with these Bethshemites, request the Saviour to depart, and vainly seek to escape the Lord’s displeasure, by an entire forgetfulness of Him.—Scott.

When God, so to speak, only passes by us, through some temporary taste of His presence, it is a favour which He may also impart to sinners. But that He may make His abode in us, as He promises in so many passages of Holy Scripture, that He may be willing to remain with us and in us, for that there is demanded great purity in every respect.—Berlenberger Bible.

The attribute of holiness is, to our own apprehension, so essential to the mere idea of God—is in itself so obvious and self-evident, that we may at times be inclined to wonder at the frequency with which it is stated and enforced in the Scriptures. But the view of the Divine character out of which this feeling arises, is itself the creation of those scriptural declarations on the subject; and the formation of this high conception of God was the use they were designed to serve, and which we thus find that they have served. It may also be remembered, that to the Hebrews the enforcement of this doctrine was of an importance which it is scarcely in our power to understand or appreciate fully. The surrounding heathen—indeed all the heathen, had very different and inferior notions of the gods they served. Holiness was not their attribute. They were very capable of sin; and the choice of good in preference to evil was not essential to their nature. These were above men in their essence and in their sovereign powers; but in character they were men, and not always good men. There was no one attribute by which Jehovah was so pointedly distinguished from the gods of the nations as by this. Its maintenance, its constant assertion, was therefore of the utmost importance among a people whose tendencies so often were to merge the worship of their own Lord in that of the neighbouring idols. This attribute set a great gulf between them which could not be overpassed so long as its presence was constantly kept before the mind of the people … There was another and more general use in it, in which we share the benefit with them. It is a check to sin, and an incitement to righteousness. It seems impossible for anyone to realise a clear and distinct idea of the holiness of God—that sin, that whatever defiles, is abhorrent to His pure and holy nature, without hearing His voice crying unto us—“O, do not that abominable thing which I hate.”.… Instead of imitating the ignorant Bethshemites, in putting away the ark of God from us, because we cannot stand before His holiness, let us rather strive after assimilation to Him, that we may be enabled to keep the ark among us.—Kitto.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

2. Restoration of the Ark with Expiatory Gifts. 1Sa_6:1-11

1And the ark of the Lord [Jehovah] was in the country of the Philistines seven 2months. And the Philistines called for [together1] the priests and the diviners, saying, What shall we do to [with] the ark of the Lord [Jehovah]? Tell us 3wherewith2 we shall send it to his [its] place. And they said, If ye3 send away the ark of the God of Israel, send it not empty, but in any wise [om. in any wise4] return him5 a trespass-offering; then ye shall be healed,6 and it shall be known7 to 4you why his hand is not removed from you. Then said they [And they said], What shall be [is] the trespass-offering which we shall return to him? [Ins. And] they answered [said], Five golden emerods [boils] and five golden mice,8 according9 to the number of the lords of the Philistines; for one plague was [is] on you10 all 5and on your lords. Wherefore [And] ye shall make images of your emerods [boils], and images of your mice that mar [devastate] the laud; and ye shall give glory to the God of Israel; peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, 6and from off your gods, and from off your land. [Ins. And] wherefore then [om. then] do [will] ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? [ins. Did they not], when he had [om. had11] wrought wonderfully among them, did they not [om. did they not] let the people go, and they departed? 7Now therefore [And now] make12 a new cart, and take12 two milch kine, on which there hath come no yoke, and tie [yoke] the kine to the cart, and bring their calves 8home from them. And take the ark of the Lord [Jehovah], and lay it upon the cart, and put the jewels of gold [golden figures13], which ye return him5 for a trespass-offering, in a [the14] coffer by the side thereof, and send it away, that it may 9go. And see, if it goeth [go] up by the way of his [its] own coast to Beth-Shemesh, then he hath done us this great evil; but if not, then we shall know that it is not 10his hand that smote us; it was a chance that happened to us. And the men did so, and took two milch kine, and tied [yoked] them to the cart, and shut up their 11calves at home; And they [om. they] laid the ark of the Lord [Jehovah] upon the cart, and the coffer with [and] the mice of gold [golden mice] and the images of their emerods [boils].15

3. Reception and Quartering of the Ark in Israel. 1Sa_6:12 to 1Sa_7:1

12And the kine took the straight way [went straight forward16] to the way of [on the road to] Bethshemesh, and [om. and] went along the highway [on one highway they went], lowing17 as they went, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left; and the lords of the Philistines went after them unto the border of Bethshemesh. 13And they18of Bethshemesh were reaping their wheat-harvest in the valley; 14and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see19 it. And the cart came into the field of Joshua a Bethshemite [the Bethshemeshite], and stood there, where [and there] there was a great stone; and they clave the wood of the 15cart, and offered the kine a burnt-offering unto the Lord [Jehovah]. And the Levites took down the ark of the Lord [Jehovah], and the coffer that was with it, wherein [ins. were] the jewels of gold [golden figures] were [om. were], and put them on the great stone; and the men of Bethshemesh offered burnt-offerings, and 16sacrificed sacrifices the same day unto the Lord [Jehovah]. And when [om. when] the five lords of the Philistines had seen [saw] it, they [and] returned to Ekron 17the same day. And these are the golden emerods [boils] which the Philistines returned for [as] a trespass-offering unto the Lord [Jehovah]: for Ashdod one, for 18Gaza one, for Askelon one, for Gath one, for Ekron one. And the golden mice [ins. were] according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both of fenced cities and of country villages,20even unto the great stone of Abel whereon they set down the ark of the Lord, which stone remaineth unto this day in the field of Joshua the Bethshemite [And21 the great stone, on which they set down the ark of Jehovah, remaineth to this day in the field of Joshua the Bethshemeshite].

19And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had [om. had] looked into [at22] the ark of the Lord [Jehovah], even [and] he smote of the people fifty thousand and three-score and ten men [70 men, 50,000 men23]; and the people lamented, because the Lord [Jehovah] had smitten [smote] many of [om. many of] the people 20with a great slaughter. And the men of Bethshemesh said, Who is able to stand before [ins. Jehovah], this holy Lord [om. Lord] God? and to whom shall he go 21up from us? And they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim, saying, The Philistines have brought again [back] the ark of the Lord [Jehovah]; come ye down, and fetch it up to you.

1Sa_7:1 And the men of Kirjath-jearim came, and fetched up the ark of the Lord [Jehovah], and brought it into the house of Abinadab in [on] the hill, and sanctified [consecrated] Eleazar his son to keep the ark of the Lord [Jehovah].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

I. 1Sa_6:1-11. The ark is sent back with expiatory gifts. The designation of place: in the field is here to be taken in the wider sense of territory, country, as in Rth_1:2.—The seven months, during which the ark was in the country of the Philistines, was a time of uninterrupted plagues. In addition to the disease of boils came the plague of the devastation of the fields by mice. That the plague of mice was something over and above the disease is plain from 1Sa_6:5; 1Sa_6:11; 1Sa_6:18; in 1Sa_6:1 the Sept. adds, “and their land swarmed with mice,” which the narrator has not expressly mentioned. Thenius’ supposition that, from similarity of final syllables ((־ִים), a clause has fallen out of the Heb. text, is too bold a one. Maurer remarks correctly: “it is generally agreed that the Hebrew writers not infrequently omit things essential, and then afterwards mention them briefly in succession.”

1Sa_6:2. After it had been determined in the council of the princes to send back the ark to the Israelites, the priests and soothsayers are now to tell how it shall be sent back. Alongside of an honorable priestly class appear here the soothsayers [diviners] (that is, the organs of the deity, who reveal his counsel and will through the mantic art) as authorities, whose decision is final. The princes had to consider the political-national and social side, these the religious side of the question.,24 Inasmuch as it has already been determined to send the ark back, the question “what shall we do in respect to the ark of God?” is only introductory to the succeeding question, “wherewith or how shall we send it to its place?” The בַּמֶּה may mean either, but the rendering “how, in what way” (Vulg. quomodo) is favored by the connection, since the priests would else not have answered that the ark was not to be sent back without gifts.

