Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Samuel 5:1
And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod.
Ch. 1Sa 5:1-12. Chastisement of the Philistines for the Removal of the Ark
1. Ashdod ] Ashdod (in Greek Azotus, Act 8:40), one of the five cities of the Philistine league, was situated on an eminence near the sea, about 35 miles W. of Jerusalem. It was a place of great strength, and special importance, from its position on the high road between Syria and Egypt. It was assigned to Judah (Jos 15:47), but never conquered till the reign of Uzziah (2Ch 26:6). The Assyrian king Sargon’s ‘Tartan’ (i.e. General) took it about b.c. 716, and about b.c. 630 it proved its strength by resisting Psammitichus king of Egypt for 29 years. It was destroyed by Jonathan Maccabaeus ( 1Ma 10:84 ), but rebuilt after the Roman conquest of Judaea. The village of Es-dd still preserves the ancient name and site.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
1Sa 5:1-5
And the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod.
The hypocritical smitten before the real
The word Philistine signifies strangers or emigrants; their descent is obscure, but good reasons are assigned for considering them of Semitic extraction. Ashdod was one of the five Philistine Satrapies being an inland town, 34 miles north of Gaza, now called Eshud. And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it into the house of Dagon (1Sa 5:2). They knew the power of Israels God; did they by this conduct hope to effect a compromise, or were they offering this holy spoil as a tribute of homage to their national Deity?
I. The hypocritical smitten before the real. This world is one vast temple, filled with the unreal and untrue.
1. The Dagon of false religious systems. Superstition has enthroned its idol, ignorance its contradictions, Buddhism its sanguinary rites, Confucianism its standard of ethics, and the honest heathen his fancies of terror. There are the impositions of Mahomet, the falsehoods of his history, and the deceptions of his creed.
2. The Dagon of doctrinal heresy.
3. There is the Dagon of mercantile life. The externalisms of trade are imposing and attractive, but how unworthy its motive–how frequently are its gains the result of cunning deception, fraudulent imposition, or mischievous adulterations, and these criminal extortions are justified by the severity of competition, or the ungenerous demands and arbitrary fancies of the purchasing community. Before the ark of Godly principle and honest courtesy, these tricks of trade must suffer an ignominious defeat.
4. There are the Dagons of personal religious life. Devotion is formal; religious work mechanical; they are but pictures of the true. The piety of others consists in a spasmodic performance of the holy, in feelings of emotion, fitful and uncertain, incited more by circumstances than by steady faith.
5. The Dagon of political life. Injustice has formed the basis of law, the enforcement of which has issued in oppression and misery. How often have our social interests been blighted by the pandering politics of chuckling statesmen! Christian truth has been refused its required homage; human sagacity has been worshipped in its stead. But one day, when the ark shall be brought into the temple, this state of things will be terminated. Instead, we shall find monarchs laying their crowns at the feet of Jesus; ruling only in accordance with the principle of His life, and living in harmony with the precepts of His Word. Then shall human legislation be the expression of Divine sentiment, and the senate become a synonym for the sanctuary.
6. It had successive opportunity of recovering its defeat. And they took Dagon and set him in his place again. For how many chapters of history would this be an appropriate heading? Should it not be written under the record of Smithfields martyrdom? and what more fitting inscription could be found for the door of the Inquisition Room? But today, upon the floor of Europes Temple we find its shattered wreck. Its defeat was
(1) Rapid, early in the morning.
(2) Unquestionable: Dagon was fallen.
(3) Ignominious, his face to the ground.
(4) Signalised (1Sa 5:5).
In this superstitious folly they perpetuated the memory of their own disgrace! In this picture we have an outline of the worlds future history, when all in antagonism to the Divine nature shall be destroyed beyond the power of restoration.
II. The unholy desiring the departure of the seal. The ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us (1Sa 5:7). This is the cry of all unhallowed life.
1. A Divine Affliction. The sinful is sure to be afflicted by contact with the true. A diseased eye cannot open itself to the light without pain; neither can a corrupt nature behold spotless purity, unsullied truth, without being stricken by its brightness. Simon Peter cried out, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord, and in so doing articulated the deepest feeling of degenerate life. In order to happy association with the ark, mans receptive faculties must be touched by the Divine finger; then, with adjusted relations and restored harmony, the holy will be appreciated, exemption from affliction will be secured, and its permanent residence desired.
2. A Supreme Council. They sent, therefore, and gathered all the lords of the Philistines unto them (1Sa 5:8). The people are in a fearful extremity; and, driven almost to desperation by the fierceness of their sufferings, are ready to execute any scheme likely to ensure relief. But it was a council without a God.
3. An unavailing decree. Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried about unto Gath (1Sa 5:8). How many, when in sorrow, acting upon their own impulses, extend their affliction to others (1Sa 5:9).
III. The unholy seeking advice as to the disposition of the real.
1. Inquiry started. What shall we do to the ark of the Lord? (1Sa 6:2).
2. Anxiety displayed. Tell us wherewith we shall send it to His place (1Sa 6:2).
3. A solution suggested. But in any wise return Him a trespass offering (1Sa 6:3-9).
IV. The real inquisitively investigated. And He smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they looked into the ark of the Lord (1Sa 6:19).
1. Presumption punished. He smote of the people fifty thousand and three score and ten men (1Sa 6:19).
2. Reverence inspired. Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? (1Sa 6:19). In the next chapter we have the real penitentially sought and joyfully obtained. Lessons:–
(1) The unyielding supremacy of God.
(2) The affliction consequent upon opposition to His authority.
(3) That God is not bound to even the most sacred symbols of His presence.
(4) That great caution should be exercised when in contact with sacred things.
(5) In victory remember the God of Israel. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The ark in the house of Dagon
I. I observe it is here suggested that things which are good for some people to have may be quite the opposite for others.
When the Philistines knew that the ark had been brought into the camp of Israel they were afraid, and said, God is come into the camp. And no doubt they imagined that in it they had captured a great prize. But the ark of God did not do for the Philistines what it had done for the Israelites. On the contrary, it brought to them only disaster, disease, and destruction. The ark had been a blessing to the Israelites, it was a curse to the Philistines. Now is it not the case that what was true of the ark is also true of many things among us? For example, there is wealth. What a blessing it has been to one generation, but what a curse sometimes to the next! To the father it has been a great comfort, to his thriftless, indolent son, ruination of both body and soul. Not infrequently do we find people regarding money very much in the same light as the Philistines regarded the ark. With not a few money means omnipotence! They will sacrifice health, probity–anything, to get money. And when they have got it: what then? Is it any enjoyment to them? Does it bring comfort? Does it make them happy? No; not in a single instance, where it has been come by in an unjust or unhealthy way. God gave the Israelites the ark, at any rate He put it into their hearts to make it, and it was to them a great blessing; so if God gives a man wealth, or if He puts him into the way of making it, his fortune may be a great blessing to him. But if money does not come in this way, depend upon it we are better without it. And what is true in relation to wealth is equally true with regard to everything else which we do not possess, but which we may covet. Are you inclined sometimes to covet another mans position, and murmur because your lot is so hard and difficult? Let me, then, ask if you have reason to think that your lot is from the Lord? If to this question your only answer is Yes, then be assured that hard and difficult though it may be, for you it is the best, and if you had your wish, were you somehow to slip into the position you covet, you might not find it the bed of roses you expected, and a very short experience in it might make you long very eagerly for the old life. What is more delightful on a wintry day than to walk through a greenhouse, where the plants and flowers luxuriate, as in the warm sunshine of summer? But the greenhouse is suited only for certain plants. There are plants to whom its atmosphere would be death, that need the storm as well as the sunshine, cold as well as heat, frost as well as dew, the wild blest of winter as well as the warm breezes of summer. So if God has not put you in His greenhouse, nor in some shady, sheltered corner of His great garden, but in some spot where you stand exposed to every wind that blows, to the tempest, the biting cold, in a word, to all natures ruder elements, do not fret or be discouraged. Gods purpose is to make you a strong and noble character, and to do this the stern discipline of your life is doubtless needed. So be content with what you have, and with where you are, remembering that if you had your neighbours things you might, in their possession, be as miserable as the Philistines were all the time the ark was in their country.
II. The narrative before us suggests that God is a jealous God.–The Philistines put the ark of the Lord in the house of Dagon, and set it by the side of Dagon. But when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was on his face again before the ark, and his head and both the palms of his hands were cut off, and lying upon the threshold, and only the stump of Dagon, the fish part, was left to him. if there had been a Dominie Sampson among those priests, he certainly would have cried out, Prodigious! And it was prodigious in the truest sense, for it was a foreshadowing of Gods great law, Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Gods ark must not be placed side by side with Dagon. Now we Christians, those of us, thank God, who are living in the light of His countenance as well as those who see men only, as trees walking, have need to take care, lest we also provoke the jealousy of God. We must never place Him or His sacred things on the same level, and side by side, with our own things–Our business, or our family, or any of our earthly belongings. He only is God, and we must place Him above, infinitely above all else. All along the lines of human life the tendency has been in the direction of idolatry. The ancient people of God fell into it, as we know, again and again, and they suffered in consequence. And though the form changeth, the thing, the evil still liveth. It is right to make the home as snug and comfortable and pleasant as you can, and to take a pride in doing so. But does the home claim as much attention as God, and the things of God claim? Nay, does it claim more? Is it true that your home fills your heart, and that consequently God is shut out of it? Or is it true that it occupies quite as much of its room as God does? Is it in any sense and measure an idol? Then listen to me whilst I tell you what will some day happen. That home will one day fail to delight you. You will see no beauty in the pictures which adorn its walls. You will be unable to find comfort or rest in any part of it. Yes–your home, if you make it your idol, will come to present itself to you in quite as pitiable a light as that in which the Philistines beheld their god. And what about the children? I am fond of children, said Thomas Binney. I think them the poetry of the world–the fresh flowers of our hearts and homes. It is well spoken. But how many a sad tale may be told touching the children, for how many of these fresh flowers have drooped and died? Yes, and how many parents have had to confess, as they have gazed upon the face of a child cold in death, Alas, alas, I loved him too well, and the God who gave him, and who has taken him back, too little? Over all human affections we must build our temple, and in it, we must have only one altar, and only one God–the Lord God of Israel–for remember He is a jealous God. He loves us so much that He can bear no rival.
III. This narrative suggests that affliction may not lead to repentance and conversion. Apparently the first effect of Gods judgments upon them was the same as in the case of Pharaoh, for their priests and diviners charged them, saying, Wherefore do ye harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? Now people often speak as if affliction had a softening tendency; producing, or at any rate, leading up to true repentance, and thorough conversion to God. But this idea has little, if any, good foundation to rest upon. I believe the tendency on the whole to be the opposite. Where there is no grace–where no thought or feeling of the grace of God is entertained in the heart–the tendency of affliction is to sour and harden. There may be exceptions to this rule, but I believe they are few. And this must be said, that afflictions, by themselves, never brought any soul into a state of true repentance. It is not judgment that wins the alien to God, but mercy. David said, It was good for me that I hays been afflicted, but then David was a child, sad a good child of God. I say all this with a definite, practical object in view, viz., to stir us up to increased zeal in our teachings and preachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Gods judgments upon Pharaoh did not lead him to repentance; His judgments upon the Philistines did not lead them to repentance; but when Peter and Paul preached the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, the unbelieving Gentile, as well as the unbelieving Jew, was pricked in his heart, and in how many instances savingly converted to God? (Adam Scott.)
Dagons ups and downs
When the civil power was joined with the spiritual, and the arm of flesh came in to patronise and to take into connection with itself the arm of Gods strength, then it was that the ark was borne away in triumph by its foes. Another lesson may be learned from the incident before us. When the Philistines had beaten the Israelites in battle, and captured the sacred chest called the ark, they boasted and gloried as though they had defeated God Himself. This touched at once the honour of Jehovah, and because He is a jealous God this boded good for Israel. The fact that God is a jealous God has often a terrible side to us, for it leads to our chastisement when we grieve Him; this, indeed, led to the defeat of Israel. But it has also a bright side towards us, for His jealousy flames against His foes even more terribly than against His friends. Now, then, whenever at any time infidelity or superstition shall so prevail as to discourage your minds, take you comfort out of this–that in all these Gods honour is compromised. Have they blasphemed His name? Then He will protect that name. Where the living God comes into the soul, Dagon, or the idol god of sin and worldliness, must go down.
I. The coming back of the ark into Dagons temple was an apt simile of the coming of Christ into the soul. Dagon, according to the best information, warn the fish god of Philistia; perhaps borrowed from the Sidonians and men of Tyre, whose main business was upon the sea, and who therefore invented a marina deity. The upper part of Dagon was a man or woman, and the lower part of the idol was carved like a fish. We get a very good idea of it from the common notion of the fictitious, fabulous creature called a mermaid. Dagon was just a merman or mermaid; only, of course, there was no pretence of his being alive. He was a carved image. The temple at Ashdod was, perhaps, the cathedral of Dagon, the chief shrine of his worship; and there he sat erect upon the high altar with pompous surroundings. The ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts was a small wooden box overlaid with gold, by no means a very cumbersome or bulky matter, but nevertheless very sacred, because it had a representative character, and symbolised the covenant of God.
1. We have now Dagon and the ark in the same temple, sin and grace in the same heart, but this state of things cannot long abide. No man can serve two masters, and even if he could then two masters would not agree to be so served. The two great principles of sin and grace will not abide in peace with each other, they are as opposite as fire and water.
