1 Samuel 5:6-12

CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES—

1 Samuel 5:6. “He destroyed them.” From 1 Samuel 6:4; 1 Samuel 6:11; 1 Samuel 6:18, where, besides the votive offering referring to the bodily disease, a second, the golden mice, is expressly mentioned, it is clear that, in addition to the corporal plague, another, a land-plague, had fallen on the Philistines. “He destroyed them” (like “destruction” or “desolation,” in Micah 6:13, used of persons) denotes a wasting of the land, that is, of the produce of the fields, as the support of human life, by mice which “destroy the land” (1 Samuel 6:5). (Erdmann.) “We must go to the East for parallels to these ancient plagues. A parallel to this plague of mice is furnished in the recent history of Ceylon. In 1848, the coffee-crop of that fertile island was utterly destroyed by mice, and the people, losing their staple harvest, were reduced to the most terrible misery and want.” (S. Cox.) “Emerods.” “The disease we call bleeding piles,” a disease very common in Eastern lands, where the extreme heat induces indisposition to exercise, and the liver is very apt to grow sluggish and weak. The word is vernacular English for the Greek compound from which we derive the technical medical terms, “hemorrhoids, hemorrhage,” which designate a flow of blood. (S. Cox.) “The heathen generally regarded diseases affecting the secret parts of the body as punishments from the gods for trespasses committed against themselves.” (Jamieson.)

1 Samuel 5:8. “Let the ark of the God of Israel,” etc. The princes of the Philistines probably imagined that the calamity which the Ashdodites attributed to the ark of God, either did not proceed from the ark, i.e., from the God of Israel, or if actually connected with its presence, simply arose from the fact that the city itself was hateful to the God of the Israelites, or that the Dagon of Ashdod was weaker than the Jehovah of Israel; they therefore resolved to let the ark be taken to Gath in order to pacify the Ashdodites.” (Keil.) “Gath.” Also one of the five Philistian satrapies. Its site is not accurately known, but it is generally identified with the modern Tell-es-Sâfieh, 10 miles east of Ashdod, and about the same distance S. by E. of Ekron. (See Smith’s Biblical Dictionary.)

1 Samuel 5:10. “Ekron.” Another of the princely cities, now Akir.

1 Samuel 5:12. “The cry of the city went up to heaven.” “The disease is attended with acute pain” (Jamieson).

Note.—This chapter, with the following, strikingly illustrates the non-missionary character of the old dispensation. For centuries the Israelites were near neighbours of the Philistines, and had some acquaintance with their political and religious institutions. Yet the Philistines had at this time only a garbled and distorted account (1 Samuel 4:8) of the history of the Israelites, derived probably from tradition, and seemingly no particular knowledge of their religion, nor did the Israelites ever attempt, though they were in the times of Samson and David in close connection with Philistia, to carry thither a knowledge of what they yet believed to be the only true religion. This religious isolation was no doubt a part of the Divine plan for the development of the theocratic kingdom, guarding it against the taints of idolatry, and permitting the chosen people thoroughly to apprehend and appropriate the truth which was then to go from them to all the world. But if we look for the natural causes which produced this isolation in ancient times, we shall find one in the narrowness of civilisation of ancient times, where the absence of means of social and literary communication fostered mutual ignorance and made sympathy almost impossible, and another in the peculiarly national local nature of the religion of Israel, with its central sanctuary and its whole system grounded in the past history of the nation, presenting thus great obstacles to a foreigner who wished to become a worshipper of Jehovah. (Amer. Tranr. of Lange’s Commentary).

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Samuel 5:6

THE JUDGMENTS UPON THE PHILISTINES

I. When judgment begins with the people of God it is certain to extend to the ungodly. If a human king is just he will visit his own family with punishment if they break the laws of his kingdom. But the very fact that he does so is a pledge that he will not spare the rest of his subjects if they are found guilty. Judgment will begin where transgression ought, least of all, to appear, and where, if it appear, it ought to be least tolerated; but should the same sins be committed by others, it may be regarded as certain that it will extend to them also. God deals with men as a good king and father deals with his children. He will certainly inflict chastisement upon those who are most nearly related to Him by moral character, but He will not spare those who are utterly ungodly. God’s ancient people, at this period in their history, needed chastisement, and they had it. He avenged the dishonour which had been done to His name by those whom He “had nourished and brought up” as His children (Isaiah 1:2) by a heavy visitation. But He did not spare the more guilty Canaanites. When judgment “begins at the house of God,” the question forces itself upon the mind, “Where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4:17).