1Sa_6:3, We must here not supply the pronoun “ye” to the Particip. (מְשַׁלְחִים), but must render (as in 1Sa_2:24) impersonally,1 Samuel 25 : “if one sends, if they send.” The ark must be restored, not empty, but with gifts. These gifts are to be an asham (אָשָׁם), a debt-offering or expiatory offering; the gift is thus designated, because it is a question of the payment of a debt.26 Satisfaction must be made to the angered God of the people of Israel for the contempt put on Him by the abduction of the ark. The word “return, make compensation” (הֵשִׁיב) refers to the unlawful appropriation; it is a matter of compensation. Vulg.: quod debetis, reddite ei pro peccato. לוֹ [“to him,” “to it”] is to be referred not to the ark (Sept.), but to God. Send Him a “gift, by which His anger shall be appeased, lest He torment you more” (Cleric). According to Exo_23:15 no one was allowed to appear empty-handed (רֵיקָם) before God. Whether, as Clericus supposes, this was known to the Philistine priests, is uncertain. The words אַז תֵּרָֽפְאוּ may be taken either as conditional or as assertory. The latter rendering “then you shall be healed” would suit the connection and the whole situation, but that these priests expressly declare it to be possible (1Sa_6:9) that this plague was to be ascribed not to the God of Israel, but to a chance. The hypothetical rendering is therefore to be preferred, which is grammatically allowable, though the conditional particle is wanting. (Comp. Ew. Gr., § 357 b). We must therefore translate: “and if ye shall be healed.”,27 In the words “and it shall be known to you why His hand is not removed from you” the present tense offers no difficulty, the sense being: “you shall then by the cure learn why His hand now smites you; His hand is not removed from you, because the expiation for your guilt, which will be followed by cure, is not yet made.”

Bunsen: “It was a universal custom of ancient nations to dedicate to the deity to whom a sickness was ascribed, or from whom cure was desired, likenesses of the diseased parts.” This was true also of the cause of the plagues. The Philistines therefore (1Sa_6:4 sq.), when they inquired what they should send along as trespass or expiatory offering, received the answer: “five golden boils and five golden mice.” The number five is expressly fixed on with reference to the five princes of the Philistines, who represent the whole people (מִסֻפָּר is Acc. of exact determination “according to, in relation to,” with adverbial signification. Ges. Gr., § 118, 3). The change of person in the words “one plague is on them all and on your princes” has occasioned the reading “you all,” which is for this reason to be rejected.28 People and princes are here regarded as a unit, the latter representing the former, and therefore the number of the gifts to be offered for the whole is determined by the number (five) of the princes. 1Sa_6:5 makes in a supplementary way express mention of the devastation which the mice made in the land. “This plague is often far greater in southern lands than with us; so that the Egyptians use the figure of a fieldmouse to denote destruction; there are many examples, it is said, of the whole harvest in a field having been destroyed by them in one night” (1 Samuel 5 : Gerl.). Comp. Boch. Hieroz. II., 429 ed. Ros.; Plin. Hist. Nat. X. c. 65. By the presentation of the likenesses in gold they were to “give honor to the God of Israel.” These words of the Philistine priests explain the expression “pay or return a trespass-offering.” By the removal of the ark, the seat of the glory of the God of Israel, His honor is violated; hence the punishment in this two-fold plague; by these gifts they are to attempt to make compensation for the violation of honor, and the wrath of the God who is wounded in His honor is to be turned aside. “By bringing precisely the instrument of their chastisement as a gift to God, they confess that He Himself has punished them, and do homage to His might, hoping therefore all the more by paying their debt to be made or to remain free,” (v. Gerlach). The expression “perhaps He will lighten His hand from off you” agrees with that in 1Sa_6:3, “if ye be healed,” and with 1Sa_6:9.

[It is not clear that the Philistines were visited with a plague of mice. In spite of Maurer’s remark (on 1Sa_6:1) endorsed by Erdmann, it is strange that no mention is made of the mice in chap. 5. Philippson (who translates akbar not “mouse” but “boil”) further objects that the assumption of a mouse-plague different from the boil-disease is incompatible with the assertion in 1Sa_6:4, “one plague is on you and on your lords,” which supposes a bodily infliction (on which, however, see the discussion of the Sept. text of 1Sa_6:4-5, in note to 1Sa_6:18). Nor does the Heb. text expressly state that there was such a plague. In 1Sa_6:5 nothing more is necessarily said (so Wellhausen) than that they were exposed to land devastations by mice, and that the whole land had suffered, and 1Sa_6:18 (however interpreted) adds nothing to the statement in 1Sa_6:4. We may on critical grounds keep the present Masoretic text (discarding the Sept. addition to 1Sa_6:1) without finding in it the mouse-plague. On the other hand, the figure of a mouse was in Egypt a symbol of destruction, and so might have been chosen here as a fitting expiatory offering. Possibly, as there was a Baal-zebub, “lord of flies” (Ζεὺς ’Απόμυιος), worshipped at Ekron, so there was a Baal-akbar, “lord of mice,” and this animal may have been connected with religious worship.—Others explain the figures of the boils and mice as telesms or talismans. So Maimonides, quoted in Poole’s Synopsis, in which are cited many illustrations of the wide use of talismans (figures made under planetary and astral conjunctions in the likeness of the injurious object or of the part affected) among the ancients (expanded by Kitto, Daily Bible Illust., Saul and David, p. 86 sq.). But, supposing there was a plague of mice, these figures were prepared, not by their own virtue to avert the plague (which the talismans were supposed to do), but to appease the wrath of the God of Israel.—Tr.].—Lighten from off you, etc., is a pregnant expression for “lighten and turn away from you,” so that the burden of the punishment shall be removed from you. In 1Sa_6:6 the case of the Egyptians is referred to in order to strengthen the exhortation. We have already seen in 1Sa_4:8 the mark of the deep impression made on the neighboring heathen nations by the judgments of the God of Israel on the Egyptians. The Philistine priests see in these plagues judgments like those inflicted on the Egyptians, and set forth the universal and comprehensive significance of this revelation of the heavy hand of God in the words “on [rather from] you, and your god [better, perhaps, gods, as in Eng. A. V.], and your land.” They thus refer this general calamity not only to its highest cause in the God of Israel and His violated honor, but also to its deepest ground in the Philistines’ hardening of the heart against Him after the manner of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and so show exact acquaintance with the pragmatism of the history of God’s revelations towards Egypt and its king. Comp. Exo_7:13 sqq. with Exo 8:32. It is evident from the connection that the words of the priests are to be referred only to the obligation to “give honor to the God of Israel” by expiatory presents, not to the restoration of the ark, which was already determined on. The hardening or obduration of the heart is the stubborn and persistent refusal to give to the God of Israel His due honor, after His honor had been violated. The word הִתְעַלֵּל [“ wrought”] points to God’s mighty deeds against Pharaoh and the Egyptians; it is found in the same sense “work, exercise power” [“work one’s will on”] in Exo_10:2 and 1Sa_31:4. In view of these exhibitions of God’s power, they are warned against such a persistent stiff-necked opposition to it. 1Sa_6:6 is not inconsistent with the doubt expressed in 1Sa_6:9, whether the plagues come from the God of Israel or from a chance, since it is (in 1Sa_6:9) at any rate regarded as possible that the God of Israel has thus exhibited His anger. “The mere possibility of this makes it seem advisable to do every thing to appease the wrath of the God of the Israelites, which the heathen, from their fear of the gods, dreaded under the circumstances not less, yea, more than the anger of their own gods” (Keil).

1Sa_6:7-9. The arrangements respecting the mode of sending back the ark. In 1Sa_6:7 the arrangements are made for a restoration of the ark worthy of and proportionate to the honor of the God of Israel. The Philistines are not, for this purpose, to have a new cart made, but, as the preceding קְחוּ shows, to take,29 one already made, in order to fit it up and prepare it for this end; this is shown by the וַעֲשׂוּ [“and make”]. A new cart and two hitherto unyoked milch cows (comp. Deu_21:3) are to carry back the ark with the presents; only what had not been used, what was still undesecrated, was an appropriate means for the honor destined to be shown to the dreaded God of Israel. עֲגָלָה, properly the “rolling thing,” means the transport-wagon, which, according to this, was in use in Philistia, and was usually yoked with oxen. The calves were to be taken along, but afterwards to be carried from behind the drawing cows, back into the house—that is, into the stall. In reference to the cows the Masc. is thrice used in 1Sa_6:7 for the Fem., “because the writer thinks of the cows as oxen” (Thenius); and so in 1Sa_6:10; 1Sa_6:12. In 1Sa_6:8 a minute description is given of the manner of loading the cart with the ark and with the coffer (אַרְגָּז, found only here and 1Sa_6:11; 1Sa_6:15) in which the golden expiatory gifts were to be carried. “And send it away, that it may go.” From the connection it appears that the cart, with the ark, is left to the cows to draw; the direction which they take without being led or driven is decisive of the question whether the plagues are from the God of Israel or not.