2. Very likely your Dagon is in the shape of self-righteousness. I shall call it Dagon, for it is nothing better: one of the worst idols in the whole world is the idol of self. The self-righteous man boasts that he is as good as other people, if not rather better, although he is not a Christian.
3. Perhaps the man never had much of this vainglorious self-righteousness, but he served the Dagon of besetting and beloved sin.
4. Now the parallel may be run a little further: This fall of Dagon very soon began to be perceived.
5. Now, what happened on the night mentioned in the text? Dagon fell before the ark when it was all quiet and still in the temple. Thought is the channel of immense benefit to the soul. Shut the temple doors and let all be still, and then will the Holy Ghost work wonders in the soul.
II. The setting up of Dagon the second time, and his second fall, very well represent the battle going on in the soul between sin and grace.
1. Even thus Satan and the flesh come into our souls and try be set our fallen Dagon up again with soma measure of success. It often happens that in young converts there comes a period when it looks as if they had altogether apostatized and gone back to their former ways. It seems as if the work of God were not real in their souls, and grace was not triumphant. Do you wonder at it? I have ceased to wonder. The gospel is preached, and the man accepts it, and there is a marvellous difference in him; but when he goes among his old companions, although he is resolved not to fall into his former sins, they try him very severely. He is assailed in a thousand ways! I have known a man when he has been tempted to go into evil company refuse again, and again, and again. His tempters have laughed at him, and he has borne it all, but at last be has lost his temper; and as soon as the enemies have seen his passion boiling up they have cried out, Ah, there you are! We have got you. At such a time as that the poor man is apt to cry, Alas, I cannot be a believer, or else I should not have done this. Now, all this is a violent attempt of Satan and the flesh to set Dagon up again. Sometimes they do for a time set Dagon up again and cause great sorrow in the soul. The wandarers have come back, weeping and sighing, to own that they have dishonoured their profession: and what has been the result in the long run? Why, they bare had more humility, more tenderness of heart, more love to Christ, more gratitude, than they had before.
2. Now, notice that although they again set Dagon up, he had to go down again with a worse fall. The idols head was gone, and even so the reigning power of sin is utterly broken and destroyed, its beauty, its cunning, its glory are all dashed to atoms. This is the result of the grace of God, and the sure result of it, if it comes into the soul, however long the conflict may continue, and however desperate the efforts of Satan to regain his empire. O, believer, sin may trouble thee, but it shall not tyrannize over thee. Then, too, the hands of Dagon were broken off, and even thus the active power, the working power of sin is taken away. Both the palms of the idols hands were cut off upon the threshold, so that he had not a hand left. Neither right-handed sin nor left-handed sin shall remain in the believer when Gods sanctifying grace fetches Dagon down.
3. This happened, too, if you notice, very speedily; for we are told a second time that, when they arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face.
III. Though the fish god was thus maimed and broken, yet the stump of Dagon was left to him. The original Hebrew is, Only Dagon was left to him, or only the fish: only the fishy part remained. The head and the upper portions were broken away, there remained only the fishy tail of Dagon, and that was all: but that was not broken.
1. Now, this is the business which brings us so much sorrow–that the stump of Dagon is left to him. There is the old corruption within us, and there is no use denying it, because denying it will put us off our guard, will make many of the puzzles of life to be quite unanswerable, and often bring upon us great confusion of soul. The other law is within us as well as the law of grace.
2. The stump of Dagon is still left; and because it is left, dear friends, it is a thing to be watched against, for though that stony stump of Dagon would not grow in the Philistine temple, yet they would make a new image, and exalt it again, and bow before it as before. Alas, the stump of sin within us is not a slab of stone, but full of vitality, like the tree cut down, of which Job said, At the scent of water it will bud. Leave the sin that is in you to itself, and let temptation come in the way, and you shall see that which will blind your eyes with weeping.
IV. That though the stump of Dagon was not taken out of the Philistine temple we may go beyond the history and rejoice that it will be taken from our hearts. The day is coming, brother, sister, in which there will be no more inclination in you to sin than there is in an angel. John Bunyan represents Mercy as laughing in her sleep. She had a dream, she said; and she laughed because of the great favours which were yet to be bestowed upon her. Well, ii some of you were to dream tonight that the great thing which I have spoken of had actually happened to you, so that you were completely free from all tendency to sin, would not you also be as them that dream and laugh for very joy. Think of it–no more cause lot watchfulness, no more need of weeping over the days sin before you fall asleep at night; no more sin to confess, no devil to tempt you, no worldly care, no lusting, no envy, no depression of spirit, no unbelief, nothing of the kind–will not this be a very large part of the joy of heaven? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The fall of Dagon
The text reminds us of four things.
I. The inevitable doom of wrong. Wrong in markets, in governments, churches, in all institutions, and in all lives must fall.
II. The destined depravation of sinners. Dagon was the object in which the men of Ashdod centred the deepest sympathies of their soul–their god. No loss to a man is equal to the loss of his god, the object he loves most; and every sinner must experience this loss one day. Whatever he loves and prizes most must go from him.
III. The silent working of God. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
They took Dagon, and set him in his place again.–
The repair of broken ideals
Because you have broken your purpose do not allow it to go unmended. Even the heathen with so base a conception of divinity as Dagon was, when Dagon fell to the ground, lifted him up again and put him in his place. When, not your idol, but your bright ideal, falls to the ground, though its head and its feet be broken, lift it up and put in its place again. Because you have broken faith and fealty to that which you meant to be, and meant to do, it is no reason why you should not swear again, and again go forward. Let your ideal stand high and bright and pure, though by it every one of you is condemned, and cast down, as it were, to the very bottom of condemnation. Save that. Even though a man forsake his purpose, though he is recreant to his ideal, though he through months and years goes knowingly wrong, let not his star set. Do not let your ideal go down. (H. W. Beecher.)
The head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off.–
The helplessness of idols
The philosopher Heine, in one of his letters written from Paris, says: Only with pain could I drag myself to the Louvre, and I was nearly exhausted when I entered the lofty hall where the blessed goddess of beauty, our dear lady of Mile, stands on her pedestal. At her feet I lay a long time, and I wept so passionately that a stone must have had compassion on me. Therefore the goddess looked down pityingly upon me, yet at the same time inconsolably as though she would say: See you not that I have no arms, and that, therefore, I can give you no help?
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER V
The Philistines set up the ark in the temple of Dagon at Ashdod;
whose image is found next morning prostrate before it, broken
in pieces, 1-5.
The Philistines are also smitten with a sore disease, 6.
The people of Ashdod refuse to let the ark stay with them; and
the lords of the Philistines, with whom they consulted, order
it to be carried to Gath, 7, 8.
They do so; and God smites the inhabitants of that city, young
and old, with the same disease, 9.
They send the ark to Ekron, and a heavy destruction falls upon
that city, and they resolve to send it back to Shiloh, 10-12.
NOTES ON CHAP. V
Verse 1. Brought it from Eben-ezer unto Ashdod.] Ashdod or Azotus was one of the five satrapies or lordships of the Philistines.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Quest. Why were not they immediately killed, who touched the ark, as afterwards Uzzah was? 2Sa 6:7.
Answ. First, Because the sin of the Philistines was not so great, because the law forbidding this was not given, or at least was not known to them; whereas Uzzahs fact was a transgression, and that of a known law. Secondly, Because God designed to reserve the Philistines for a more public and more shameful punishment, which had been prevented by this. From Eben-ezer; where they found it in the camp of the Israelites, 1Sa 4:1. Ashdod, called also Azotus; whither they brought it, either because it was the first city in their way, or rather because it was a great and famous city, and most eminent for the worship of their great god Dagon.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. Ashdodor Azotus, one ofthe five Philistine satrapies, and a place of great strength. It wasan inland town, thirty-four miles north of Gaza, now called Esdud.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And the Philistines took the ark of God,…. Which fell into their hands, Israel being beaten, and caused to flee, and the priests that had the care of the ark slain; and when possessed of it, they did not destroy it, nor take out of it what was in it, only took it up:
and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. Ebenezer was the place where the camp of Israel was pitched, 1Sa 4:1 and near to which the battle was fought. Ashdod was one of the five principalities of the Philistines, the same with Azotus, Ac 8:40. The distance between these two places, according to Bunting q was one hundred and sixty miles; though one would think the distance from each other was not so great: why it was carried to Ashdod is not plain; perhaps it might be the nearest place of note in their country; and certain it is that it was one of their most famous cities, if not the most famous;
[See comments on Isa 20:1], and had a famous idol temple in it.
q Travels of the Patriarchs, &c. p. 122.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The Ark in the Land of the Philistines. – 1Sa 5:1-6. The Philistines carried the ark from Ebenezer, where they had captured it, into their capital, Ashdod ( Esdud; see at Jos 13:3), and placed it there in the temple of Dagon, by the side of the idol Dagon, evidently as a dedicatory offering to this god of theirs, by whose help they imagined that they had obtained the victory over both the Israelites and their God. With regard to the image of Dagon, compounded of man and fish, i.e., of a human body, with head and hands, and a fish’s tail, see, in addition to Jdg 16:23, Stark’s Gaza, pp. 248ff., 308ff., and Layard’s Nineveh and its Remains, pp. 466-7, where there is a bas-relief from Khorsabad, in which “a figure is seen swimming in the sea, with the upper part of the body resembling a bearded man, wearing the ordinary conical tiara of royalty, adorned with elephants’ tusks, and the lower part resembling the body of a fish. It has the hand lifted up, as if in astonishment or fear, and is surrounded by fishes, crabs, and other marine animals” (Stark, p. 308). As this bas-relief represents, according to Layard, the war of an Assyrian king with the inhabitants of the coast of Syria, most probably of Sargon, who had to carry on a long conflict with the Philistian towns, more especially with Ashdod, there can hardly be any doubt that we have a representation of the Philistian Dagon here. This deity was a personification of the generative and vivifying principle of nature, for which the fish with its innumerable multiplication was specially adapted, and set forth the idea of the giver of all earthly good.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Fall of Dagon. | B. C. 1120. |
1 And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. 2 When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. 3 And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again. 4 And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him. 5 Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon’s house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day.
Here is, I. The Philistines’ triumph over the ark, which they were the more pleased, the more proud, to be now masters of, because before the battle they were possessed with a great fear of it, ch. iv. 7. When they had it in their hands God restrained them, that they did not offer any violence to it, did not break it to pieces, as the Israelites were ordered to do by the idols of the heathen, but showed some respect to it, and carefully carried it to a place of safety. Whether their curiosity led them to open it, and to read what was written with the finger of God on the two tables of stone that were in it, we are not told; perhaps they looked no further than the golden outside and the cherubim that covered it, like children that are more affected with the fine binding of their bibles than with the precious matter contained in them. They carried it to Ashdod, one of their five cities, and that in which Dagon’s temple was; there they placed the ark of God, by Dagon (v. 2), either 1. As a sacred thing, which they designed to pay some religious respect to, in conjunction with Dagon; for the gods of the heathen were never looked upon as averse to partners. Though the nations would not change their gods, yet they would multiply them and add to them. But they were mistaken in the God of Israel when, in putting his ark by Dagon’s image, they intended to do him honour; for he is not worshipped at all if he is not worshipped alone. The Lord our God is one Lord. Or rather, 2. They placed it there as a trophy of victory, in honour of Dagon their god, to whom no doubt they intended to offer a great sacrifice, as they had done when they had taken Samson (Jdg 16:23; Jdg 16:24), boasting that as then they had triumphed over Israel’s champion so now over Israel’s God. What a reproach was this to God’s great name! what a disgrace to the throne of his glory! Shall the ark, the symbol of God’s presence, be a prisoner to Dagon, a dunghill deity? (1.) So it is, because God will show of how little account the ark of the covenant is if the covenant itself be broken and neglected; even sacred signs are not things that either he is tied to or we can trust to. (2.) So it is for a time, that God may have so much the more glory, in reckoning with those that thus affront him, and get him honour upon them. Having punished Israel, that betrayed the ark, by giving it into the hands of the Philistines, he will next deal with those that abused it, and will fetch it out of their hands again. Thus even the wrath of man shall praise him; and he is bringing about his own glory even when he seems to neglect it, Ps. lxxvi. 10. Out of the eater shall come forth meat.
II. The ark’s triumph over Dagon. Once and again Dagon was made to fall before it. If they designed to do honour to the ark, God thereby showed that he valued not their honour, nor would he accept it; for he will be worshipped, not with any god, but above all gods. He owes a shame (as bishop Hall expresses it) to those who will be making matches betwixt himself and Belial. But they really designed to affront it, and though for some hours Dagon stood by the ark, and it is likely stood above it (the ark, as its footstool), yet the next morning, when the worshippers of Dagon came to pay their devotions to his shrine, they found their triumphing short, Job xx. 5.
1. Dagon, that is, the image (for that was all the god), had fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark, v. 3. God had seemed to forget the ark, but see how the Psalmist speaks of his appearing, at last, to vindicate his own honour. When he had delivered his strength into captivity, and all seemed going to ruin, then the Lord awaked as one out of sleep, and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine, Ps. lxxviii. 59-65. And therefore he prevented the utter desolations of the Jewish church, because he feared the wrath of the enemy,Deu 32:26; Deu 32:27. Great care was taken, in setting up the images of their gods, to fix them. The prophet takes notice of it, Isa. xli. 7, He fastened it with nails that it should not be moved; and again, Isa. xlvi. 7. And yet Dagon’s fastenings stood him in no stead. The ark of God triumphs over him upon his own dunghill, in his own temple. Down he comes before the ark, directly towards it (though the ark was set on one side of him), as it were, pointing to the conqueror, to whom he is constrained to yield and do homage. Note, The kingdom of Satan will certainly fall before the kingdom of Christ, error before truth, profaneness before godliness, and corruption before grace in the hearts of the faithful. When the interests of religion seem to be run down and ready to sink, yet even then we may be confident that the day of their triumph will come. Great is the truth, and will prevail. Dagon by falling prostrate before the ark of God, which was a posture of adoration, did as it were direct his worshippers to pay their homage to the God of Israel, as greater than all gods. See Exod. xviii. 11.