II. When the ungodly have been used as instruments of Divine chastisement, they are chastened themselves to teach them that they were not chosen for their moral excellence. Sometimes delay takes place in the execution of a criminal, not because there is any reason to show him favour, but that he may be used to bring others to justice. When he has been used for this purpose he finds that the same law which convicts them punishes him also. It is often so in the righteous government of God. He selected Nebuchadnezzar to be His battle-axe when Israel needed chastisement, but he was but a reprieved criminal, and when he had fulfilled the Divine purpose he was made to feel that it was so. Here the Philistines were made the instruments of God’s judgment upon His people, but they soon found that they had not been selected for this work because they were held in favour by Jehovah. The hand of God upon them soon taught them that they also were under His displeasure—that God had, in the language of the prophet, taken “the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of His fury, and put it into the hand of them that afflicted Israel” (Isaiah 51:22).

III. There may be an admission that God has smitten without true repentance. The Philistines confessed that the hand of Jehovah was sore upon them, and upon their god, but it led to no investigation into His claims to their homage—to no change in their disposition towards Him. Pharaoh acknowledged that “the Lord was righteous, and that he and his people were wicked” (Exodus 9:27), but his admission had no effect upon his conduct. Saul admitted that God had forsaken him, and was visiting him for his sin, but he turned not to Him who had smitten him, but, in direct opposition to the Divine command, sought counsel of a witch. Many men in every age are compelled to acknowledge that God is visiting them, yet they will not turn to Him in repentance. They may cry to God in their despair, but they give evidence that it is not sin that troubles them, but the punishment of sin. Like the Philistines, they would be rid of their suffering, but they are not willing to give up their Dagons, and to give glory and render obedience to the Lord of hosts.

OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS

1 Samuel 5:6. The hand of the Almighty, which moved them not in falling on their god, falls now nearer on their persons, and strikes them in their bodies which would not feel themselves stricken in their idol. Pain shall humble them, when shame cannot.—Bp. Hall.

1 Samuel 5:7. They should have rather parted with their sins than with the ark, and have said unto their sins “Get thee hence,” as Isaiah 30:22. What have we to do any more with Dagon who cannot save himself, much less us, from the Divine vengeance? Wicked men are glad upon all occasions to be rid of God and His ark, His ordinances, which they, Philistine-like, have rather as prisoners than as privileges.—Trapp.

The emerods were not a disease beyond the compass of natural causes; neither was it hard for the wiser sort to give a reason of their complaint; yet they ascribe it to the hand of God: the knowledge and operation of secondary causes should be no prejudice to the first. They are worse than the Philistines who, when they see the means, do not acknowledge their first Mover, whose active just power is no less seen in employing ordinary means than in raising up extraordinary; neither doth He less smite by a common fever, than by an avenging angel.—Bp. Hall.

1 Samuel 5:10. The struggles of the Philistines against Jehovah tended only to bring the ark nearer to its own home, and to bring more evils on its enemies. The sufferings of Ekron were worse than those of Ashdod, and the sufferings of Gath were more grievous than those of Ekron. So all the assaults of the enemies of the faith against the ark of Christ’s church will serve only to bring her nearer to her heavenly and eternal home.—Wordsworth.

Thus they send the plague of God up and down to their neighbours. Wicked men use to draw others into partnership of their condemnation.—Trapp.

1 Samuel 5:11. When man’s heart will not give up its worthless idols, though God’s hand draw it to Himself by affliction and suffering, then the distance between him and the God that offers to be with him becomes greater in proportion to the severity and painfulness of the suffering felt by the soul alienated from God and devoted to idolatry. We shall at last desire to be entirely away from God, as the Philistines at last resolved to carry the ark over the border, that they might have nothing more to do with the God of Israel, while, on the contrary, the ark should have warned them to give glory to the God of Israel, who had so unmistakably and gloriously revealed Himself to them.—Lange’s Commentary.

God knows how to bring the stubbornest enemy on his knees, and make him do that out of fear which His best child would do out of love or duty … It is happy that God hath such store of plagues and thunderbolts for the wicked: if He had not a fire of judgment, wherewith iron hearts might be made flexible, He would want obedience, and the world peace.—Bp. Hall.

1 Samuel 5:12. The cry that ascends to heaven over sufferings and afflictions that are the consequences of wickedness, is by no means a sign that need teaches prayer; it may be made wholly from a heathen point of view. The cry that penetrates into heaven is “Against thee have I sinned,” and is the expression of an upright, earnest penitence, which is awakened in the heart by the chastisement of God’s hand.—Lange’s Commentary.