1Sa_6:9. This is stated more precisely by the priests. If the cows went straight to its (the ark’s) territory, this would be the sign that the plagues were from the God of Israel; if not, it would show that it was only a matter of chance. From their stand-point the heathen distinguished with perfect logical consistency between the providence of the God of Israel and a mere chance. “Its territory or coast” (גְּבוּלוֹ) is the land of Israel as its home. Bethshemesh is one of the Israelitish priestly cities on the border of Judah and Dan (Jos_21:16), the nearest of them to Ekron, and the nearest point of entrance from Philistia into the hill-country of Judah (Jos_15:10-11). The valley in or on which (1Sa_6:13) it lay, was the same with the present Wady Surar. The present Ain Shems which rests on it is the ancient Bethshemesh.30 S. Robinson, II. 599, III. 224 sq. [ Amer. Ed. II. 14, 16, 223–225.] If this direction was not taken by the cows, that was to be the sign that “this was a chance (מִקְרֶה is not adverb. “by chance” (Keil), but Nom. of the subject; and this is no ground for reading (with Böttcher) מִקָּרֶה, “by chance”). The meaning of the priests was, that the cows, being unaccustomed to the yoke, and being, besides, milch cows, from which their calves had been separated, would, in obedience to their natural impulse, wish to turn about and go back to their stall, unless a higher power restrained them, and compelled them to take the road to Bethshemesh and keep it. By God’s ordination this was done, and so was for the Philistines the factual confirmation given by the God of Israel of the opinion that He had inflicted the plagues on them. 1Sa_6:10-11 relate the carrying out of the arrangements which the priests had made. The restoration is performed in the manner prescribed by the priests.

II. 1Sa_6:12-21. The ark is transported to Bethshemesh. 1Sa_6:12. They kept the road exactly—lit. “they were straight on the way.”31 Mesillah (מְסִלָה) is a thrown up, raised way, a highway. On one highway—that is, without going hither and thither, as is afterwards added by way of explanation, “without turning aside to the right or to the left.” They went going and lowing; that is, constantly lowing, because they wanted their calves; yet they did not turn about, but went on in the opposite direction. The Philistine princes went behind, not before them, because, in accordance with the suggestion of the priests, they had to observe whither the animals went. 1Sa_6:13. Bethshemesh is for “the inhabitants of Bethshemesh.” Though it was a priestly city, the inhabitants of Bethshemesh are expressly distinguished from the Levites. The Bethshemeshites, who were reaping wheat in the valley (Wady Surar), rejoiced to see the long-lost ark. [The wheat harvest points to May or June as the time of the return of the ark. Robinson: “May 13. Most of the fields (near Jericho) were already reaped. Three days before we had left the wheat green upon the fields around Hebron and Carmel; and we afterwards found the harvest there in a less forward state on the 6th of June” (I. 550, 551). We do not know what species of wheat the ancient Hebrews had; but the crop was the most important one in the country (see 1 Kings v. 11). Mr. W. Houghton says (Smith’s Bib. Dict. Art. “Wheat”): “There appear to be two or three kinds of wheat at present grown in Palestine, the Triticum vulgare (var. hybernum), the T. spelta, and another variety of bearded wheat, which appears to be the same as the Egyptian kind, the T. compositum.” The phrase “they lifted up their eyes and saw,” being the common Heb. formula for “looking,” does not show that the object looked at was on a higher elevation than the spectator. Thus Stanley’s argument (Sin. and Pal., p. 248) from Gen_22:4 as to the site of “Moriah” has no weight.—Tr.] 1Sa_6:14. The great stone in the field of the Beth-shemeshite Joshua was probably the occasion of the cart’s being stopped here, with the design of using the stone as a sacred spot for the solemn removal of the ark and the presents, as appears from 1Sa_6:15. The Levites are expressly mentioned in connection with the setting the ark down on the great stone, a sacred act which pertained to them alone. Since the ark betokened the presence of the Lord, it could be said that they, namely, the Bethshemeshites, offered the kine to the Lord by using the wood of the cart for the burnt-offering. With this they joined a blood-offering. It was lawful to offer the sacrifice here, because, wherever the ark was, offering might be made. Though the people of Bethshemesh are expressly said to be the offerers [1Sa_6:15], this does not exclude the co-operation of the priests, especially as Bethshemesh was a priestly city. From the single burnt-offering in 1Sa_6:14, which was offered with the cart and the kine, the burnt-offerings [1Sa_6:15] and the slain-offerings, which were connected with a joyful sacrificial meal, are to be distinguished as a second sacrificial act, which, in its first element (the burnt-offering), set forth the renewed consecration and devotion of the whole life to the Lord, and in its second (the meal) expressed joyful thanksgiving for the restoration of God’s enthronement and habitation amid His people, of which they had been so long deprived. 1Sa_6:16. The five lords of the Philistines saw in this occurrence, in accordance with the instruction of their priests, a revelation of the God of Israel; they returned to Ekron the same day.

1Sa_6:17-18. A second enumeration of the expiatory gifts, comp. 1Sa_6:4. The statement here made varies from that of 1Sa_6:4 only in the fact that, while the priests had advised the presentation of only five golden figures of mice, here a much greater number, “according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines,” are offered; because, from the expression “from the fenced city to the village of the inhabitants of the low land” (הַפְּרָזִי Deu_3:5) [rather “fenced cities and country32 villages”], which shows that every Philistine locality was represented in the mouse-figures, we learn that the mouse-plague extended over the whole country, while the boil-plague prevailed only in the largest cities,33 In the second clause, instead of וְעַד [“and unto”] read וְעֵד [“and witness”], and instead of אָכֵל [“Abel”], we must, on account of the attached Adj. and the repeated reference to the “field of Joshua” (1Sa_6:14; 1Sa_6:16), read אֶבֶן [“stone”], and translate: “and a witness is the great stone (וְעֵד is found in the same sense, Gen_31:52)… to this day.” Kimchi’s explanation of אָבֵל as the name [the Heb. word means “mourning”] given to the stone on account of the mourning made there (1Sa_6:19) is a fanciful expedient, which has also no support in the context, since nothing is afterwards said of a mourning at this stone.

1Sa_6:19-21. The ark in Bethshemesh. A punishment is inflicted by God on the Bethshemeshites because they had sinned respecting the holiness of God, which was represented before their eyes by the ark. Wherein this sin consisted is stated in the words “because they looked,” &c. (בִּי רָאוּ בְּ׳), which are to be connected with the question in 1Sa_6:20. From 1Sa_6:13 (if we retain the text) it could not have been the mere looking at the ark, which stood on the cart, and was necessarily visible to every body, but, as the בְּ shows, consisted only in the manner of looking at it. As the unauthorized touching (Num_4:15; 2Sa_6:7), so the profane, prying, curious looking at the ark, as the symbol of the holy God who dwells amid His people, is forbidden on pain of death. The fundamental passage, to which we must here go back, is Num_4:20. The deepest ground of the strict prohibition to touch and look at the ark lies in the opposition which exists between man, impure through sin, and the holy God, which cannot be removed by immediate and unmediated connection with God on man’s part, but only through the means which God has by special revelation ordained to this end. Against Thenius, who holds that this explanation cannot be based on Num_4:20, it is to be remarked that this passage speaks expressly not only of unauthorized intrusion, but also of a similar looking at the inner sanctuary. There is no contradiction between this verse and 1Sa_6:13, if we regard the Ace. in the latter, and the Prep. “at” (בְּ) here; this difference in the designation of the object indicates a difference in this connection in the seeing. In Num_4:20 also the seeing is more exactly defined by an added word. Other explanations, as: “because they were afraid at the ark” (Syr., Arab.), or: “looked into it” (Rabb.), are entirely untenable. It is true, however, that the words of the text (according to which the above would be the only tenable explanation) present great difficulties, which Thenius expresses in the remark: “One does not see why ‘and he smote’ (וַיַךְ) is repeated, and why we have ‘the people’ (בָּעָם) again after ‘the men of Bethshemesh’ (בְּאַנְשֵׁי ב׳).” Moreover, the following words of this verse, which give the number of the slain, undoubtedly offer an incorrect, or rather a corrupt text; whereby the preceding words would be involved in the corruption. The supposition of a defective text being here so natural, we should be inclined to adopt (with Thenius) the reading of the Sept.: “And the children of Jechoniah among the Bethshemeshitcs were not glad (5:13) that they saw the ark, and he smote of them,” etc.; but that the objection “that we elsewhere find nothing at all about the race of Jechoniah” is by no means so unimportant as Thenius thinks it. The reading “70 men, 50,000 men” is evidently corrupt. If a process of addition were here intended, then “and” (ו) must necessarily stand before the second number. If a partition were meant (70 out of 50,000 men), then, besides the grammatical difficulty, there is the objection that the city of Bethshemesh (and it alone is here spoken of), could not possibly have had so many inhabitants. The last objection applies with still more force to Ewald’s translation, “beginning with 70 and increasing to 50,000 men,”—which would require us to suppose a still larger population. The words “50,000 men” are wanting in Jos. (Ant. 6,1–14), and in some Heb. MSS. (Cod. Kenn. 84, 210, 418), and are [to be rejected],34 since they give no sense, and probably “came from the margin into the text as another solution of the numeral sign which stood there (in the original text stood ע [70], while in another נ̈ [50,000] was found)” (Thenius).—The ground of the sudden death of the 70 of the race of Jechoniah is their unsympathizing, and therefore unholy bearing towards the symbol of God’s presence among His people, which showed a mind wholly estranged from the living God, a symptom of the religious-moral degeneracy, which had spread among the people, though piety was still to be found.35

1Sa_6:20. Who can stand before this holy God?—This question expresses their consciousness of unworthiness, and their fear of the violated majesty of the covenant-God of Israel. The people of Bethshemesh recognize in the death of the 70 a judgment of God, in which He punishes the violation of His majesty and glory, and defends His holiness in relation to His people. God is called the holy in this connection, in that He guards and avenges His greatness and glory, which He had revealed to Israel, when they are violated and dishonored by human sin, by unholy, godless conduct.—From the connection only “God” can be the Subj. of “shall go up” (יַעֲלֶה). The question “to whom shall he go up from us?” refers then indeed to the ark, in connection with which the sin and the punishment had occurred, and supposes that the Bethshemeshites were unwilling to keep it among them, from fear of farther judgments which its stay might occasion. A superstitious idea here mingles with the fear of God, since the stay of the ark is regarded as in itself a cause of further misfortune.