2. The priests, finding their idol on the floor, make all the haste they can, before it be known, to set him in his place again. A sorry silly thing it was to make a god of, which, when it was down, wanted help to get up again; and sottish wretches those were that could pray for help from that idol that needed, and in effect implored, their help. How could they attribute their victory to the power of Dagon when Dagon himself could not keep his own ground before the ark? But they are resolved Dagon shall be their god still, and therefore set him in his place. Bishop Hall observes hence, It is just with God that those who want grace shall want wit too; and it is the work of superstition to turn men into the stocks and stones they worship. Those that make them are like unto them. What is it that the great upholders of the antichristian kingdom are doing at this day but heaving Dagon up, and labouring to set him in his place again, and healing the deadly wound that has been given to the beast? but if the reformation be the cause of God, before which it has begun to fall, it shall not prevail, but shall surely fall before it.
3. The next night Dagon fell the second time, v. 4. They rose early, either, as usual, to make their addresses to their god, or earlier than usual, being impatient to know whether Dagon had kept his standing this night; and, to their great confusion, they find his case worse now than before. Whether the matter of which the image was made was apt to break or no, so it was that the head and hands were cut off upon the threshold, so that nothing remained but the stump, or, as the margin reads it, the fishy part of Dagon; for (as many learned men conjecture) the upper part of this image was in a human shape, the lower in the shape of a fish, as mermaids are painted. Such strong delusions were idolaters given up to, so vain were they in their imaginations, and so wretchedly darkened were their foolish hearts, as to worship the images, not only of creatures, but of nonentities, the mere figments of fancy. Well, the misshapen monster is by this fall made to appear, (1.) Very ridiculous, and worthy to be despised. A pretty figure Dagon made now, when the fall had anatomized him, and shown how the human part and the fishy part were artificially put together, which perhaps the ignorant devotees had been made to believe was done by miracle! (2.) Very impotent, and unworthy to be prayed to or trusted in; for his losing his head and hands proved him utterly destitute both of wisdom and power, and for ever disabled either to advise or act for his worshippers. This they got by setting Dagon in his place again; they had better have let him alone when he was down. But those can speed no better that contend with God, and will set up that which he is throwing down, Mal. i. 4. God, by this, magnified his ark and made it honourable, when they vilified and made it contemptible. He also showed what will be the end of all that which is set up in opposition to him. Gird yourselves, but you shall be broken to pieces, Isa. viii. 9.
4. The threshold of Dagon’s temple was ever looked upon as sacred, and not to be trodden on, v. 5. Some think that reference is had to this superstitious usage of Dagon’s worshippers in Zeph. i. 9, where God threatens to punish those who, in imitation of them, leaped over the threshold. One would have thought that this incontestable proof of the ark’s victory over Dagon would convince the Philistines of their folly in worshipping such a senseless thing, and that henceforward they would pay their homage to the conqueror; but, instead of being reformed, they were hardened in their idolatry, and, as evil men and seducers are wont to do, became worse and worse, 2 Tim. iii. 13. Instead of despising Dagon, for the threshold’s sake that beheaded him, they were almost ready to worship the threshold because it was the block on which he was beheaded, and will never set their feet on that on which Dagon lost his head, shaming those who tread under foot the blood of the covenant and trample on things truly sacred. Yet this piece of superstition would help to perpetuate the remembrance of Dagon’s disgrace; for, with the custom, the reason would be transmitted to posterity, and the children that should be born, enquiring why the threshold of Dagon’s temple must not be trodden on, would be told that Dagon fell before the ark of the Lord. Thus God would have honour even out of their superstition. We are not told that they repaired the broken image; it is probable that they sent the art of God away first, and then they patched it up again, and set it in its place; for, it seems, they cannot deliver their souls, nor say, Is there not a lie in our right hand? Isa. xliv. 20.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
First Samuel – Chapter 5
Philistine Woes, vs. 1-12
What did the Philistines think of their victory over Israel and the capture of the ark of the Lord? Chapter 5 reveals quite clearly their thinking. Their god, Dagon, had given them victory of this great and mighty God of Israel, about which they had heard such great things. Therefore Dagon, their god must be greater than Israel’s God. To honor Dagon and to let him share in their great victory the Philistines carried the ark of the Lord and put it in Dagon’s temple at Ashdod. It was set down right beside Dagon, thereby signifying equality of the two. But the pagan Philistines were about to learn there was a vast difference in the two.
Ashdod was one of five major Philistine cities, each ruled over by a lord. The other four were Gath, Ekron, Gaza, and Ashkelon. The Philistines dwelled in the Mediterranean coastal lands. While they had lived in the southern part of Canaan since the days of Abraham, they were not Canaanites. When Joshua and the Israelites conquered this area they did not at once settle in it, and the vacuum left by the conquest seems to have afforded the Philistines an opportunity to move in and to occupy it.
Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Gaza were on the sea, or very near it. Gath and Ekron were further inland, near the towns of the Israelites. Gath was the chief of the cities and the seat of the king. The Philistines carried the ark down to Ashdod, and when it had wrought havoc there they moved it back inland to Gath. Finally they tried to locate it farther north at Ekron.
The false god Dagon had a fish’s tail for the lower part of his torso. The upper part of him was the head and shoulders of a man. His arms extended in an attitude of supplication. The next morning after the ark was set beside him the people of Ashdod came into his temple and found him bowed down before the ark. They set him up again, and the next morning he had not only fallen before the ark, but had broken off his head and his hands on the threshold of the door. This showed the Philistines that their god could neither think or perform for them, and they began to realize that they had not overcome the God of Israel.
Not only was their god broken because the ark of the Lord was in their midst, but God also struck them with disease and death, so that the country was like to be destroyed. The emerods were a disease of the Philistines’ private parts. These were tumors, the nature of which is not entirely clear today. Some liken them to hemorrhoids, while others have suggested they were some kind of venereal disease. Whatever it was, it was capable of taking their lives.
The first thought of the Philistines seems to have been that the God of Israel was displeased at being in the same city with Dagon, as though He did not like the competition. So they took the ark from Ashdod and carried it over to Gath. But the people of Gath began to suffer in like manner as those of Ashdod. So the decision was now to send it to Ekron, but a delegation of Ekronites, hearing that it was being sent to them, vigorously protested bringing it into their city.
The Philistine lords were gathered to consider what they should do with the ark. The Ekronites were demanding that it be sent back to Israel, for all their efforts at keeping it out of town to the contrary, it was bringing destruction on them also. God’s hand was so heavy upon them, so many were being destroyed, with many others smitten with emerods that an awful cry of woe and distress went up to heaven.
Some lessons to learn from chapter five: 1) The unbelieving world will one day suffer the mighty judgment of the Lord; 2) the Lord God is not confined in a box, or image; 3) God’s hand will be heavy on all who take Him lightly.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES
1Sa. 5:1. Ashdod. One of the five Philistine satrapies, about thirty-two miles north of Gaza, and about a mile from the sea. It is now the little village of Esdd.
1Sa. 5:2. Dagon. One of the chief Philistine deities. With regard to the image of Dagon, compounded of a man and fish, i.e., of a human body with head and hands, and a fishs tail, see Starks Gaza and Layards Nineveh, where there is a bas-relief from Khorsabad, in which a figure is seen swimming in the sea, with the upper part of the body resembling a bearded man, wearing the ordinary conical tiara of royalty, adorned with elephants tusks, and the lower part resembling the body of a fish. (Starke.) As the bas-relief represents (according to Layard) the war of an Assyrian king with the inhabitants of the coasts of Syria, most probably of Sargon, who had to carry on a long conflict with the Philistian towns, more especially with Ashdod, there can hardly be any doubt that we have a representation of the Philistian Dagon here. This deity was a personification of the generative and vivifying principle of nature for which the fish, with its innumerable multiplication, was specially adapted, and set forth the Giver of all earthly good. (Keil.)
1Sa. 5:4. The word were is not in the original, and would be better omitted; the head and palms of Dagon, being cut off, were lying on the threshold. Here was the miracle, and it was very significant. It was done by the Divine power. The head and palms of Dagon, the chiefest of his members, the emblems of his strength, were lopped off. (Wordsworth.) Only the stump, etc. Literally, only Dagon, the fish (from dag, a fish), the ignoblest part, was left. (Wordsworth.)
1Sa. 5:5. Therefore neither the prieststread on the threshold, etc. Cf. Zep. 1:9. On the same day will I punish all those that leap on (or over) the threshold. No doubt this phrase was intended (perhaps with some irony) to describe the worshippers of the Philistian Dagon. (Hobson.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH1Sa. 5:1-5
THE FALL OF DAGON
I. God works in silence and in secret against false systems of religion to give men a public and sudden proof of their folly. Dagons downfall took place in the secrecy of the night: when daylight came, his destruction was made apparent. Gods kingdom of nature, and His kingdom of grace, are alike in this, that neither come with observation (Luk. 17:20). All the winter nature seems to be at a standstill, but all the time secret preparation is going on beneath the ground and within the plants for the outburst of life and beauty in the spring. And in His spiritual kingdom there have often been times and seasons in which there has seemed to be hardly any true religious life left in the world, when solitary believers in God here and there have been ready to exclaim with the prophet of old, I, even I only, am left (1Ki. 19:14). But it has often been found that such seasons of darkness have been followed by a day in which the truth of God has won great victories in the hearts of men, giving proof that His spirit has been, during all the long night, working silently and secretly in mens hearts. So it was before the downfall of Paganism after the coming of Christ, and before the overthrow of the Papal tyranny at the time of the Reformation. When the pious Israelite lay down that night and thought of the sacred ark of the covenant in the house of Dagon, he must have been ready to exclaim with the dying wife of Phinehas, The glory is departed from Israel. But God at that very hour was working in secret, and was dealing a heavy blow at the idolatry of the Philistines.
II. Even miraculous evidence does not always suffice to bring men to acknowledge God. Experience of the fallacy of the advice of a quack is the surest way, we think, to lead men to put faith in the advice of a skilful physician; and when men have had the powerlessness of the gods whom they worship proved to them by unmistakable evidence, we should expect them to be ready to embrace a religion based upon supernatural evidence if history and experience did not testify to the contrary. Dagon testified by his first fall that an idol is nothing in the world (1Co. 8:4). But it brought no conviction into the minds of the Philistine priests. They set him in his place again. His second fall upon the threshold seemed to tell them that he was only fit to be trodden under foot, yet they venerated the spot upon which he fell. But the Philistines were not more unwilling to receive evidence of the truth than the majority of mankind. Israel was formed into a nation by miraculous power, and sustained miraculously for forty years, and over and over again were delivered from their distresses by miraculous interposition, yet Gods testimony concerning them is, Ephraim is joined unto idols (Hos. 4:17). The Son of God Himself proved that He came from the Father by His mighty works, but they made no impression upon the mass of the Jewish people. A delusion proved is not a delusion abandoned. And Our Lord Himself tells us the reason why. It is because men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil (Joh. 3:19).
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
1Sa. 5:1-5. Dagon before the ark, or heathenism conquered at the feet of the living God.
1. In the domain of its powerits own abode (1Sa. 5:1-2).
2. Through the secret demonstration of the power of the Lord (1Sa. 5:3-4).
3. Amid the destruction of its power and glorythe face, as a sign of its worthless glory and vain beauty, struck down to the earth; the head also, as the seat of the wisdom which is alienated from God, and opposed to God; the hands, as a symbol of the powers of darkness which work therein, cut off (1Sa. 5:3-5). The fall of heathenism.
1. It is thrown down before the power of God, manifesting Himself as present in His Word (the law and testimony in the ark).
2. Its power broken and destroyed through the secretly working power of the Spirit of God.
3. Ever a more and more glorious revelation of the power of God, which casts down heathenism in the light of the day of salvation.Langes Commentary.
Where God comes with His ark and with His testimony, there He smites the idols to the ground; idolatry must fall where His gospel finds a place.Berlenberger Bible.
If men did not mistake God, they could not arise to such heights of impiety; the acts of His just judgments are imputed to impotence. Dagon had never so great a day, so many sacrifices, as now that he seems to take the God of Israel prisoner. Where should the captive be bestowed, but in custody of the victor? It is not love, but insultation, that lodges the ark close beside Dagon. What a spectacle was this, to see uncircumcised Philistines laying their profane hands on the testimony of Gods presence! to see the glorious mercy-seat under the roof of an idol! to see the two cherubims spreading their wings under a false god! O the deep and holy wisdom of the Almighty, which over-reaches all the finite conceits of His creatures, who, while He seems most to neglect Himself, fetches about most glory to His own name! He winks and sits still on purpose to see what men would do, and is content to suffer indignity from His creature for a time, that He may be everlastingly magnified in His justice and power: that honour pleaseth God and men best, which is raised out of contempt. If the Israelites put confidence in the ark, can we marvel that the Philistines did put confidence in that power, which, as they thought, had conquered the ark? The less is ever subject unto the greater; what could they now think, but that heaven and earth were theirs? Security and presumption attend ever at the threshold of ruin. God will let them sleep in this confidence; in the morning they shall find how vainly they have dreamed! Now they begin to find they have but gloried in their own plague, and overthrown nothing but their own peace. Dagon hath a house, when God hath but a tabernacle; it is no measuring of religion by outward glory.Bishop Hall.
