1Samuel chapter 6 comments

 1Samuel 6:1 ¶  And the ark of the LORD was in the country of the Philistines seven months. 2  And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, What shall we do to the ark of the LORD? tell us wherewith we shall send it to his place. 3  And they said, If ye send away the ark of the God of Israel, send it not empty; but in any wise return him a trespass offering: then ye shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you. 4  Then said they, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden emerods, and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines: for one plague was on you all, and on your lords. 5  Wherefore ye shall make images of your emerods, and images of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from off your gods, and from off your land. 6  Wherefore then do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? when he had wrought wonderfully among them, did they not let the people go, and they departed? 7  Now therefore make a new cart, and take two milch kine, on which there hath come no yoke, and tie the kine to the cart, and bring their calves home from them: 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, in a coffer by the side thereof; and send it away, that it may go. 9  And see, if it goeth up by the way of his own coast to Bethshemesh, then he 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.

 

We see here the Philistines looking toward their priests and diviners for what is needed to be done. They liken the return of the Ark to Israel to the Israelites leaving Egypt. They clearly know the history. They believe that if the beasts return the Ark to Israel on their own that they will then know that this was the God of Israel’s doing. If it does not happen they will accept that they were smitten by just blind chance.

 

Mice clearly were part of the pestilence and this suggests even more strongly that this was some kind of plague. Bubonic plague, like some of what is called today the Black Death in Medieval Europe but was called ‘The Great Mortality’ by them, is thought to have been carried by fleas on rodents which infected humans. We should consider the devastation that this plague wrought in the country of the Philistines. It was so bad they were willing to put their pride aside to return the Ark to appease the God of a people that was not themselves, remembering that ancient warfare was considered warfare not only against a city but against its gods as well. The severity of the human toll is suggested by the extreme actions that the Philistines took to return the Ark.

 

1Samuel 6:10 ¶  And the men did so; and took two milch kine, and tied them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home: 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. 12  And the kine took the straight way to the way of Bethshemesh, and went along the highway, lowing 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. 13  And they of Bethshemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley: and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see it. 14  And the cart came into the field of Joshua, a Bethshemite, and stood there, where there was a great stone: and they clave the wood of the cart, and offered the

kine a burnt offering unto the LORD. 15  And the Levites took down the ark of the LORD, and the coffer that was with it, wherein the jewels of gold were, and put them on the great stone: and the men of Bethshemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices the same day unto the LORD. 16  And when the five lords of the Philistines had seen it, they returned to Ekron the same day. 17  And these are the golden emerods which the Philistines returned for a trespass offering unto the LORD; for Ashdod one, for Gaza one, for Askelon one, for Gath one, for Ekron one; 18  And the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both of fenced cities, and of country villages, even 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.

 

Interestingly the passage concludes with internal evidence as to when this was written. It had to be in the time when this event was in living memory and the stone if the field of Joshua, the Bethshemite was still there and known to the reader.

 

The Philistines were glad to see it gone and the Israelites were rejoicing to have the Ark returned.

 

1Samuel 6:19 ¶  And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter. 20  And the men of Bethshemesh said, Who is able to stand before this holy LORD God? and to whom shall he go up from us? 21  And they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kirjathjearim, saying, The Philistines have brought again the ark of the LORD; come ye down, and fetch it up to you.

 Numbers 4:20  But they shall not go in to see when the holy things are covered, lest they die.

While the Philistines were not punished for their handling of the Ark the Israelites were. The number here of 50, 070 men is a huge number but it is so specific it needs some attention. If we accept this number and others we will come to as true and accurate we must reconsider what scholars have believed regarding the populations of the Ancient Near East.

 

John Gill noted that someone had asserted that this number accounted also for the Philistines that died from the plague but this isn’t warranted by the text. First, we ask the question why were so many people gathered at what was probably a small place?

 

Some scholars estimate the world of Greece and the Ancient Near East in around 400BC as upwards of ten million but historical records of census in Ancient China, if they are reliable, suggest a population there of 13 million from between 2000 and 1000BC. Ancient Egypt according to ancient writers had a population of 7 million or above. I would say that the numbers were there in this most fertile place and are probably vastly understated due to the length of time a census would take in the ancient world and how inaccurate it might be. The Chinese references may only be a count of heads of households and not represent total numbers. We discussed this in Genesis, Exodus, and beyond, this land flowing with milk and honey, this very fertile place still drying out after the Flood.

 

The fields must have been filled with workers for the harvest. In an agricultural country this would mean thousands of workers every square mile doing work by hand. With the slow progression of this cart led by cows from the land of the Philistines word would get around very quickly and people would mass toward this great event. We gather large crowds to sporting events and music concerts today and this would have been much more important of an event to these people. The death toll must have been a staggering blow to the work of the harvest and a great grief to the population. I would suggest perhaps, considering verse 2 of the next chapter that it took twenty years for the land to recover from the destruction, perhaps worse than the plague the Philistines suffered.