1Sa_6:21. Kirjath-jearim, that is, “ city of forests” [Forestville, Woodville], in the tribe-territory of Judah, belonged at an earlier period to Gibeon (Jos_9:17; Jos_18:25-26; Ezr_2:25; Neh_7:29), and is the present Kuryet el Enab= “city of wine” [literally “grapes”] (Rob. II. 588 sq. [Amer. ed. II. 11], and Bibl. Forschung. 205 sq. [Am. ed. III. 157], Tobler, Topogr. II. 742 sqq.).36 The embassy to the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim had two objects: the announcement of the return of the ark, and the demand that they should take it. They are silent as to the misfortune which was connected with its restoration, and as to their reason for not wishing to keep it. 1Sa_7:1 mentions the safe transportation of the ark by the Kirjath-jearimites to their city. The ark is placed in the house of Abinadab בּגִּבְעָה, “on the hill,” not in “Gibeah” (Vulg., Luther), as if the latter were a suburb of Kirjath-jearim. The house of Abinadab was on a hill, and for this reason probably was chosen as the resting-place of the ark. “They consecrated Eleazar,” the son of Abinadab, that is, they chose and appointed him as a person consecrated to God for this service: he had to keep watch and guard over the ark. It is hence probable that the ark found shelter in the house of a Levite. “Nothing is said of Eleazar’s consecration as priest.…. He was constituted not priest, but watchman at the grave of the ark, by its corpse, till its future joyful resurrection” (Hengst., Beitr. III. 66 [Contributions to Int. to O. T.]). Why it was not carried back to Shiloh, is uncertain. The reason may be, that the Philistines after the victory in ch. iv. had conquered Shiloh, and now held it, as Ewald (Gesch. II. 540 [Hist, of Isr.]) supposes; though his conjecture that the Philistines had destroyed Shiloh together with the old sanctuary, is to be rejected, since it is certain that the Tabernacle afterwards moved from Shiloh to Nob, and thence to Gibeon, and that the worship in connection with it was maintained (1Sa_21:6; 1Ki_3:4; 2Ch_1:3). Or, it may be that, without a special revelation of the divine will, they were unwilling to carry the ark back to the place whence it had been removed by a judgment of God in consequence of the profanation of the Sanctuary by the sons of Eli (Keil); or simply that the purpose was first and provisionally to carry it safely to a large city as far off as possible, inasmuch as, in view of the sentence of rejection which had been passed on Shiloh, they did not dare to select on their own authority a new place for the Sanctuary (comp. Hengst., ubi sup., 49). It was not till David’s time that the ark was carried hence to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6).

HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL

1. Outside the sphere of His revelations in the covenant-people, the living God has not allowed the heathen nations to be without positive testimonies to His glory; He has, by severe chastisements, made them feel His might and power over them, when they, though they were the instruments of His punitive justice on Israel, did violence to His honor, and transgressed the limits assigned them.

2. The exact knowledge that the Philistine priests and soothsayers had of the punitive revelations of God against the Egyptians, and of the cause of them in the fact that that people hardened itself against Him, is an eminent example of His government of the world, which was closely interwoven with the history of revelation in His kingdom, and in which He penetrated with the beams of His revealed light the darkness of heathenism which surrounded His people, and made preparation for the revelation of the new covenant, which was to embrace the whole world. They were in such light to seek the Lord in their ways, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him (Act_17:27).

3. The need of expiation, as well as the demand for it, is deeply grounded in the relation of man to the holy God; through sin against God’s will and ordinances man finds himself in custody under His punitive justice, whence there is no redemption except by an expiation, failing which judgment is pronounced against him. Ail need of expiation and all means thereto, not only in the sphere of Old Testament revelation, but also in heathendom, are predictions of Christ, who made the universal and all-sufficient expiation for the guilt of the world.

4. The enemies of God’s kingdom cannot and are not permitted to retain the possessions of God’s sanctuary which they have gotten by robbery, but must bow beneath His mighty hand, and give them up, yea, restore them increased by counter-gifts on their part.

5. “ Who can stand before the Lord, this holy God!” The more clearly God’s holiness is seen in the mirror of His justice, the deeper and more energetic is the feeling of sin and unworthiness in the human heart before the holy God. The depth of the divine holiness becomes clearest and most sensible to sinful man in those of its manifestations, by which he sees God as “this holy God,” that is, in the vigorous exercise of His holiness, of which he has experience in God’s punitive justice directed against himself. But the deeper and more thorough the knowledge of one’s own sin, the clearer the knowledge of the divine holiness. Yet, to sinful men the light of the divine holiness, which is always for him dulled, must not become intolerable, so that he shall avoid God’s face, and abandon fellowship with Him; rather must sinful man bear this light which discloses all his sin and alienation from God, and seek to learn in it the ways of grace and salvation (Psa_51:5-6 [4,5]). The contrary result of the revelation of God’s holiness and justice leads to a sundering of relations between sinful man and Him, which by man’s fault makes of no effect God’s purposes of salvation.

6. “The blow which fell on the inhabitants of Bethshemesh in connection with the arrival of the ark, showed the people that they were not yet worthy of the fulfilment of the promise ‘I dwell in your midst.’ A condition of things had come about like that in the wilderness after the calf-worship, and in the Babylonian exile. The people must first become again inwardly God’s people before the sanctuary could be again placed among them. In what had happened they saw God’s factual declaration that He wished to dwell no longer in Shiloh” (Hengst. Beitr. 3, 48 sq. [Contrib. to Introd.]).

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

1Sa_6:1. [Henry: Seven months Israel was punished with the absence of the ark, and the Philistines punished with its  presence.… A melancholy time no doubt it was to the pious in Israel—particularly to Samuel—but they had this to comfort themselves with, as we have in the like distress, when we are deprived of the comfort of public ordinances, that, wherever the ark is, the Lord is in His holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven, and by faith and prayer we may have access with boldness to Him there. We may have God nigh unto us, when the ark is at a distance.—Tr.]. S. Schmid: God cannot bear with His enemies too long, but knows how at the right time to save His honor.

1Sa_6:2-3. J. Lange: Bad men, when they are chastised for their sins, are commonly disposed not to recognize the true cause, but maintain that it all comes only from chance or from merely natural causes.—Wuertemberg Bible: Even false prophets and teachers often have the gift of prophecy: Num_24:2; Joh_11:50-51; Mat_7:22-23. We must therefore not trust to outward gifts.—Tuebingen Bible: Even the heathen have recognized that the justice of God must be appeased if sin is to be forgiven.

1Sa_6:6. Cramer: God is wonderful, and often even speaks His word through unbelievers and ungodly men (Num_22:28). The word of God loses nothing in certainty, power, and worth, though it is preached by ungodly men (Php_1:15). [Hall: Samuel himself could not have spoken more divinely than these priests of Dagon: they do not only talk of giving glory to the God of Israel, but fall into an holy and grave expostulation.… All religions have afforded them that could speak well. These good words left them both Philistines and superstitious.—Tr.].

1Sa_6:7. S. Schmid: That the irrational brutes are under God’s providence and control, even the heathen have recognized.

1Sa_6:9. Starke: Great and wonderful is the long suffering of God, that He condescends to the weakness of men and suffers Himself to be tempted by them.—S. Schmid: That in which men prescribe to God and tempt Him, cannot indeed bind God; but it binds the men themselves in their consciences, who prescribe to Him.

1Sa_6:13. S. Schmid: Even in troublous times God does not cease to do good to His people.—Cramer: When God brings forth again the light of His word, it ought to be recognized with the highest thankfulness.

1Sa_6:14. Seb. Schmid: It is a great favor when God comes forward before men, and voluntarily appears among them.

1Sa_6:15. Wuert. Bible: When, after we have borne trouble and need, God again manifests to us His favor and help, we should not forget to be thankful.

1Sa_6:19. Seb. Schmid: An untimely and venturesome joy God can soon turn into great sorrow.—The plague is fortunate that brings the impenitent to repentance.