The foolish Philistines thought that the same house could hold both the ark and Dagon, as if an insensible statue were a fit companion for the living God. In the morning they come to thank Dagon for the victory, and to fall down before him before whom they thought the God of Israel was fallen; and lo! now they find the keeper flat on his face before the prisoner. Had they formerly, of their own accord, with awful reverence, laid him in this posture of a humble prostration, yet God would not have brooked the indignity of such an entertainment. But seeing they durst set up their idol cheek by cheek with their Maker, let them go read their folly in the temple floor, and confess that He who did cast their god so low, could cast them lower. Such a shame doth the Lord owe all them which will be making matches betwixt Him and Belial. Yet they consider not, How should this god raise us who is not able to stand or rise himself? Strange they must confess it, that whereas Dagon was wont to stand, and themselves to fall down; now Dagon was fallen down, and themselves stood, and must help up with their own god. Yea, their god seems to worship them on his face, and to crave that succour from them which he was never able to give them. Yet in his place they set him again, and now lift up those hands to him which helped to lift him up and prostrate those faces to him before whom he lay prostrate. So can idolatry turn men into the stocks and stones which they worship: They that make them are like unto them. But will the Lord put it up thus? No, the next fall shall burst it to pieces; that they may sensibly perceive how God scorns a competitor, and that there is no agreement betwixt Him and idols. Now, what is the difference between the Philistines and the Papists? The Philistines would set God in the temple of idols; the Papists would set idols in the temple of God. Both agree in this, that they would make God and idols agree together.T. Adams.
1Sa. 5:3. Because you have broken your purpose, do not allow it to go unmended. Even the heathen, with so base a conception of divinity as Dagon was, when Dagon fell to the ground, lifted him up again and put him in his place. When, not your idol, but your bright ideal, falls to the ground, though its head and its feet be broken, lift it up and put it in its place again. Because you have broken faith and fealty to that which you meant to be, and meant to do, it is no reason why you should not swear again, and again go forward.Beecher.
1Sa. 5:4. The prevalence of idolatry in the heart of man. Dagon has still his temple there. The great idolatry of mankind is self. Christ is the true ark of the covenant, and when He takes possession of the temple of mans heart, then the Dagon of the place is dethroned; it loses its head and hands, its carnal wisdom and carnal works, at the very threshold of the sanctuary, but still the stump is left; however powerful the principle of indwelling grace may be, there is still the remnant of indwelling sin. And while we might unfeignedly desire that even the stump of sin and self were gone, we may well be thankful if no more be left. We know not whether the priests of Dagon erected another idol upon the stump of the broken one; but this we know, that many idols are contending for the throne of mans heart, and when one Dagon is deposed, he leaves his stump upon which another is quickly raised. But the same Almighty grace which cast down one shall triumph over all. The covenant ensures the death of sin, the life of grace, and the crown of glory, and when grace has brought you to glory you will rejoice to all eternity, that only the stump of Dagon was left.Fenn.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
The Captivity of the Ark, 1Sa. 5:1 to 1Sa. 7:17.
The Ark in the Temple of Dagon. 1Sa. 5:1-6
And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod.
2 When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon.
3 And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the Lord. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again.
4 And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left of him.
5 Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagons house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day.
6 But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.
1.
Where did the Philistines take the Ark? 1Sa. 5:1
They thought they had captured the God of Israel, and they wanted to place this God by their god and glory in the triumph. As we should expect in the case of a remarkable trophy, they brought it to the temple of Dagon. Dagon was the national god of the Philistines, if we gather anything from his prominence here. The temple alluded to here existed until the time of the Maccabees (1Ma. 10:83 ff; 1Ma. 11:4).
2.
Who was Dagon? 1Sa. 5:2 (cf. Jdg. 16:23)
The nature and attributes of Dagon are not certainly known. He is a god of the Philistines in whose honor a great feast was held (Jdg. 16:23). If the name is Semite, it may be related either to the word for fish or to a word for corn. The adoration of a fish-god or corn would be at home in the fine grain-growing land of the Shephelah. A bas-relief in Khorsabad, Sargons Assyrian capital, depicts a figure swimming in the sea. The upper part of the body resembled a bearded man, wearing the ordinary conical tiara of royalty and was adorned with elephants tusks. The lower part of the body resembled the body of a fish. Since the whole scene is the picture of a battle between the Assyrian king and the inhabitants of the coast of Syria, this is in all probability a representation of the god of Ashdod, namely, Dagon.
3.
What happened while the Ark was in Philistia? 1Sa. 5:3-7
Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the Ark of the Lord on the first morning. On the second morning, both the palms of Dagons hands were cut off, his head was cut off, and the remaining stump was lying upon the threshold of the temple. The visitation of God was not restricted to the demolition of the statue of Dagon, but affected the people of Ashdod as well. The desolation included diseases and also the withdrawal or diminution of the means of subsistence, the devastation of the fields, and such like. From Ashdod, the Ark was sent to Gath, thence to Ekron. There was a deadly panic. No part of the country wanted the Ark deposited in its borders, so they finally decided that something would have to be done about it. The tumult was not caused merely by fear or death, but it was a result of their actual suffering.
4.
Where was Ashdod? 1Sa. 5:6
Ashdod was one of the five principal cities of the Philistines. Together with Gaza, Gath, Ekron, and Ashkelon it formed what was known as the Philistine pentapolis. These cities were at the very height of their power at the time of Saul and continued to be important after the time of David. Ashdod was situated between Ashkelon, a seaport, and Ekron, the city inland on the caravan route east to Lydda and west to Joppa.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) The Philistines took the ark of God.The sacred writer concerns himself after the battle of Aphek only with the future of the Ark of the Covenant, and says nothing of the fate of Shiloh after the rout of the Israelites and the death of the high priest. We can, however, from Psa. 78:60-64, and two passages in Jeremiah (Jer. 7:12; Jer. 26:9), complete the story of the sanctuary city after the death of Eli. After the victory of Aphek, the Philistines, flushed with success, probably at once marched on Shiloh, where, from the words of the above quoted Psalm, they seem to have revenged themselves for past injuries by a terrible massacre, and then to have razed the sacred buildings of the city to the ground. The awful fate of the priestly city seems to have become a proverb in Israel. This house shall be like Shiloh, wrote Jeremiah, hundreds of years later, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant. Yet, in spite of this crushing blow, the national life of the Hebrew people was by no means exterminated; we shall soon hear of its revival under happier auspices. There were others in Israel like Samuel, who, as we have seen, with all their hearts trusted in that Lord who, when Israel was a child, then He loved him; others like that weak but still righteous judge Eli, who for one great weakness had paid so awful a penalty; many others, like the wife of Phinehas, the wicked priest, and Elkanah and Hannah, the pious father and mother of Samuel, who dwelt in Ramah of the Watchers.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE ARK OF GOD AMONG THE PHILISTINES, 1Sa 5:1-12.
The Philistine conquerors are soon to find that the ark is for them a fearful booty. With great rejoicing they carry it to their great idol’s temple, as if to say, Our God is mightier than the mighty God of Israel, and we will dedicate the ark to him. But miserable honours await Dagon, and fearful plagues visit his worshippers. Terror-smitten, they carry the ark from one place to another, supposing that change of locality might check its power for evil, but all without avail, for the presence of the ark spreads plague and terror everywhere.
Here we may see why Jehovah permitted the ark to fall into the hands of these idolaters. It would prove to them, in their own land, that Jehovah’s power was not in sword nor bow, nor chariot; that the ark alone, the mere symbol of his presence, could be used by him to crush their Dagon, and smite their land and its inhabitants with plagues. Nor was this capture of the ark without its salutary lessons for Israel. They never afterwards attempted to put it to a superstitious use. Their priests had defiled the tabernacle by their impiety, and had committed sacrilege in their use of the offerings. The sanctuary seems to have become totally neglected by several of the tribes of Israel, for as “men abhorred the offering of the Lord” (1Sa 2:17) at Shiloh, they turned to the practice of sacrificing on high places; or else, like Micah, (Jdg 17:5,) made a tabernacle of their own with graven images, and set up an independent worship. Thus Israel failed to establish a central seat of worship, as well as a central government; the Levitical service became disorganized, and the worship at Shiloh a reproach; and the Lord allowed the ark of his presence to be taken from them as a judgment for their sins. Compare Psa 78:56-66.
“The loss and the recovery of the ark,” says Milman, “would tend powerfully to consolidate the disorganized realm. The tidings of that awful calamity, the capture of the ark, the seeming abandonment of his people by their God, would sound like a knell in the heart of every one born of Israel. From the foot of Lebanon to the edge of the desert, from the remotest pastures of Gilead to the seacoast of Asher, the dormant religious feeling would be stirred to its depths. Even those who had furtively cast their grain of incense on the altar of Baal would be roused by the terrible shock, and prostrate themselves in penitence, if not in despair. That universal religious movement, from grief, from shame, from fear, would be maddened to tumultuous excitement at the tidings, as rapidly, as widely spread, of the restoration of the inappreciable treasure Jehovah’s return in all his power and majesty to the center of his chosen people.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1. From Eben-ezer unto Ashdod A distance of nearly thirty miles.
Ashdod in Greek, Azotus (Act 8:40) was one of the five chief cities of Philistia, (Jos 13:3,) and the principal seat of the worship of Dagon.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Ark of God is Taken to Ashdod and The Idol Dagon Falls Before YHWH and Is Smashed in Pieces ( 1Sa 5:1-5 ).
Analysis.
a
b And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was found to have fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of YHWH (1Sa 5:3 a).
c And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again (1Sa 5:3 b).
b And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of YHWH, and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands lay cut off on the threshold, only the stump of Dagon was left to him (1Sa 5:4).
a That is why neither the priests of Dagon, nor any who come into Dagon’s house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod, to this day (1Sa 5:5).
Note that in ‘a’ is brought to Ashdod and into the house of Dagon and set before Dagon as a trophy, and in the parallel, as a direct result, none in Ashdod tread on the threshold in the house of Dagon in Ashdod to this day. It was a permanent evidence of the power of YHWH. In ‘b’ Dagon had fallen on its face to the ground before the Ark of YHWH, and in the parallel the same had happened. Centrally in ‘c’ Dagon had to be lifted up and replaced on his plinth. So much for the might of Dagon.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Strange Happenings In The House Of Dagon ( 1Sa 5:1-5 ).
1Sa 5:1
‘ Now the Philistines had taken the ark of God, and they brought it from Eben-ezer to Ashdod.’
As already described in the previous chapter, the Philistines had ‘taken the Ark of YHWH’. They were no doubt delighted. Here indeed was a trophy that revealed the power of their gods. The gods of Israel had clearly been unable to do anything against them, and they intended to put the Ark on triumphal show in all their Temples so that the worshippers would see what their gods had done. And the first place where they intended to do this was in Ashdod, one of the five main cities of the Philistines. Each of these cities was ruled over by one of the five ‘Tyrants’ (seren) who together formed the overall leadership of the Philistines. The cities were Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, Ekron and Gaza. (See Jos 13:3). Ashdod, Ashkelon and Gaza (in that order from north to south) were situated on the trade route that ran down the coastal plain of Palestine connecting Egypt in the south with Syria and other nations to the north. Ashdod was directly west of Jerusalem.
1Sa 5:2
‘ And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon.’
So the Philistines brought the Ark of God to Ashdod and set it up as a trophy in the Temple of Dagon, who was seemingly a god with a human face and hands. We know little else about him except that he was probably a grain god (Hebrew dagan=grain).
1Sa 5:3
‘ And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was found to have fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of YHWH. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again.’
Next morning the people woke early and hurried to the Temple of Dagon so as to bask in their triumph. But what they found there could only rather have perturbed them, for they discovered that the statue of Dagon had fallen on its face before the Ark of YHWH. It almost seemed as though Dagon had had to bow down to YHWH.
Shrugging off such an idea as ridiculous they ‘took Dagon and set him in his place again’. They no doubt comforted themselves with the thought that there must have been a brief earth tremor. They then engaged in their victory celebrations.
1Sa 5:4
‘ And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of YHWH, and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands lay cut off on the threshold, only the stump of Dagon was left to him.’
However, next morning when they gathered early in the morning to celebrate they discovered to their horror that not only had Dagon fallen on its face before the Ark of YHWH, but also its head and its hands had broken off and lay on the threshold of the inner sanctuary where the statue had been erected. Only the central ‘Dagon’ was left intact. Now what had happened was not so easy to shrug off. The cutting off of the head signified to the Philistines a defeated foe (1Ch 10:10). It was clear that when it came to facing YHWH Dagon was no match for Him.
1Sa 5:5
‘ That is why neither the priests of Dagon, nor any who come into Dagon’s house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod, to this day.’
So YHWH left a permanent reminder of His presence in the house of Dagon, for from that day onwards neither priest nor worshipper ever trod on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod because it was where their god’s head and hands had lain. Instead they would reverently step over it.
“To this day.” This behaviour in the house of Dagon was still the practise in the writer’s own day. These words are simply an indication of something permanent and lasting. They give no idea how long a period is in mind. As far as the phrase itself indicates it could be six months, or six hundred years.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
1Sa 5:2 When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon.