1Sa_6:20. Berlenb. Bible: When God so to speak only passes by us, through some temporary taste of His presence, it is a favor which He may also impart to sinners. But that He may make His abode in us, as He promises in so many passages of Holy Scripture, that He may be willing to remain with us and in us,—for that there is demanded great purity in every respect.—S. Schmid: Better is quite too great a fear of God than no fear, if only it does not wholly take away confidence in God’s mercy (Psa_119:120).

Footnotes:

[1][1Sa_6:2. So the verb is not unfrequently used, as in Jos_23:2.—Tr.]

[2][1Sa_6:2. Or, “how.—Tr.]

[3][1Sa_6:3. The Pron. is not in the present Heb. text, but is found in 7 MSS., in Sept., Syr., Chald., Arab., and apparently in Vulg. It may have fallen out, as Houbigant suggests, from similarity to the following word (אתם את). Others (so Erdmann) take the construction as impersonal, and render: “if one sends back,” etc.—Tr.]

[4][1Sa_6:3. This phrase in Eng. A. V. is intended to express the Heb. Inf. Abs.; but where the proper shade of intensity or emphasis cannot be given in Eng., it is better to write the verb simply, and not introduce a foreign substantive idea.—Tr.]

[5][1Sa_6:3. Some ancient vss. and modern expositors refer this to the ark, and render “to it,” relying on the grammatical connection, and on 1Sa_6:9; but the Philistines throughout seem to regard God, and not the ark, as the author of their sufferings. Yet it is possible that, even with this view, their idolatrous ideas might have led them to appease the instrument or visible occasion of the divine infliction.—Tr.]

[6][1Sa_6:3. Erdmann and others take this sentence as conditional (which is here possible, but somewhat hard) on the ground that the priests are not sure that the atonement-offering will be successful, but propose an experiment (as in 1Sa_6:9). Yet in 1Sa_6:5-6 they are sure, and the experiment in 1Sa_6:9 seems an afterthought.—Tr.]

[7][1Sa_6:3. The Heb. text is here supported by Syr., Arab. and Vulg., nor is there any variation in the MSS. (De Rossi); but Sept. has “expiation shall be made for you” (נִכַּפֵּר), and Chald. “healing shall be granted you” (יִתְרְוַח). To the first of these the repetition is an objection, to the second the order of ideas (healing, expiation). It does hot appear whether they are loose renderings of our text, or represent a different text.—Tr.]

[8][1Sa_6:4. Philippson renders “tumors” (geschwülste), setting aside the supposed plague of field-mice. See Exeg. Notes in loco. The Sept. here departs from the Heb. text in the order of statements and in the number of mice; see the discussion in the note on the passage.—Tr.]

[9][1Sa_6:4. This clause stands first in the original.—Tr.]

[10][1Sa_6:4. Heb.: “them all,” and so Erdmann and Philippson. But all the VSS. and 10 MSS. read “you,” Which the sense seems to require.—Tr.]

[11][1Sa_6:6. The verb (התעלל) is Aor., rendered “wrought” in Exo_10:2 by Eng. A. V.; Sept. and Vulg. render freely “smote;” but Syr. has “they mocked them, and did not send them away, and they went,” where the wrong number of the first vb. required the negation in the second.—Tr.]

[12][1Sa_6:7. Or, “take and prepare” (so Erdmann). But the verb קְחוּ may properly be taken as expletive or pleonastic here, as in 2Sa_18:18 (see Ges. Lex. s. v.), though it must be understood before the second accusative “kine.”—Tr.]

[13][1Sa_6:8. The word כְּלִי means any instrument or implement, and is used of utensils, implements, armor, weapons, vessels and jewels; here, however, it is none of these, but figures, copies or works: Luther, bilder, Erdmann, geräthe, D’Allioli, figures, Cahen, empreintes, and the other modern VSS., of Martin, Diodati, D’Almeida, De S. Miguel, have “figures;” only the Dutch has “jewels,” Vulg. vasa, Sept. σκεύη.—Tr.]

[14][1Sa_6:8. The Art. here points out the coffer which belonged to the cart; but as this is not otherwise known or mentioned, the insertion or omission of the Art. in Eng. makes little or no difference. The Al. Sept. inserts a neg. before the word “put” in this verse, perhaps to avoid a supposed difficulty in the number of golden mice.—Tr.]

[15][1Sa_6:11. The Vat. Sept. (but not Al.) omits the words “and the images of their boils,” perhaps in order to indicate that the mice were not in the argaz or box, and thus avoid the difficulty above-mentioned (see 1Sa_6:18). Wellhausen, taking exception to the inverted order here (mice, boils), to the word tehorim, and to the ambiguity of the phrase, omits all of 1Sa_6:11 after “coffer,” regarding the Heb. as a gloss on the already corrupt Greek. But this is improbable, and the Heb. is sustained by all the VSS. The tehorim is not improbably a marginal explanation of ophalim which has crept into the text (so Geiger and Erdmann); but the text, though not perfectly clear, must, on critical grounds, be retained, since there would have been no special reason why a scribe should insert it, but on the other hand ground for its omission, as the Greek shows tampering with the text to avoid a difficulty.—Tr.]

[16][1Sa_6:12. On the form of the Heb. word see Erdmann in loco.—Tr.]

[17][1Sa_6:12. Ges. Gram. (Conant’s transl.), § 75, Rem. I. 2.—Tr.]

[18][1Sa_6:13. The Heb. has simply “Bethshemesh,” the place put for its inhabitants.—Tr.]

[19][1Sa_6:13. Sept.: “to meet it” (לִקְרָאתוֹ), error of copyist.—Tr.]

[20][1Sa_6:18. The first clause of this verse (and along with it 1Sa_6:17) is stricken out by Wellhausen on the ground of its incompatibility with 1Sa_6:8. The external evidence for the clause is complete; on the internal evidence see the Comm. in loco and Translator’s note.—Tr.]

[21][1Sa_6:18. Or: “witness is the great stone,” etc., omitting the word “remaineth;” so Erdmann, see Comm. in loco. The simpler translation given above is that suggested in Bib. Comm.—Tr.]

[22][1Sa_6:19. This is the common meaning of the verb (ראה with ב).—Tr.]

[23][1Sa_6:19. These numbers, though probably incorrect, are left in the text, because no satisfactory reading has been settled on. The clause should be bracketed. See discussion in Comm.—Tr.]

[24][The word here employed for “priests” (kohanim) is the same as that used to designate the priests of the true God, the distinctive word for idol-priests (kemarim) occurring only three times in O. T., though frequent in the Syriac and Chald. translations. The Arabic here renders “chiefs” or “doctors” (ahbara), probably to avoid a scandalous application of the sacred name. For etymology of kohen see Ges., Thes., and Fürst, Heb. Lex.—The word rendered “soothsayer” (qosem) is probably from a stem meaning “to divide, partition, assign fortunes,” and seems to be employed to denote divination by processes such as shaking arrows, consulting teraphim, inspecting livers (Eze_21:26-28 [21–23]), perhaps differing thus from the mantic art proper, which involved possession or inspiration by the deity (which two methods Cicero calls divination with and without art, Div. 1, 18). The word is used in O. T. only of false diviners (for wider use in Arabic see Freytag, Ar. Lex. s. v. qasama). Comp. Art. “Divination” in Smith’s Bib. Dict. Articles “Wahrsager” and “Magier” in Winer’s Bib. R. W., and Ges., Thes.—Tr.]

[25][On this see Translator’s note in “Textual and Grammatical.”—Tr.]

[26][The word asham rather means not “debt,” but “offence” and its “punishment” (comp. Gen_26:10; Ps. 14:9; Isa_53:10, and the Arab. athama), and is not restricted in the Mosaic Law to cases of restitution (see Leviticus 5 (Eng. A. Lev_5:1 to Lev_6:7), Lev_14:12; Num_6:12). Here it may be used in this latter sense, and is in general more appropriate than hattath, since the Philistines cannot be supposed to have the deeper conception of sin involved in the latter word. It is, of course, a question whether they employed this very word asham.—Tr.]

[27][Against this see note under “Textual and Grammatical.”—Tr.]

[28][For defence of the reading “you all” see “Textual and Grammatical” notes in loco.—Tr.]

[29][Erdmann translates: “take and make a new cart, and take two milch cows,”—on which see note under “Textual and Grammatical.”—Tr.]

[30][Robinson: “Just on the west of the village (Ain Shems), on and around the plateau of a low swell between the Surar on the North and a smaller Wady on the South, are the manifest traces of an ancient site. Here are the vestiges of a former extensive city, consisting of many foundations and the remains of ancient walls of hewn stone. The materials have indeed been chiefly swallowed up in the probably repeated constructions of the modern village; but enough yet remains to make it one of the largest and most marked sites which we had any where seen. On the north the great Wady-es-Surar—itself a plain—runs off first west and then north-west into the great plain; while on the south the smaller Wady comes down from the south-east, and uniting with the one down which we had traveled, they enter the Surar below the ruins.”—Tr.]

[31] יִשַׁרְנָה is for ייִשָּׁרְנָה, and the י for ת. On this form comp. Ew. §191 b, and Gesen. §47, R. 3.

[32][The word פְּרָזָה is explained by the Mishna and the Jews generally, and by Gesenius, to mean “open country,” and this signification for the adj. form in the text is required by the contrast with “fenced cities.” See Ges. Thes. s. v. The Arab. stem pharaza is “to separate”—and the derived nouns have the sense of “planeness,” whence the rural districts may have been called “plane,” that is, “unwalled.”—Tr.]

[33][On the supposition that there was no mouse-plague, the mouse-figures equally represented the whole country. In this connection the Greek text of 1Sa_6:4-5 is worthy of attention. It reads: “(1Sa_6:4), five golden hedras (ophalim, ‘boils’), according to the number of the lords of the Philistines; (1Sa_6:5), and golden mice, like the mice,” etc.; thus separating the two statements, and omitting the second number five. If this reading were adopted, it-would relieve the Heb. text, which, in several places in this chapter, shows traces of corruption. See note under “Textual and Grammatical.”—Tr.]

[34][The words in brackets are not in the German—omitted probably by typographical error.—Tr.]

[35][On the criticism of this verse see De Rossi, Var. Lcct., and a good note in Bib. Comm. As to the numbers, it seems impossible to determine anything with certainty, and the conjecture of Thenius (that we read 70, omitting the 50,000) is as probable as any other. That the first part of the verse is corrupt is evident from the variations in the VSS. and the confused character of the Heb. text itself. Two hints for the reconstruction of the true text appear to be given us, one by the Chald., the other by the Sept. The former reads: “and He slew among the men of Bethshemesh, because they rejoiced when they saw the ark,” etc. (where the “rejoiced” is apparently taken from 1Sa_6:13); the latter reads: “and not pleased were the sons of Jechoniah among the men of Bethshemeshites, that they saw the ark,” etc. Combining these, we may perhaps infer 1) that the “rejoice” or “pleased” was inserted by a translator or copyist and 2) that a phrase of several words preceded the words “with the men of Bethshemesh,” The verse then, may have begun somewhat so: וַיחֲר אַף יהוה ,בּאֲנְשֵׁי ב׳, and read “and Jehovah was angry with the Bethshemeshites, because, etc., … and smote among them” (reading כהם for בעם). From this the present Heb. text might have come by substituting וַיִַךְ (by homœoteleuton or otherwise) for the first words, and omitting יי or יהוה, and the Sept. text might be explained as a duplet, in which the בְּנֵי יְכָנְיָהוּ is a corruption of the Heb., and the “displeased” taken from the same source as the Chald.—Wellhausen translates the Sept. into Heb. by the words וְלֹא נִקּוּ בְנֵי יְכָנְיָהוּ, and adopts this as the true text. But this is not in itself very satisfactory (“and the sons of Jechoniah were not guiltless,” etc.), and does not answer the demands of the VSS. and the context.—Tr.]

[36][Mr. Grove (Smith’s Bib. Dict., Art.“ Kirjath-jearim ”) suggests that the ancient sanctity of Kirjath-jearim (it was called Baalah and Kirjath-Baal, and may have been a seat of worship of the Canaanitish deity Baal) was the ground of the ark’s being sent thither. He points out also a difficulty in its identification with Kuryet el Enab from the distance (ten miles over an uneven country) between it and Bethshemesh (Ain Shems), and further from the absence (so far as known) of a hill corresponding to that mentioned in 1Sa_7:1. But see Porter, p. 270.—Tr.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTERS 6:1-7:2

1. The counsel of the Philistines (1Sa 6:1-9)

2. The ark at Beth-shemesh (1Sa 6:10-20)

3. The ark at Kirjath-jearim (1Sa 6:21; 1Sa 7:1-2)

The ark had remained among the Philistines seven months. For them they were months of suffering and deadly destruction. Now they plot to get rid of the ark and of Him whose hand rested so heavily in judgment upon them. The advice of the heathen priests and diviners is that the ark should be sent away with votive offerings of gold, representing that which had plagued them. This was a heathen custom, which has also been adopted and is practiced by Roman Catholicism, the great Philistine system of Christendom. In Romish churches, especially at shrines, one can find hundreds of votive offerings to God by those who are suffering affliction to appease the wrath of God. It is heathenish and denies Him who shed His blood for our redemption. And as these Philistine priests had some knowledge of God’s judgment upon Egypt they added to their counsel a warning reminding them of Pharaoh and Egypt. Their unbelief and superstition are manifested by the way they returned the ark. But the power of the Creator is seen in the incident.

“In result it is proved conclusively that Jehovah is the God of Creation, supreme above all the natural instincts: the kine, though unaccustomed to a yoke, take the cart with its sacred burden directly away from where their calves are shut up, even while lowing after them, and take the straight road to Bethshemesh, a priestly city near the Israelite border. There, at the border, they stop, still under the eyes of the Philistine lords, at a great stone upon which the Levites place the ark, and where the kine are offered up a burnt offering to Jehovah.

“Thus the Philistines have Jehovah’s sovereignty demonstrated to them in the precise terms which they have themselves chosen,--the goodness of God thus meeting them with what should have turned them from idolatry forever and brought them to His feet. But they go back, after all, to worship instead the humbled Dagon” (Numerical Bible).

The ark reaches Beth-shemesh (house of the sun) the nearest point across the border. It is welcomed with much rejoicing, but they forgot the holiness of God and looked into the ark, and the people of Beth-shemesh were smitten. As Beth-shemesh was only a small town it is generally taken that the number of the slain as given in verse 19 was changed by the mistake of a copyist. Various readings give smaller numbers; but that is immaterial.

The ark is removed from Beth-shemesh to Kirjath-jearim, “the city of the woods.” It was an humble place where the ark abode for twenty years. It was brought into the house of Abinadab; his son Eleazar (my God is help) was set aside to keep it. David found it there (Psa 132:6). The ark never returned to Shiloh again.

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

They thought by continuance of time the plague would have ceased, and so would have kept the Ark still.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

The first words of the chapter tell us how long the captivity of the ark continued - it was in the country of the Philistines seven months. In the field of the Philistines (so it is in the original), from which some gather that, having tried it in all their cities, and found it a plague to the inhabitants of each, at length they sent it into the open fields, upon which mice sprang up out of the ground in great multitudes, and destroyed the corn which was now nearly ripe and marred the land. With that judgment they were plagued (Sa1 6:5), and yet it is not mentioned in the foregoing chapter; so God let them know that wherever they carried the ark, so long as they carried it captive, they should find it a curse to them. Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed in the field, Deu 28:16. But, most take it to signify, as we render it, The country of the Philistines. Now, 1. Seven months Israel was punished with the absence of the ark, that special token of God's presence. How bare did the tabernacle look without it! How was the holy city now a desolation, and the holy land a wilderness! A melancholy time no doubt it was to the good people among them, particularly to Samuel; but they had this to comfort themselves with, as we have in the like distress when we are deprived of the comfort of public ordinances, that, wherever the ark is, the Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord's throne is in heaven, and by faith and prayer we may have access with boldness to him there. We may have God nigh unto us when the ark is at a distance. 2. Seven months the Philistines were punished with the presence of the ark; so long it was a plague to them, because they would not send it home sooner. Note, Sinners lengthen out their own miseries by obstinately refusing to part with their sins. Egypt's plagues would have been fewer than ten if Pharaoh's heart had not been hardened not to let the people go. But at length it is determined that the ark must be sent back; there is no remedy, they are undone if they detain it.

I. The priests and the diviners are consulted about it, Sa1 6:2. They were supposed to be best acquainted both with the rules of wisdom and with the rites of worship and atonement. And the Israelites being their neighbours, and famed above all people for the institutions of their religion, they had no doubt the curiosity to acquaint themselves with their laws and usages; and therefore it was proper to ask them, What shall we do to the ark of Jehovah? All nations have had a regard to their priests, as the men whose lips keep knowledge. Had the Philistines diviners? We have divines, of whom we should enquire wherewith we shall come before the Lord and bow ourselves before the most high God.