1Sa 5:2
1Sa 21:9, “And the priest said, The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod: if thou wilt take that, take it: for there is no other save that here. And David said, There is none like that; give it me.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Ark in Ashdod.
v. l And the philistines took the ark of God, which they had captured in the great battle, and brought it from Ebenezer, as the place was afterward called, unto Ashdod, a city of Philistia almost due west of the battlefield, on the Mediterranean, apparently the leading city in the federation of city-states among the Philistines.
v. 2. When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, v. 3. And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon, v. 4. And when they arose early on the morrow morning, v. 5. Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, v. 6. But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, v. 7. And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
THE ARK OF GOD IN PHILISTIA (1Sa 5:1-12).
1Sa 5:1
The Philistines took the ark of God. The silence of Scripture is often as remarkable as what it tells us. From Psa 78:60-64; Jer 7:12; Jer 26:9, we gather that from Aphek the Philistines marched upon Shiloh, and having captured it, put all whom they found there to the sword, and levelled the buildings to the ground. Especially their wrath fell upon the priests, in revenge for the bringing of the ark to the camp, by which the war was made a religious one, and the worst feelings of fanaticism aroused. Of all this the history says nothing, nor of the measures taken by Samuel under these trying circumstances. From his previous eminence, the government would naturally devolve upon him, especially as Eli’s sons were both slain; and evidently he must have managed in some way to save the sacred vessels of the sanctuary, and the numerous records of the past history of the nation laid up at Shiloh. Whatever learning there was in Israel had its seat there; it was probably the only school wherein men were initiated in the knowledge brought out of Egypt; and it is one of the worst and most barbarous results of war that it destroys so much connected with human progress and civilisation, overthrowing with its violent hand as well the means of a nation’s culture as the results thereof. Samuel evidently did all that was possible to counteract these evils; and as the Philistine army withdrew into its own country immediately after the destruction of Shiloh, probably to carry homo the rich spoils obtained there, he was apparently able to ward off the worst effects of the Philistine invasion, and by rapidly reorganising the government to save the people from utter demoralisation. But upon all this Scripture is silent, because it concerns the history of Israel on its temporal side, and not as it exemplifies God’s spiritual dealings with nations and men. From Eben-ezer (see on 1Sa 4:1) unto Ashdod. This town, the Azotus of Act 8:40, was with Ekron and other Philistine cities, assigned to the tribe of Judah
. In one of the sculptures brought from Khorsabad there is a representation of a battle between the Assyrians and the inhabitants of the Syrian sea coast, and in it there is a figure, the upper part of which is a bearded man with a crown, while from the waist downwards it has the shape of a fish (Layard’s ‘Nineveh,’ 2:466). Moreover, it is swimming in the sea, and is surrounded by a multitude of marine creatures. Doubtless this figure represents Dagon, who, nevertheless, is not to be regarded as a sea god, like Neptune; but as the fish is the product of water, he is the symbol of nature’s reproductive energy. Together with Dagon a female deity was commonly worshipped, called Atergatis, half woman and half fish, whose temple is mentioned in 2Ma 12:26. In the margin there she is explained as being Venus; but the ideas have only this in commonthat Venus also, as rising out of the sea, symbolises life as springing out of water. As Dagon had a temple also at Gaza (Jdg 16:23), and at the other cities of Philistia (Jerome on Isa 46:1), he was evidently the chief deity of the nation, and the solemn depositing of the ark in his temple, and by Dagon,literally, “at his side,”was intended as a public demonstration that the God of the Israelites was inferior to, and had been vanquished by, the national deity of the Philistines.
1Sa 5:3, 1Sa 5:4
On the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of Jehovah. I.e. he was in the attitude of adoration, and instead of triumphing over Jehovah, he was prostrate, as if compelled to worship. But his priests perhaps thought that it was an accident, and so they set the image in its place again. They also, we may be sure, took due precaution against any one entering his temple by stealth; but when early on the second morning they came with anxious minds to see whether any new prodigy had happened, they found their god not only prostrate, as before, but mutilated, and his head and both the palms of his hands were cut offnot broken off by the fall of the image from its place, but severed with deliberate care, and placed contemptuously upon the threshold, i.e. upon the door sill, the place where all must tread. Only Dagon was left to him. We cannot in English render the full contemptuousness of this phrase, because Dagon is to us a mere proper name, with no significance. In the original it conveys the idea that the head, the emblem of reason, and the human hands, the emblems of intellectual activity, were no real parts of Dagon, but falsely assumed by him; and, deprived of them, he lay there in his true ugliness, a mere misshapen fish; for dag, as we have seen, means a fish, and Dagon is here a diminutive of contempt. In spite of his discomfiture the Philistines were tree to their allegiance to their god, because, believing as they did in “gods many,” he was still their own national deity, even though he had been proved inferior to the God of Israel, and would probably be rendered more particular and exacting as regards the homage due to him from his own subjects by so humiliating a defeat. For the gods of the heathen were jealous, fickle, and very ill tempered if any slight was put upon them. After all, perhaps they thought, he had done his best, and though worsted in the personal conflict, he had managed so cleverly that they had gained in fair fight a great victory.
1Sa 5:5
Henceforward, therefore, his priests and other worshippers carefully abstained from treading on the door sill, where his nobler members had lain, unto this day. Apparently the Books of Samuel were written some time after the events recorded in them took place, and we have remarkable evidence of the permanence of the custom in Zep 1:9, where the Philistines are described as “those that leap on,” or more correctly over, “the threshold.” The custom, so curious in itself and so long continued, bears strong testimony to the historical truth of the narrative.
1Sa 5:6
But the hand of Jehovah was heavy upon them of Ashdod. I.e. his power and might were exercised in smiting them with severe plagues. A question here arises whether, as the Septuagint affirms, besides the scourge of emerods, their land was desolated by swarms of field mice. It is certain that they sent as votive offerings golden images of “the mice that mar the land” (1Sa 6:5); but the translators of the Septuagint too often attempt to make all things easy by unauthorised additions, suggested by the context; and so probably here it was the wish to explain why mice were sent which made them add, “and mice were produced in the land.” Really the mouse was a symbol of pestilence (Herod; 2:141), and appears as such in hieroglyphics; and by sending golden mice with golden emerods the lords of the Philistines expressed very clearly that the emerods had been epidemic. This word, more correctly spelt haemorrhoids, has this in its favour, that the noun used here, ophalim, is never read in the synagogue. Wherever the word occurs the reader was instructed to say tehorim, the vowels of which are actually attached to the consonants of ophalim in the text of our Hebrew Bibles. In Deu 28:9.7 tehorim is mentioned as one of the loathsome skin diseases of Egypt, and though rendered “emerods” in the A.V; is possibly, as translated by Aquila, “an eating ulcer.” Ophalim need only mean turnouts, swellings, its original signification being “a hill” (2Ch 27:3); yet as the word was not thought fit for public reading in the synagogue, we may feel sure that it means some such tumours as the A.V. describes.
1Sa 5:7
His hand is sore upon us. The epidemic was evidently very painful, and, as appears from 1Sa 5:11, fatal in numerous instances. Connecting this outbreak with the prostrate condition and subsequent mutilation of their god, the people of Ashdod recognised in their affliction the hand, i.e. the power, of Jehovah, and determined to send away the ark, the symbol of his ill omened presence among them.
1Sa 5:8
The lords of the Philistines. Philistia was governed by a council of five princes, but whether they were elective or hereditary in the several towns is by no means clear. They are called “seranim,” from seren, “a hinge,” just as the cardinals of the Church of Rome take their name from the Latin word cardo, which has the same meaning. There is no ground for connecting the word with sar, “a prince.” When Ewald did so he probably forgot that the two words begin with different lettersseren with samech, and sar with shin. Seranim is the word constantly used of the lords of the Philistines (Jos 13:3; Jdg 3:3; Jdg 16:5, Jdg 16:8, etc.; 1Ch 12:9), though after being correctly so styled in 1Sa 29:2, they are popularly called in 1Sa 29:3, 1Sa 29:4, 1Sa 29:9, sarim, “princes.” Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried about unto Gath. Unwilling to part with so signal a proof of their victory, the lords of the Philistines determine to remove the ark to another locality, but thereby only made the miraculous nature of what was taking place more evident to all. Of Gath but little is known; but Jerome describes it as still a large village in his days, and as situated near the border of Judaea, on the road from Eleutheropolis to Gaza.
1Sa 5:9
And they had emerods in their secret parts. The verb used here, sathar, is found in Hebrew only in this place, but is of common occurrence in Syriac and Arabic. Its ordinary meaning in both these languages is to “cover,” “conceal,” and the A.V; taking it in this sense, supposes that the boils were hidden, and translates as above. But the root has a double meaning, and signifies also “to destroy,” though in this sense the Arabic has a slight difference in spelling, namely, shatara instead of satara. The old versions were evidently at a loss in understanding the meaning, though their renderings are suggestive, except the Syriac, which translates quite literally, but leaves thereby the difficulty untouched of the twofold meaning of the word, and the Syro-Arabic lexicons are uncertain which to choose. Some give, “and the emerods hid themselves in them,” in the sense of gnawing and burrowing into the flesh, i.e. they became cancerous. Others take the alternative sense, and render, “and the emerods were burst upon them,” i.e. became fissured and rent, and turned into open sores. Another translation has been proposed, namely, “the tumours or emerods brake out upon them;” but as the verb, both in the Hebrew and the Syriac, is passive, this rendering can scarcely be defended. Upon the whole, the most probable sense is that the tumours buried themselves deep in the flesh, and becoming thus incurable, ended in causing the death of the sufferers.
1Sa 5:10, 1Sa 5:11
The Ekronites cried out. Convinced by this second and more fatal plague that the ark was the cause of their punishment, the people of Ekron, when it was passed on to them from Gath, protested loudly against its presence. Compelled to receive it until the lords of the Philistines could be convened in council to decide upon its ultimate destination, the plague broke out so heavily among them that they were in utter dismay. For the rendering deadly destruction is untenable. Literally the words are, “a dismay of death;” but in Hebrew death added to a word of this sort simply means “very great.” So “terrors of death” in Psa 55:4 are very great terrors. In the next verse we learn that many did die, but the words used here describe the mental agony and despair of the people as they saw the ark, which had wrought elsewhere so great misery, brought unto them.
1Sa 5:12
The cry of the city went up to heaven. Not the word used in 1Sa 5:10, where it is an outcry of indignation, but a cry for help, a cry of sorrow and distress. Though in 1Sa 5:10 Ekronites is in the plural, yet in all that follows the singular is used. “They have brought about the ark to me, to slay me and my people That it slay me not and my people.” It is the prince of Ekron who, as the representative of the people, expostulates with his fellow rulers for the wrong they are doing him. But finally all join in his lamentation, and the whole city, smitten by God’s band sends up its prayer to heaven for mercy.
HOMILETICS
1Sa 5:1-5
Foreshadowings.
The facts given are
1. The Philistines, acting on polytheistic principles, place the ark in their heathen temple, thus ascribing to it Divine honour, and yet indicating its inferiority to Dagon.
2. During the night their god Dagon falls to the ground.
3. Supposing the fall to be the result of some unaccountable accident, they replace their god, and on the next day find him even broken to pieces.
4. The event is memorialised by the establishment of a superstitious custom. The supernatural and ordinary events connected with Israel’s history have a prophetic significance for future ages. The record is “for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world have come.” There is another bondage than that of Egypt, another conflict than that of Dagon and the ark. Here are two powers in collision, and we have given us
I. A FORESHADOWING OF THE FALL OF HEATHENISM.
1. The fact is established that heathenism is doomed to perish. The occurrence in the house of Dagon is a single instance, in palpable form, of what has taken place in many lands, and will recur till every idol is abolished. No prediction in Scripture is more clear than that the day will come when paganism will cease to exist (Psa 2:8; Isa 2:18; Isa 11:9). Events daily point on to it. Dagons fall in many lands. History is really but the completion of processes set in operation by God in ages past. Destruction is inherent in the essential falsehood of heathenism. The truth of God cannot be converted into a permanent lie (Rom 1:25). It is a mercy that God has so ordained things that only true worship can endure.
2. Heathenism is doomed to perish by contact with God’s truth. Dagon might stand erect and receive the homage of men when he and they are left to themselves; but in presence of the ark, the visible manifestation of God’s will to the world, he must fall on his face to the earth. Doubtless corruption in men, if left long enough on earth, would cause them to become extinct, because in the nature of things it tends to utter ruin of morals, society, health, and life. It is, however, the purpose of God to extinguish it without extinguishing the race of men, and that too by his revealed truth. Events prove that this has been the process. Britain ceased to be idolatrous when the light of life came to her shores. Hence the missionary enterprise; hence the need of “holding forth the word of life.”
3. The downfall of heathenism is brought about by the secret, silent power of God exercised through his truth. There is suggestiveness in the hint that the fall of Dagon occurred during the silence of night. The fall was through the unseen power of God, operating by ways men could not trace, and that revealed its existence in its effects. The conquests of the gospel are instrumental. It is not history, though pure and impressive; nor precept clear and useful; nor sublime thought for the intellect; nor mere influence of character, though holy and elevating; but the quickening Spirit, who, in the depths of human nature working by means of the instrument, turns men to God. There is a profound secrecy and mystery in every soul’s regeneration.
4. The final down fall of heathenism by means of the truth is brought about after repeated efforts to revive it. They placed Dagon on his seat again, and rejoiced once more in his sufficiency; but the Unseen Power wrought on with greater energy, till the head and hands, the seat and instruments of power, were cut off. Beautifully does Scripture thus indicate the ebbs and flows of the stream of truth in process of subjugating every principality and power to Christ. A thousand years with God are as one day. He gives free scope to men and principles. Yet the truth will prevail until the earth is “filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the deep.”
II. The FRUSTRATION OF ALL EFFORTS TO DISHONOUR GOD‘S REVELATION OF HIMSELF. The placing of the ark in the presence of Dagon was intended to indicate a belief in it as a power among men, but as a power inferior to that exercised by the Philistines’ god. Jehovah was a deity, but yet a conquered deity. Hence the glory due to Dagon. Now the ark represented at that time the specific revelation which God had given for bringing to pass his purpose in the deliverance of the world from the curse of sin. The practical effect, therefore, of the Philistines’ conduct was to rob revelation of its supremacy. The tendencies of human nature are constant; and now that the full revelation has been given in Christianity, there is the same effort to dishonour and discredit it before men by placing it in unwarrantable positions.
1. The insult offered to Christianity. There are two forms of insult.
(1) That offered by persons who simply recognise Christianity as one among the many and equally authorised powers for promoting the good of mankind. Human society is regarded as a whole, needing, for its intellectual, moral, and material development, a wise use of various educational appliances which God has provided. Religions, philosophies, statecraft, productions of men of genius, are all of God, and equally demand the respect and deference of men. An inspiration from the Almighty runs through them all, since they are his agents. Hence Christianity is just one of the religions of the world, doing its part in common with them. As a philosophy it may have a place among other systems. As useful in the management of peoples, statesmen may lay hold of it in support of other agencies; Christ may adorn the Pantheon in company with other neroes in thought and action.
(2) That offered by persons who regard Christianity as a power inferior to other agencies for influencing human destiny. There are few who would esteem it inferior as a religion, when compared with prevailing forms in non-Christian lands; but by some it is held to be inferior as compared with a pure theism and the higher philosophies. Its supernaturalism is branded as the crude product of unphilosophical minds. Its cardinal doctrine of atonement is declared to be at variance with first principles in morality. Unless divested of its outward garb, it is supposed to be unsuited to the higher order of intellect. Its power as a supreme authority is said to be on the wane, and pride is felt in placing its pretensions side by side with those of the modern Dagon.
2. The rebuke of those who offer the insult. Without dwelling on the sure disappointment and sorrow which come on those who dishonour Christianity by regarding it as merely one of the various powers equally deserving of respect, it may suffice to point out how
(1) Facts show that all systems in rivalry with Christianity lose their vaunted pre-eminence; and this too, on the one hand, by the loss of their influence, and on the other by the permanent and growing power of Christianity. The wisdom of the Greek ceased to be a ruling force, while the truth of Christ won for him the Roman empire. The cold theism of the eighteenth century sank into obscurity as the great evangelical impulse of the Church of God developed its force. The men who pride themselves in antagonism to Christ have never done anything to regenerate the savage, to make the dying-bed peaceful.
(2) It is in the nature of the case that such a result should always ensue. No other religion is so fully attested as Divine. Every other system partakes of the imperfection of its authors; fails in motive power; is more of a criticism on man and his position in the world than a solvent of the deep spiritual cravings of the soul; and is liable to pass out of influence under the analysis of succeeding minds. The policy that would suggest to a statesman the use of Christianity as a tool for government thereby proves its moral instability. The unseen power of the “jealous God” will work in silence, and cause the “Name that is above every name” to have “in all things the preeminence.” A refuge of lies means trouble and anguish.
General lessons:
1. History confirms faith in the sufficiency of the gospel for the conquest of heathenism.
2. In all use of means the power of the Holy Spirit should be recognised.
3. We must seek proof of the pre-eminence of Christianity in deeds such as no rivals can produce.
4. We may yet expect many boastful claims from human systems before men learn fully the lessons of history.
1Sa 5:6-12
Coercive providences.
The facts given are
1. God visits the men of Ashdod with severe affliction.
2. In their perplexity they remove the ark to another locality.
3. The device proving a failure, and the men of Ekron refusing to receive the unwelcome symbol, a council of authorities decides to return it to Israel. Providence had so ordered events for high moral ends as to bring the ark into captivity. The influences were at work in Israel to issue in the result desired. Hence there arose a need for a turn in the course of Providence.
I. The NEED FOR COERCIVE PROVIDENCES ARISES CHIEFLY FROM TWO CAUSES.
1. Imperfect acquaintance with the Divine will. These men had some knowledge of the Divine power in the ark, but could not learn the precise will of the strange god. One of the first things, therefore, is to prompt to an inquiry as to what is desired. But man, especially when grossly ignorant, is indisposed to search for light, and cannot bear very clear light. If men will not act because they do not know, they must be aroused to learn, or to do without knowing; for God’s great ways must not be barred and blocked by man.
2. Unwillingness to be convinced of the Divine will. The fall of Dagon on the first night aroused the thought of a superior power, and the danger of keeping it from its natural place. This first gleam of light was extinguished by a new trial of Dagon’s power to stand. A second failure brought more light, but the expedient of change of abode was adopted to evade the new and clearer suggestion. Men often do not like to know the path of duty. There is much ingenuity spent in evading the force of Divine teaching. If they will not follow increasing light when their doing so is necessary to the realisation of a Divine purpose, pressure must be brought to bear. Pharaoh, Balaam, and Jonah are instances of this.
II. The KIND OF COERCION EMPLOYED WILL DEPEND ON THE MENTAL AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. Men are influenced strongly by events which touch their interests, and which come in such shape as to be adapted to their ordinary modes of thought and views of things. The people of Ashdod were highly susceptible to religious impressions, and their religious associations were entirely with the honour of their god. Philosophical arguments and high-toned reasons suited to pure Hebraism or Christianity would not have touched them. Moreover, by education and inheritance they were governed by the habit of associating bodily sufferings, when great, with a positive Divine purpose. Now, God governs men according to their capabilities, and reveals his will in ways conformable to their ruling ideas. Whether by miracle or natural coincidences, there is always adaptation to the minds to be influenced. This principle solves many events in Old Testament history, and shows the perfect reasonableness and even propriety of the pressure brought to bear on the benighted Philistines. God fits every rod to the back of the fools he smites, and speaks to every ear in accents suited to its delicacy or obtuseness.
III. The COERCION IS PROGRESSIVE IN INTENSITY. The select body of priests of Dagon first feel the hand of God, then the people as individuals, and then the entire community as such. Also, there was first a rude blow to the religious prejudices of the priestly body, and through them of the people; then an assault on the physical condition of multitudes; and finally a disastrous blow on the prosperity of the state. Men will answer religious arguments by religious arguments, and evade truth if possible; but touch their bodies and their fields, and some earnest inquiry as to the cause and intent will be evoked. Especially does material disaster induce effort to learn the truth when authorities are compelled to deliberate on possible remedies. In national providences the pressure at last reaches the rulers.
General lessons:
1. God uses pressure on each of us when our inclination runs against our true interest and his glory. Lot was led urgently out of Sodom.
2. The pressure used never crushes the will, but develops thought, and opens out lines of conduct for adoption.
3. It is important to study the meaning of events in our lives which are inevitable and disagreeable.
4. The coercive action of Providence will become less or more according as we turn from sin or harden our hearts. “The way of transgressors is hard.”
HOMILIES BY B. DALE
Ch. 5; 6:1-9. (ASHDOD, GATH, EKRON.)
The ark among the heathen.
“And the ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months” (1Sa 6:1). The scene is now changed. Whilst there arises in every household in Israel a cry of mourning for the dead, Shiloh is ravaged and burnt with fire, and the yoke of oppression made heavier than before, the hosts of the Philistines return to their own country elated with victory. They carry with them the ark of the Lord, which had never before been touched by unconsecrated hands, or for ages exposed to the gaze of any but the priests; and the interest centres on the sacred symbol amidst its new and strange surroundings. It is first of all taken to Ashdod, three miles from the sea coast, the chief seat of the worship of Dagon, the national god of the Philistines (1Ch 10:10); afterwards to Gath, ten miles distant (the native place of Goliath, and twice the temporary residence of David); and then to Ekron (1Sa 7:14), the most northerly of their cities. Although the other two cities of the Philistine Pentapolis, Gaza, the scene of Samson’s death (Jdg 16:21-30), and Askelon (1Sa 31:10; 2Sa 1:20), were deeply concerned in the events which attended its presence (1Sa 5:8; 1Sa 6:17), it does not appear to have visited them.
1. The time of its abode among the Philistines was for them a time of judgment. Although the ark when among the people of Israel seemed to be abandoned by God and destitute of power, it was now defended by him and clothed with might. The difference arose from the different circumstances in which it was placed; and in both cases it was shown that the possession of institutions appointed by God does not profit those who refuse to stand in a right relation to God himself, but rather serves to increase their condemnation. Judgment also is executed in many ways.
2. Judgment was mingled with mercy. The afflictions which they endured were “less than their iniquity deserved” (Job 11:6), and were “established for the correction” (Hab 1:12) of their sins and the prevention of their ruin (Eze 18:30). The God of Israel has supreme dominion over the heathen, “chastises” them (Psa 94:10) for their good, and never leaves himself “without witness” (Act 14:17).
3. The design of the whole was the furtherance of the purpose for which Israel was called, viz. to bear witness to the living and true God, and to preserve his religion separate and distinct from the idolatry and superstition of the heathen.
4. The effect of the display of his power in connection with the presence of the ark among them appears here and in their subsequent history. Consider these Philistines as
I. TRIUMPHING IN THE CAPTURE OF THE ARK (verses 1, 2). “They brought it into the house (or temple) of Dagon, and set it by Dagon,” as a trophy or a votive offering, ascribing their victory to him, and magnifying him as superior to Jehovah. The process described by the Apostle Paul (Rom 1:18-23) had taken place in them. Their worship was a nature worship, joined with the embodiment of their “foolish” imaginations in an image with which their god was identified. Dagon was “the god of natural powerof all the life-giving forces of which water is the instrument; and his fish-like body, with head and arms of man, would appear a striking embodiment of his rule to those who dwelt near the sea.” When men have fallen away from the knowledge of the true God they
1. Do honour to a false god; impelled by the religiousness of their nature, which will not let them rest without an object of worship.
2. Dishonour the true God, by declaring him inferior and subject to the false, and by “despising his holy things.” The Philistines did not deny the existence of Jehovah; they were willing to account him one among “lords many and gods many,” and regarded him as having a local and limited dominion. But the fundamental idea of the religion of Israel was that Jehovah is God alone, and demands the supreme and entire affection of man (Isa 42:8). “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” i.e. in my presence.
3. Give glory to themselves; are proud and boastful of .their wisdom, power, and success. Self is really the idol of all who forsake the Lord. But the triumph of the ungodly is short.
II. SMITTEN BEFORE THE PRESENCE OF THE ARK (verses 2-4). Almost as soon as they obtained possession of it, the victory which they thought they had obtained over him whose presence it represented was turned into disastrous defeat.
1. Their god was cast down and broken in pieces.
(1) Mysteriously. In the night.
(2) Significantly. “Fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord,” as if in subjection, or rendering worship to the Lord of all.
(3) Irresistibly. Unwilling to lay the lesson to heart, they set him in his place again, but only to prove that their efforts on his behalf were abortive (Isa 45:9).
(4) More and more signally. Their very efforts affording occasion for a greater manifestation of Divine power, and one which could not be, as the first may possibly have been, attributed to accident. “The face, as a sign of its worthless glory and vain beauty, struck down to the earth; the head also, as the seat of the wisdom which is alienated from God and opposed to God; the hands, as a symbol of the powers of darkness which work therein, cut off” (Lange).
(5) Contemptuously. “Upon the threshold,” as if fit only to be trodden under foot, Such, however was the blindness of his votaries, that they henceforth accounted the spot as peculiarly sacred (verse 3).
(6) Completely. “Only the fish stump was left.” “Thus the kingdom of Satan will certainly fall before the kingdom of Christ, error before truth, profaneness before godliness, corruption before grace in the hearts of the faithful.”
2. Their sustenance was wasted and destroyed (verse 6; 6:4, 5). “Mice were produced in the land, and there arose a great and deadly confusion in the city”. The cornfields, the chief means of their subsistence and the source of their prosperity, rendered fertile, as they deemed, by the power and favour of Dagon, were wasted by a plague of field mice (not unknown in the history of other lands) under the special arrangement of Divine providence, that they might learn the vanity of their idol and the supremacy of Jehovah.
3. Their persons were afflicted with disease. “The hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod” and “the coasts (territory) thereof,” and “smote them with emerods” (verses 9, 12; either boils or hemorrhoids, bleeding pilesPsa 78:66).
(1) Painful.
(2) Reproachful, because of the moral corruption sanctioned in connection with idolatrous worship (Rom 1:24-32).
(3) Instructiveconcerning the self-control and moral purity which the true God requires in men. These things were adapted to show the folly of idolatry, the majesty of God, and the necessity of humiliation before him. Nor were they wholly without effect.
III. INSPIRED WITH DREAD OF THE ARK (verse 7), for such was evidently the prevailing feeling of the men of Ashdod, and of others subsequently, as more fully expressed in verses 11, 12. They attributed their afflictions to its presence”His hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our god;” and feared a continuance of them. Hence they wished to get rid of it, as the Gergesenes desired Jesus to “depart out of their coasts” (Mat 8:34).
1. The religion of the heathen is a religion of fear.
2. The fear of man in the presence of the supernatural bears witness to the sinfulness of his nature, or of his disturbed relations with the Divine.