II. They give their advice very fully, and seem to be very unanimous in it. It was a wonder they did not, as friends to their country, give it, ex officio - officially, before they were asked. 1. They urge it upon them that it was absolutely necessary to send the ark back, from the example of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, Sa1 6:6. Some, it may be, were loth to yield, and were willing to try it out with the ark awhile longer, and to them they apply themselves: Wherefore do you harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did? It seems they were well acquainted with the Mosaic history, and could cite precedents out of it. This good use we should make of the remaining records of God's judgments upon obstinate sinners, we should by them be warned not to harden our hearts as they did. It is much cheaper to learn by other people's experience than by our own. The Egyptians were forced at last to let Israel go; therefore let the Philistines yield in time to let the ark go. 2. They advise that, when they sent it back, they should send a trespass-offering with it, Sa1 6:3. Whatever the gods of other nations were, they knew the God of Israel was a jealous God, and how strict he was in his demands of sin-offerings and trespass-offerings from his own people; and therefore, since they found how highly he resented the affront of holding his ark captive, those with whom he had such a quarrel must in any wise return him a trespass-offering, and they could not expect to be healed upon any other terms. Injured justice demands satisfaction. So far natural light instructed men. But when they began to contrive what that satisfaction should be, they became wretchedly vain in their imaginations. But those who by wilful sin have imprisoned the truth in unrighteousness, as the Philistines did the ark (Rom 1:18), may conclude that there is no making their peace with him whom they have thus injured but by a sin-offering; and we know but one that can take away sin. 3. They direct that this trespass-offering should be an acknowledgement of the punishment of their iniquity, by which they might take shame to themselves as conquered and yielding, and guilty before God, and might give glory to the God of Israel as their mighty conqueror and most just avenger, Sa1 6:5. They must make images of the emerods, that is, of the swellings and sores with which they had been afflicted, so making the reproach of that shameful disease perpetual by their own act and deed (Psa 78:66), also images of the mice that had marred the land, owning thereby the almighty power of the God of Israel, who could chastise and humble them, even in the day of their triumph, by such small and despicable animals. These images must be made of gold, the most precious metal, to intimate that they would gladly purchase their peace with the God of Israel at any rate, and would not think it bought too dearly with gold, with much fine gold. The golden emerods must be, in number, five, according to the number of the lords, who, it is likely, were all afflicted with them, and were content thus to own it; it was advised that the golden mice should be five too, but, because the whole country was infested with them, it should seem, upon second thoughts, they sent more of them, according to the number both of the fenced cities and of the country villages, Sa1 6:18. Their priests reminded them that one plague was on them all; they could not blame one another, for they were all guilty, which they were plainly told by being all plagued. Their proposal to offer a trespass-offering for their offence was conformable enough to divine revelation at that time; but to send such things as these for trespass-offerings was very foreign, and showed them grossly ignorant of the methods of reconciliation appointed by the law of Moses; for there it appears all along that it is blood, and not gold, that makes atonement for the soul. 4. They encourage them to hope that hereby they would take an effectual course to get rid of the plague: You shall be healed, Sa1 6:3. For, it seems, the disease obstinately resisted all the methods of cure their physicians had prescribed. "Let them therefore send back the ark, and then," say they, "It shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you, that is, by this it will appear whether it is for your detaining the ark that you are thus plagued; for, if it be, upon your delivering it up the plague will cease." God has sometimes put his people upon making such a trial, whether their reformation would not be their relief. Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, Mal 3:10; Hag 2:18, Hag 2:19. Yet they speak doubtfully (Sa1 6:5): Peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you; as if now they began to think that the judgment might come from God's hand, and yet not be removed immediately upon the restitution of the ark; however that was the likeliest way to obtain mercy. Take away the cause and the effect will cease. 5. Yet they put them in a way to make a further trial whether it was the hand of the God of Israel that had smitten them with these plagues or no. They must, in honour of the ark, put it on a new cart or carriage, to be drawn by two milch-cows, that had calves daily sucking them (Sa1 6:7), unused to draw, and inclined to home, both for the sake of the crib where they were fed and of the calves they nourished, and, besides, altogether unacquainted with the road that led towards the land of Israel. They must have no one to lead or drive them, but must take their own way, which, in all reason, one might expect, would be home again; and yet, unless the God of Israel, after all the other miracles he has wrought, will work one more, and by an invisible power lead these cows, contrary to their natural instinct and inclination, to the land of Israel, and particularly to Beth-shemesh, they will retract their former opinion, and will believe it was not the hand of God that smote them, but it was a chance that happened to them, Sa1 6:8, Sa1 6:9. Thus did God suffer himself to be tempted and prescribed to, after he had been otherwise affronted, by these uncircumcised Philistines. Would they have been content that the honour of Dagon, their god, should be put upon such an issue as this? See how willing bad men are to shift off their convictions of the hand of God upon them, and to believe, when they are in trouble, that it is a chance that happens to them; and, if so, the rod has no voice which they are concerned to hear or heed.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

CHAPTER VI

After the ark had been seven months in the land of the

Philistines, they consult their priests and diviners about

sending it to Shiloh, 1, 2.

They advise that it be sent back with a trespass-offering of

five golden emerods, and five golden mice, 3-6.

They advise also that it be sent back on a new cart, drawn by

two milch kine from whom their calves shall be tied up; and

then conclude that if these cows shalt take the way of

Beth-hemesh, as going to the Israelitish border, then the LORD

had afflicted them, if not, then their evils were accidental,

7-9.

They do as directed; and the kine take the way of Beth-shemesh,

10-13.

They stop in the field of Joshua; and the men of Beth-shemesh

take them, and offer them to the Lord for a burnt-offering,

and cleave the wood of the cart to burn them, and make sundry

other offerings, 14, 15.

The offerings of the five lords of the Philistines, 16-18.

For too curiously looking into the ark, the men of Beth-shemesh

are smitten of the Lord, 19, 20.

They send to the inhabitants of Kirjath-jearim, that they may

take away the ark, 21.

NOTES ON CHAP. VI

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

And the ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months. Or "in the field" (c) of the Philistines; hence Procopius Gazaeus observes, that none of the cities daring to receive the ark, they left it without under the open air, so thinking they should be delivered from their calamity. But the word is often used for country, and is generally so understood here; the Targum is,"in the cities of the Philistines;''in one or other of them, first for a while in Ashdod, and then for some time in Gath, and last in Ekron, and in all seven months from the time of its being taken; and it being in wheat harvest when it was returned, Sa1 6:13, these seven months will carry us back to the beginning of winter, or towards the end of autumn, when the battles between Israel and the Philistines were fought, and the ark was taken. Josephus (d) says it was with the Philistines four months only, contrary to the text.

(c) , Sept. "in agro", Pagninus, Montanus. (d) Antiqu. l. 6. c. 1. sect. 4.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

So long they kept it, as loth to lose so great a prize, and willing to try all ways to keep it, and yet free themselves from the mischiefs accompanying its presence.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Philistines return the Ark to Israel

2. The diviners] The Philistines appear to have been notorious for their attachment to divination: see on Isa_2:6.

3. The trespass offering was always brought to atone for some wrong done to, or some right withheld from, God or man.

5. Aristotle relates that in harvest entire crops were sometimes destroyed in a single night by the ravages of field-mice.

7. The new cart and the kine who had worn no yoke were signs of respect.

9. Under ordinary circumstances the cows would not have left their calves. Beth-shemesh] the modern Ain-Shems, on the N. border of Judah.

18. Even unto the great stone] Read with LXX, 'And the great stone, whereon they set down the ark of the Lord, is a witness unto this day.

19. It is very probable that in this v. LXX has preserved the original text: 'But the sons of Jechoniah rejoiced not with the men of Beth-shemesh, when they gazed (with gladness) at the ark of the Lord, and he smote among them 70 men.' All editors are agreed that the 'fifty thousand' is a gloss which has crept into the text. The Hebrew phrase here used is not the correct method of expressing 50,070.

21. Kirjath-jearim] see on Jdg_18:12. For the further account of the ark cp. 2 Samuel 6.

C.

71. This v. is the conclusion of the narrative, and should really form part of 1 Samuel 6.

We should have expected the ark to be taken back to Shiloh; perhaps Shiloh had fallen into the hands of the Philistines, who now overran Israel (cp. 1Sa_14:6, 1Sa_14:19). At any rate, we hear no more of Shiloh as a national meeting-place; for the time, whatever national unity exists centres round Samuel.

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

RESTORATION OF THE ARK TO THE ISRAELITES (vers. 1-12).

Vers. 1, 2. The ark of Jehovah was in the country literally, the field, i.e. the territoryof the Philistines seven months, during which long time the people wherever the ark was deposited were afflicted in their persons with a most painful malady. The princes determined, therefore, to restore it to Israel, and convened the priests and the diviners, that they might advise them as to the manner in which this purpose should be best carried out, lest some error or want of due reverence might only serve to increase their sufferings. It would be the duty of the priests to see that the proper ceremonial was observed in moving the ark, while the diviners would decide what day and hour and special method would be lucky. The importance of the diviner, qosem, is shown by his being mentioned in Isa_3:2 in an enumeration of the leading orders in the state. He isplaced there between the prophet and the elder or senator; but the A.V, displeased perhaps at finding one who practised a forbidden art nevertheless described as practically so valued, translates the word prudent. Literally it means a divider or partitioner, because it was his office to separate things into the two classes of lucky and unlucky. Tell us wherewith, etc, Though this translation is tenable, the right rendering is probably how. The princes did not assume that gifts must accompany the ark, but inquired generally as to the best method of restoring it. So the answer of the priests and diviners is not merely that expiatory offerings are to be made, but that the ark is to be sent back in such a way as to give proof that Jehovah had intervened, or the contrary (vers. 7, 8, 9).

Vers. 1-9.

Seeking light.

The facts are

1. The Philistines, oppressed by Providence, are uncertain what to do withthe ark.

2. They, consulting the priests and diviners, are advised to send the arkaway with all due honours and safeguards in case it is sent at all.

3. They are instructed how to carry out the advice, and warned not torefuse so to do.

4. Having done their best, they are to learn the truth from the issue. Theincidents recorded furnish an instance of men seeking light. The events of the past few months had clashed with their material interests, and a series of observations had given rise to the opinion that these events were traceable to a restlessness on the part of the Hebrew Divinity. They did not wish to send back the ark. At the same time, there might be some error in the observations already made; and if so, the troubles of the land and the presence of the ark would be a mere coincidence. This then was more than an ordinary case of perplexity. The Philistines knew the ark to be a superior power. Their doubt was whether it was indicating its mind by the events which troubled the land, and if so, what should be their conduct in relation to it. Thus the crude ideas and superstitious conduct of heathens embrace truths which find expression in modern experience.

I There ARE IN HUMAN LIFE SEASONS OF DEEP PERPLEXITY, WHEN MEN WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH CONCERNING GOD. More intelligently than the Philistines, we believe in God as the Lord of all, and the ever present Worker in human affairs. Although events move on in well defined lines of natural order, we know that God uses them to indicate his will, in conjunction with the intimations furnished by his word and Spirit. "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord." But amidst the voices that fall on the ear, and owing to dulness of perception, the soul sometimes is in great doubt concerning the mind of God, and what course should be pursued. This is especially true when events run counter to our desires and apparent interests, and when pride of spirit is cherished. Home may be wrecked. Business may bode disaster. Great decisions have to be taken. In each God has a will of his own, and conduct must have primary regard to him. The desire to do right is out of proportion to the perception of what in the particular instance is right.

II The COURSE TO BE ADOPTED FOR THE REMOVAL OF PERPLEXITY. The Philistines proved themselves to be men of good sense by the course they took. The particular methods of obtaining more light will always depend on the spiritual state and previous attainments of those seeking it; yet the main lines pursued will be the same. Summarising then the reference here to men of experience, and the advice given by them, we see a course available for all.

1. To act on the experience of the past. The priests and diviners were the embodiments of generations of experience in matters pertaining to the gods. Their advice, therefore, was the product of experience. Likewise forevery man there is a rich store of wisdom in the events of his own life, in the records of history, in the judgment of contemporaries. Experience is a process which gradually enkindles and feeds a lamp within the spirit of a man. It is one of God"s ways of making our path plain. Especially should the experience of others both show us the line of duty and warn us of the risk of shutting our eyes to the light. The reference to the experience of Pharaoh, under circumstances in some respects similar to theirs, was extremely judicious on the part of the Philistine priests.

2. To fulfil all known religious obligations. The advice to send back the ark intact, with due honours and with emblems of confession of sin, was based on the best religious knowledge of the people. The only way of ascertaining the real mind of the Hebrew Divinity was to honour and propitiate it. In this crude conception we have a great principle. Our escape from many perplexities depends largely on our careful performance of such religious duties as are imposed by our present knowledge. No man can know the will of God as he ought unless he obey that will as far as he knows it, and at any cost. If prayer is a clear duty, pray; if confession of sin, confess: if some great act of self-denial, perform it. The perceptive powers are clearer when calmed by true practical religion. The discharge of high duties fits for discerning others. A sound spiritual condition, conserved by daily observance of religious obligations, is a powerful solvent of doubts. "If any man will do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.

3. To supplement these means by watching carefully for new indications. The Philistines were to do all in their power to enable them to judge the significance of coming events. We cannot always make occasions for Providence to reveal itself; but we can fulfil all conditions for observing clearly, and then can watch the indications of the will which we know does speak to us in daily life, in the word and in the "still small voice." Then, acting in a reverent spirit, straitness will yield to a "large place," and darkness will be made light before us.

General lessons:

1. God has means of helping even the most ignorant to a fuller knowledge of his will.

2. By what wise and unlooked for methods God accomplishes the realisation of his purpose among men who do not love him!

3. How superior the privileges of those who in mental darkness can crydirect for more light to the Father of light!

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Philistines send the ark back, ver. 1-12. The Israelites receive it, ver. 13-18. The people of Beth-shemesh, smitten for looking into the ark, desire those of Kirjath-jearim to fetch it, ver. 19-21.

Seven months - So long they kept it, as loath to lose so great a prize, and willing to try all ways to keep it.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The Ark sent back to Beth-Shemesh. —

v. 1. And the ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months, in the three cities of the Philistine territory which were named in the preceding chapter.

v. 2. And the Philistines, as represented by their five lords, called for the priests and the diviners, all of whom were supposed to possess soothsaying power to reveal the counsel of the deity, saying, What shall we do to the ark of the Lord? What form of procedure was advisable in the circumstances? Tell us wherewith we shall send it to his place. They were especially anxious to find out what gifts of atonement must accompany the ark on its return in order that the plague might be stopped.

v. 3. And they, the soothsayers, said, If ye send away the ark of the God of Israel, send it not empty, without some expiatory gift; but in any wise return Him a trespass-offering, a sacrifice or gift to atone for their offense, to wipe out their debt; then ye shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why His hand is not removed from you; by the cure which the soothsayers expected to follow this course the people would learn that it was actually God’s hand which was smiting them, a matter which the priests themselves were not yet quite ready to concede.

v. 4. Then said they, What shall be the trespass-offering which we shalt return to Him? They answered, Five golden emerods and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, which, in turn, agreed with that of the city-states in the federation; for one plague was on you all and on your lords. In suggesting five golden boils and five golden mice the soothsayers followed the ancient custom by which likenesses of the diseased parts were dedicated to the deity to whom the sickness was ascribed.

v. 5. Wherefore ye shall make images, carved or engraved likenesses, of your emerods and images of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel, confessing that the plagues with which they had been smitten had been laid upon them in justice; peradventure He will lighten His hand from off you, by causing the punishment to stop, and from off your gods, and from off your land, the burden of the chastisement thus being taken from their entire nation. Still they are careful to speak conditionally, in order to have an excuse if their plan should fail.

v. 6. Wherefore, then, do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts, Exo 7:13? When He had wrought wonderfully among them, carried out His avenging purpose upon them, did they not let the people go and they departed? Cf Exo 12:31 ff. The Philistines were urged to profit by the example of the Egyptians, not as a matter of conviction or of confession of the true God, but of expediency, the God of Israel apparently being the stronger God, who therefore had to be humored.

v. 7. Now, therefore, make a new cart, take and prepare in the proper manner, and take two milch kine on which there hath come no yoke, Cf Deu 21:3, and tie the kine to the cart, hitching them before the cart to draw it, and bring their calves home from them, holding them back in the barn;

v. 8. and take the ark of the Lord, and lay it upon the cart; and put the jewels of gold which ye return Him for a trespass-offering, the five golden boils and the five golden mice, in a coffer, a small chest, by the side thereof; and send it away that it may go, giving the strange draft-animals their head. Only such things were to be used as had not been desecrated by profane use, in order to show proper honor to the dreaded God of Israel.

v. 9. And see, if it, the cart as thus prepared, goeth up by the way of his own coast to Beth-shemesh, within the territory of Israel,then He, the God of Israel, hath done us this great evil; but if not, then we shall know that it is not His hand that smote us; it was a chance that happened to us. The crafty priests of Dagon, who feared for their prestige, had purposely specified cows with calves, since it was probable that their instinct, their natural impulse, would tend to make them turn back to their stalls, unless a higher power restrained them, compelling them to take the road to Beth-shemesh and hold it.

v. 10. And the men did so; and took two milch kine, and tied them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home;

v. 11. and they laid the ark of the Lord upon the cart and the coffer with the mice of gold and the images of their emerods.

v. 12. And the kine took the straight way to the way of Beth-shemesh, headed directly for the highway leading to the nearest city of Israel, just beyond the boundary, and went along the highway, keeping to the road, lowing as they went, because they wanted their calves, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left, made no attempt to go back to their stalls; and the lords of the Philistines went after them unto the border of Beth-shemesh, to find out where the animals would take the ark. It was evident that the living God directed the course of the cart, and that it was He who had sent the punishment upon the Philistines. It may well be that this realization caused at least some of the Philistines to turn to the true God. Thus many a national calamity has, in the hands of God, been a means of making people realize their sinfulness and turn to the living God for their salvation.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

the priests and the diviners

These were pagan priests and diviners who worshiped Dagon.

Tell us how we should send it

The Philistines wanted to know how to get rid of the ark without angering Yahweh any further.

translationWords

ark of the covenant

Yahweh

Philistines

people group

call

priest

divination

send

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.