3. It springs from a conviction or instinct of retribution, which, however, is often mistaken in its applications.
4. A servile, selfish fear drives away the soul from God instead of drawing it near to him, and is contrary to the reverential, filial fear in which true religion has its root (2Ti 1:7).
IV. STRIVING FOR THE RETENTION OF THE ARK (verses 8-12). The effect of their sufferings on the people of Ashdod was to lead them to resolve, “The ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us;” but its removal was deemed a matter of such importance that they called a council of the lords (or princes) of the confederacy to determine what should be done with it. Whilst they may have felt toward Jehovah a like fear to that with which they regarded Dagon, they were unwilling to render honour to him by “letting it go again to its own place” (verse 11), still less to renounce their idolatry. They wished to retain the ark for their own honour and glory; and so indisposed were they to desist from their attempt, and acknowledge their fault, that even their own priests found it necessary to admonish them against “hardening their hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh” (verse 6; 1Sa 4:8). They sought to effect their purpose by sending it to Gath; and it was only when both Gath and Ekron were still more severely afflicted than Ashdod, many died, and the cry of distress “went up to heaven” (verse 12), that in a second council they consented to let it go.
1. The devices of men against the Lord are foolish and vain (Pro 21:30).
2. Their continued resistance to his will causes increased misery to themselves and others.
3. Their efforts against him afford opportunities for a wider and more signal display of his power.
4. What they are unwilling to do in the beginning they are, after much suffering, constrained to do in the end.
V. INQUIRING ABOUT THE RETURN OF THE ARK (1Sa 6:2-9). The Philistine princes, having resolved to send it back, called “the priests and soothsayers” together, to show them in what manner it should be done; and the answer they received, though not unmingled with the caution generally exhibited by heathen priests, was wise and good.
1. Men in all ages have had need of special guidance in Divine things. The very existence of a priesthood is a confession of such need.
2. Conviction often forces itself upon the most reluctant.
3. There is in men generally a deep feeling of the necessity of a propitiatory offering in order to avert Divine wrath”trespass offering” (verse 3).
4. Even the light which shines upon the heathen indicates the need of the higher light of revelation. Their wisest advisers exhibit uncertainty and doubt (verses 5, 9).
VI. RENDERING HOMAGE TO THE GOD OF ‘THE ARK.
1. By sending it back to its own place.
2. By the open acknowledgment of their transgression in the trespass offerings they present on behalf of the whole nation. “Give glory unto the God of Israel” (verse 5).
3. By providing the most appropriate and worthy means of making their offerings. “A new cart” (2Sa 6:3). “Two milch kine on which there hath come no yoke” (Num 19:2).
4. By the humble attendance of their chief men (verses 12, 16).
5. By confessing the incompatibility of the worship of Jehovah with the worship of Dagon. “And from this time we hear no more of the attempts of the Gentile nations to join any part of the Jewish worship with their own” (Warburton). Imperfect as their homage was, it was not unacceptable to him “who is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repents him of the evil” (Jon 4:2; Act 17:27, Act 17:30).
VII. PERSISTING IN THEIR ATTACHMENT TO IDOLS; We know not all the beneficial effect of the presence of the ark among them, in restraining them from evil and inciting them to good; but we know that
1. They did not renounce their idolatry.
2. They did not cease from their oppression of Israel. And,
3. Were not permanently deterred from making fresh attacks upon them (1Sa 7:7), and by their opposition to the God of Israel “bringing upon themselves swift destruction.”D.
1Sa 5:3. (ASHDOD.)
The overthrow of idolatry.
“Behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the Lord.” Idolatry still prevails over by far the larger portion of the earth. It is an ancient, persistent, and enormous evil. And we, like Israel of old, are called to be witnesses to the heathen of the living and true God; not, indeed, by keeping outwardly separate from them, nor for that purpose, and the preservation of the truth intrusted to us, by contending against them with the sword; but by going into all the world, and preaching the gospel to every creature. Our only weapons are those of truth, righteousness, and love.
“Nor do we need
Beside the gospel other sword or shield
To aid us in the warfare for the faith.”(Dante.)
When the ark was defended with carnal weapons, it was carried away by the heathen, and placed in the temple of Dagon; but he whom the sacred symbol represented smote the idol to the ground (1Sa 5:1-5). “Wherever he comes with the ark and the testimony, there he smites the idols to the ground. Idolatry must fall where the gospel finds a place.” Concerning idolatry, notice
I. THE NATURE OF THE EVIL.
1. False and unworthy conceptions of God. The instinct of worship was possessed by the Philistines; but their worship was rendered to a monstrous image, which was wholly destitute of, and opposed to, the perfections of the true God. It is the same with other idolatrous nations. Of the innumerable gods of India it has been said, “What a lie against his supreme majesty! Their number is a lie against his unity; their corporeal nature is a lie against his pure, invisible spirituality; their confined and local residence a lie against his omnipresence and immensity; their limited and subdivided departments of operation a lie against his universal proprietorship and dominion; their follies and weaknesses a lie against his infinite wisdom; their defects, vices, and crimes a lie against his unsullied purity and perfection.” “Having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12).
2. Great corruption of life and manners; gross sensuality, incessant strife, oppression, cruelty, etc. (Psa 74:20). “The land is defiled, and vomiteth out her inhabitants” (Le 1Sa 18:25).
3. A downward tendency towards still greater darkness, corruption, and misery. “The true evil of idolatry is this. There is one sole idea of God which corresponds adequately to his whole nature. Of this idea two things may be affirmed, the first being that it is the root of all absolute grandeur, of all truth, and all moral perfections; the second, that, natural and easy as it seems when once unfolded, it could only have been unfolded by revelation; and to all eternity he that started with a false conception of God could not through any effort of his own have exchanged it for the true one. All idolatries alike, though not all in equal degrees, by intercepting the idea of God through the prism of some representative creature that partially resembles God, refract, and splinter, and distort that idea. And all experience shows that the tendency of man, left to his own imaginations, is downwards. Many things cheek and disturb this tendency for a time; but finally, and under that intense civilisation to which man intellectually is always hurrying, under the eternal evolution of physical knowledge, such a degradation of God’s idea, ruinous to the moral capacities of man, would undoubtedly perfect itself, were it not for the kindling of a purer standard by revelation. Idolatry, therefore, is not an evil, and one utterly beyond the power of social institutions to redress; but, in fact, it is the fountain of all other evil that seriously menaces the destiny of the human race”.
II. THE MEANS OF ITS OVERTHROW.
1. The proclamation of Divine truth, of which the ark may be accounted a symbol; the revelation of the righteous and merciful purposes of God toward men in his Son Jesus Christ.
2. The operations of Divine providence, by which heathen lands are rendered accessible, and their inhabitants disposed to pay attention to the truth; not only those which are afflictive, but also those which are benign (1Sa 5:6).
3. The influences of the Divine Spirit, by which false systems are shaken as by a “mighty rushing wind,” and consumed as with fire, and lost souls are enlightened, purified, and saved. “By my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zec 4:6). He works in silence and secrecy; but the effects of his working become manifest to all. The light of the morning reveals them.
III. THE CERTAINTY OF ITS DOOM; from
1. The adaptation of the means.
2. The work which has been already accomplished, and which is an earnest of and preparation for “greater things than these.”
3. The predictions of the word (Num 14:21; Isa 2:18; Jer 10:11; Mal 2:11).
Conclusion:
1. Pity the heathen “in the compassion of Jesus Christ.”
2. “Go ye.” “Give ye.” “Pray ye.”
3. Do all in faith and hope.D.
HOMILIES BY D. FRASER
1Sa 5:3
Infatuation.
I. OF THE HEATHEN. Samson, calling on the name of Jehovah God, pulled down the temple of Dagon at Gaza, and showed the weakness of the idol. When the Philistines got possession of the ark of Jehovah, they placed it in another temple of Dagon at Ashdod, in order to re-establish the credit of their god. Great must have been their chagrin when they found the god of the victors prostrate before a sacred symbol connected with the God of the vanquished. But it was no easy thing to break their confidence in their own god. They set the idol up again, trying to persuade themselves, perhaps, that the fall had been accidental. The restoration of Dagon, however, only prepared for him and his worshippers a greater discomfiture. As the Philistines would learn nothing from the humiliation of their god, they had to behold with horror his mutilation and destruction. A plague fell at the same time on the people of Ashdod, like the plague of boils that smote the Egyptians in the days of Moses. They were filled with dismay, yet they would not restore to its place in Shiloh that ark which, as they owned, had brought such distress upon them (1Sa 5:7). They carried it from city to city, though in each place the Lord punished them. For some months they continued in this infatuated course. The lesson of the weakness of their own gods they learned very slowly, very reluctantly; indeed, they never turned from their idols. Dreading the judgments of Jehovah, they at last sent back the ark to the land of Israel; but their minds and hearts were not changed. All that they cared for was to be free of this terrible ark, that they might cleave undisturbed to their own gods and their own heathen usages.
II. OF UNGODLY MEN IN ALL NATIONS. An evil habit is reproved, an error refuted, or a vain hope in religion exposed; yet men will not abandon it. They have some excuse for it, and after it has been thrown down they “set it up again in its place.” The lesson is repeated with emphasis more than once, and yet it is not learned. Ungodly and self-willed men fall on one excuse after another, rather than give up errors which suit their minds and evils to which they are addicted. They have no objection to keep religion as a talisman; but rather than be called to account concerning it, or compelled to choose between it and their own devices, they will send it away. They prefer even a weak Dagon, who lets them sin, to the holy God, who requires his people to be holy too. The Philistines continued to be heathens, notwithstanding the reproof and humiliation inflicted upon them, just as the Egyptians remained in heathen blindness after all the proofs given to them of the power of Jehovah over their gods and their Pharaoh. Alas! many persons in Christendom have solemn reproofs from God and exposures of their helplessness when he rises up to judgment, yet never turn to him. In their infatuation they first treat the ark with disrespect, then send it away. They dismiss God from their thoughts, and are as mad as ever on their idols.
[“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 yet the Philistines had no particular knowledge of the religion of the Israelites, and only a garbled and distorted account of their history. This religious isolation was, no doubt, a part of the Divine plan for the development of the theocratic kingdom; but if we look for the natural causes, we shall find one in the narrowness of ancient civilisation, when the absence of means of social and literary communication fostered mutual ignorance, and made sympathy almost impossible; and another in the national local nature of the religion of Israel, with its central sanctuary, and its whole system grounded in the past history of the nation, thus presenting great obstacles to a foreigner who wished to become a worshipper of Jehovah.”Dr. Broadus].F.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
1Sa 5:1. Unto Ashdod See Jos 11:22.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
III. The Ark and the Philistines. 1Sa 5:1 to 1Sa 7:1
1. The Chastisement of the Philistines for the Removal of the Ark
1Sa 5:1-12
1And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto 2Ashdod. When [And] the Philistines took the ark of God,1they [and] brought 3it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. And when [om. when] they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow,2 [ins. and] behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the Lord [Jehovah]. And they took Dagon, and 4set him in his place again. And when [om. when] they arose early on the morrow morning,1 [ins. and] behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground [earth] before the ark of the Lord [Jehovah], and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of [om. the stump of3] 5Dagon was left to him. Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagons house, tread on the threshold of Dagon unto this day.
6But [And4] the hand of the Lord [Jehovah] was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods [boils5], even [om. even] Ashdod 7 and the coasts6 thereof. And when [om. when] the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, [ins. and] they said, The ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us, for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our god. [ins. And] they sent therefore 8[om. therefore] and gathered all the lords of the Philistines unto them, and said, What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel? And they answered [said], Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried about [removed] unto Gath. And they carried [removed] the ark of the God of Israel about thither [om. about 9thither]. And it was so [And it came to pass] that, after they had carried it about [removed it], the hand of the Lord [Jehovah] was against the city with a very great destruction [; there was a very great consternation7]; and he smote the men [people] of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts [and boils broke out8 on them]. Therefore [And] they sent the ark of God to Ekron. 10And it came to pass, as the ark of God came to Ekron, that the Ekronites cried out, saying, They have brought about [om. about] the ark of the God of Israel to 11us [me9], to slay us [me] and our [my] people. So [And] they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go again [return] to his [its] own [om. own] place, that it slay us [me] not, and our [my] people; for there was a deadly destruction [consternation] 12throughout [in] all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there. And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods [boils]; and the cry of the city went up to heaven.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Sa 5:1-5. Jehovahs demonstration of power against the Philistine heathenism.
1Sa 5:1 sqq. From Ebenezer to Ashdod.On the anticipatory use of the name Ebenezer, with reference to 1Sa 7:12, see 1Sa 4:1. Ashdod, , one of the capital cities of the five Philistine princes (Jos 8:3), named in 1Sa 6:17 as that seat of Dagon-worship, which comes first to be considered in the course of this narrativeaccording to Jos. Ant. V. 1, 22 a border-city of Dan; according to Jos 15:46-47, assigned to the Tribe of Judah (Judah was to receive from Ekron on and westward all that lay near Ashdod, and their [Ashdods and Ekrons] villages), but never really held by the Israelites, though the Philistines were at times subject to the Israelites (Jos 13:3)a mile from the sea, now the little village Esdud, on an elevation on the road from Jamnia to Gaza, nine miles south of Jamnia, and about thirty-two miles north of Gaza.
1Sa 5:2. The house of Dagon is the temple of one of the chief Philistine deities, for which there were places of worship not only in Ashdod, but also, according to Jerome on Isa 46:1, in the other Philistine cities; but, according to Jdg 16:23 sqq., there was certainly a central sanctuary in Gaza, where, after the capture of Samson, the princes and the people assembled to hold a sacrifice and feast in honor of Dagon as the supposed bestower of their victory over Samson. Along with the male deity, a corresponding female deity was, according to Diodorus, worshipped, called by the Syrians Derceto (=Atargatis). As this idol-image had the face of a woman, and terminated below the waist in the tail of a fish, so the statue of Dagon, which in 1Sa 5:3-4, is expressly represented as male, had a human head and hands, and a fish-body; he is thus characterized as a marine deity, the symbol of the fruitfulness which is represented in the element of water by the fish, like the Babylonian . Comp. Movers, Religion der Phniz. I. 143 sq., 590 sq.; Stark, Gaza und die philistische Kste, Jena, 1852, p. 274 sq. The name is to be derived, not from , grain (Philo Bybl. in Eus. Prp., pp. 26, 32, Bochart, Hieroz. I. 381, Movers in Evang. 1, 10, Sanchon., fragm. ed. Orelli, Ersch, Phniz., p. 405 b) with Bunsen, Ewald and Diestel (Jahrb. fr deutsche Theol., 1860, p. 726), according to which Dagon was the god of land-fruitfulness, of agriculture, but from dag , fish (Winer, s. v.). Compare Kimchis reference to an old tradition: It is said, that Dagon had the form of a fish from the navel down, and was therefore called Dagon, and the form of a man from the navel up. Comp. J. G. Mller in Herzog, R.-E. III. 255 sq. Thenius and Keil recognize this personage in a figure found by Layard at Khorsabad, the upper part of whose body represents a bearded man, adorned with a royal crown, the lower part of the body from the navel on running into the form of a fish bent backwards; that this is a marine deity is beyond doubt, since he is swimming in the sea and surrounded by all sorts of sea-beasts (Layard, Nineve und seine Ueberreste, Germ. ed. of Meissner, p. 424 sq. [Nineveh and its remains]).
Keil rightly remarks: As this relief, according to Layard, represents a battle between the inhabitants of the Syrian coast and an Assyrian king, probably Sargon, who had a hard struggle with the Philistine cities, especially Ashdod, it is scarcely doubtful that we here have a representation of the Philistine Dagon (Comm. in loco).10The Philistines ascribed their victory over the Israelites to Dagon; therefore they brought the ark as votive offering to his temple, where, by its position near his statue, it was to set forth for the Philistines the subjection of the God of Israel to the power of their god (1Sa 5:7).But the overthrow of the image, and its recumbent position on its face before the ark (Theodoret: they saw their God showing the form of worship, ), was to be a sign to them that the God of Israel was not the conquered, but that before Him, who had temporarily delivered Israel into the hands of their enemies, every other power must sink into the dust. They set up the statue again under the impression that the cause of the overthrow was an accidental one. But in the following night not only is the prostration of the image at the feet of the ark repeatedit is besides mutilated; the head and the hands are cut off (not broken off). They did not lie towards the threshold; it is true, this is the proper meaning of , but it also signifies rest, instead of movement, and is =on, at; comp. 1Sa 18:3; Deu 16:6; 1Ki 8:30. From 1Sa 5:5 it is clear that the parts cut off lay on the threshold, and this was not only destruction, but contempt, since what lies on the threshold is exposed to be trodden on, the extremest act of contempt. To him, that is, to the whole represented in the image, was left only the fish-stump, since what was human in him, head and hands, was cut off. Kimchi: Only the form of a fish was left in him. The threshold is without doubt the door-sill of the chamber in which the image stood. Nothing is said directly of a divine miracle. But the matter is so represented by the narrator that we must recognize a special arrangement of the God of Israel for the exhibition of the powerlessness and nothingness of the god of the Philistines.
1Sa 5:5 gives an account of a ceremonial custom derived from this occurrence: the threshold of Dagon was not trodden on by his priests, etc. The threshold of Dagon, that is, of the place where his statue was set up, is distinguished from the house of Dagon, into which they went. This threshold was considered as made especially holy to Dagon by that occurrence, because his head and hands had lain on it. Sept.: , they carefully step over it. Comp. Zep 1:9. According to this passage and 1Sa 6:2, there was a special body of priests for the worship of Dagon. The word kohen () is used in the Old Testament also of heathen priests, Gen 41:45. The formula to this day usually indicates a long time (comp. 1Sa 6:18; 1Sa 30:25; 1Sa 27:6; 2Sa 4:3; 2Sa 6:8; 2Sa 18:18), and establishes the remoteness of the narrator from the time of the occurrences described.
1Sa 5:6-12. Gods chastising manifestation of power against the Philistine people by plagues and sickness. 1Sa 5:6. The hand of the Lord is here figuratively put for Gods might and power, as it made itself felt by the Philistines in the infliction of grievous severe sufferings as chastisement for the violation of His honor. The sufferings are viewed partly as an oppressive burden, in which Gods hand is felt to be heavy (comp. 1Sa 5:11; 1Sa 6:5; Psa 32:4; Psa 38:2; Job 23:2), partly as a grievous blow, in which it is felt to be hard (1Sa 5:7, comp. Job 9:34).In two ways the hand of the Lord was heavy on the inhabitants of Ashdod: 1) it wasted, destroyed them, and 2) it smote them with boils. The one calamity fell on their land (De Wette: wasted their land); the other was a bodily disease which extended over Ashdod and all its district. The Sept. adds to 1Sa 5:6 : and mice were produced in the land, and there arose a great and deadly confusion in the city; but this does not furnish, as Thenius maintains, the original, though somewhat corrupt, text, which contained this statement; rather, as a second translation of this 1Sa 5:6 has been wrongly inserted at the end of 1Sa 5:3 by a copyist of the Greek, so the second part of this addition is taken word for word from 1Sa 5:11, and the first had its origin in an explanation (in itself appropriate enough) of 1Sa 6:4 sq. For from 1Sa 6:4-5; 1Sa 6:11; 1Sa 6:18, where, besides the expiatory or 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. Taking into view the passages in 1 Samuel 6 the words: he destroyed them (like destruction [desolation] in Mic 6:13, used of persons) denote 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, 1Sa 6:5. There is no gap in the Heb. text; but the expression he destroyed them is a brief description of the universal land-plague, the nature and cause of which appears from the after mention of the votive and expiatory present brought by the Philistines. The most prominent characteristic of the field-mouse, especially in southern countries, is its voracity and rapid increase. At times these animals multiply with frightful rapidity and suddenness, ravage the fields far and near, produce famine and pestilential diseases among the inhabitants of the land, and have not seldom forced whole nations to emigrate (see examples, cited from Strabo, Diodorus, Aelian, Agatharchides, and others, in Bo-chart, Hieroz. III., cap. 34). Sommer, Bibl. Abhandl., p. 263. The ravaging of the land by field-mice probably stood in causal connection with the second plague, the boil-sickness.And he smote them with ophalim (), which, from the connection, must have been a bodily disease. The points of the word belong to the Qeri tehorim (), which was substituted for the Kethib (and in 1Sa 6:4-5, has even gotten into the text), because the word, which properly signifies swelling, elevation, hill, was supposed to designate the anus, and in its place tehorim, posteriora, as a more decent expression, was read. It was thence rendered: He smote them on the anus; and this view seemed to be supported by Psa 78:66, where, in reference to Gods judgment on the Philistines after the removal of the ark, it is said: And he smote his enemies ahor (), which was taken in the above sense particularly from the following word reproach; for ex. Vulg.: and he smote his enemies in posteriora; Luther: in the hinder parts [so Eng. A. V.]. But this rendering of the Psalm-passage is incorrect; the proper translation is: And he smote his enemies back, and put everlasting reproach on them (Geiger, Hengstenberg, Hupfeld). The above rendering has occasioned on the part of the expositors the suggestion of various affections of the hinder part of the body; some think of diarrha (Ewald), others of tumors, marisc, chancres (Keil), others of hemorrhoids [the emerods of Eng. A. V.], and the like. But, apart from the fact that no definite local disease of the sort is indicated, the verb ( with ), as Thenius conclusively shows, never means to strike on something (for ex., on a part of the body), but means in this connection to strike with something (with a disease or plague). According to the radical meaning of the word ophalim, we must render: he smote them with a skin-disease, which consisted in painful boils or large swellings, and was perhaps caused by the plague of field-mice, which Oken (cited by Thenius in loco) calls the plague of the fields, often producing scarcity, and even famine. This explanation is supported by Deu 28:27, where the word in question stands along with the names of two skin-diseases, of which one () is the Egyptian leprosy-like botch, and the other ( and ) scab and itch. Only by supposing such a plague-like disease, which became infectious on the breaking out of the boils (1Sa 5:9), can we explain its immediate universal spread (indicated by the words and its coasts), and its deadly effect (1Sa 5:11-12; 1Sa 6:19), facts not explained by the other suppositions. Comp. Win., Realw. II., s. v. Philister.
1Sa 5:7. In consequence of its being so, under such circumstances ( here as Gen 25:22), the people of Ashdod recognized the fact that the power of the God of Israel was here manifested on them and their god, and resolved to get rid of the medium of this manifestation, for so they regarded the ark.
1Sa 5:8 furnishes a contribution to the history of the political constitution of the Philistines. The princes (, seranim) of the Philistines are the heads of the several city-districts (Jos 13:3), which formed a confederation, each one of the five chief cities holding a number of places, country-cities (1Sa 27:5), daughter-cities (1Ch 18:1), as its special district. The constitution was oligarchical, that is, the government was in the hands of the College of princes, whose decision no individual could oppose, comp. 1Sa 29:6-11. Grotius: the Phil, were under an oligarchy. The resolve of the princes is: the ark shall be carried to Gath, and is forthwith executed. According to this there was no Dagon-temple in Gath; for the purpose was to remove the ark from the sanctuary of Dagon, who, in their opinion, called forth the power of the God of Israel, without being able to make stand against him. The location of Gath, also one of the five princely citiesGitta (Joseph.), Getha (Sept.), Getha (Euseb.)is doubtful. In this passage (1Sa 5:8-10) the connection points merely to the fact that it is to be sought for in the neighborhood of Ashdod and Ekron; but it does not thence necessarily follow (Ewald) that it lay between these two. Jeromes statements indicate a location near Ashdod and near the limits of Judea: Gath is one of the five cities of Palestine, near the border of Judea, on the road from Eleutheropolis to Gaza, and still a very large village (on Micah 1); Gath is near and bordering on Ashdod (on Jeremiah 25). Comp. Pressel in Herzog, R. E. s. v.,11 The Sept. takes Gath as subject, inserts to us ( or ) after Israel, and translates: And the Gittites said, Let the ark of God come to us. But this addition is uncalled for. Thenius indeed prefers this reading on the ground that such a voluntary offer to receive the ark in order to show that the calamity was merely accidental, is completely in accordance with the whole narrative; but, on the other hand, we may conclude from 1Sa 5:6 that they regarded as the cause of the evil the relation of the God of Israel to their god. Dagon, and the object of the transportation of the ark was to remove it from the region of Dagon-worship.
1Sa 5:9. The same scourge was repeated in Gath; the plague of boils fell upon all, small and great. Its painful and dangerous character is here more precisely indicated by the once-occurring word (hapaxleg.) sathar () which means, following the corresponding Arabic verb (Niph. findi, erumpi), the bursting of the plague-boils. The Acc. great consternation ( ), giving a sensible representation of the direction and motion, in which an action reaches a definite aim or end, sets forth the final effect or result in the minds of the Philistines of this new manifestation of Gods power; generally, where the point reached is to be indicated, the pref. to () is used (as in 1Sa 4:9). The hand of the Lord was on the city unto great consternation.12
1Sa 5:10 sqq. Further removal of the ark to a third princely city, Ekron, according to Robinson (Pal. III. 229 sq. [Amer. Ed. II. 227 sq.]) three miles east of Jamnia and five miles south of Ramleh on the site of the present village Akir, that is, in a northerly direction from Gath. Comp. Tobler, 3 Wand., 53; Jos 13:3. Although first assigned to the Tribe of Judah (Jos 15:45), and for a time held by it (Jdg 1:18, on which see Bertheau), then made over to Dan (Jos 19:43), it could not be retained permanently by the Israelites, but, when the Philistines advanced, fell again into their hands, and continued in their possession (Jos 15:11; 1Sa 6:17; 1Sa 7:14). Retschi in Herzog s. v. In 1Sa 5:10 is related how the inhabitants of Ekron, when the ark was brought to them, thinking of the late occurrences, made complaint and protest against its entrance.
1Sa 5:11-12. The failure of their protest is here silently assumed, and the universal prevalence, and particularly the deadly effects of the plague described. There was every where a deadly consternation, that is, a consternation produced by the sudden death of many persons from the plague, which was connected with the boil-sickness. Observe the climax in the triple description of the plague; in Gath it is severer than in Ashdod; in Ekron it has reached its greatest height. The words at the end of the descriptionAnd the cry of the city went up to heavenassume that the Philistines saw clearly that in this plague the almighty hand of the God of Israel was revealed. A second council of princes, it is expressly stated (1Sa 5:11, beginning), was called to consult in reference to the restoration of the ark to the Israelites. The proposition of Ekron (as yet undecided on) is indeed based on the deadly effects of the plague on its inhabitants (1Sa 5:11), but at the same time it takes for granted that the removal of the ark to other Philistian places would be attended with the same results, and that the punishment of the God of Israel would of necessity continue so long as the insult offered Him by the abduction of the ark was not done away with. [Bib. Comm. compares this scourge in its object and effects with the plagues of Egypt. See Exo 12:33, and also Num 17:12. With the phrase went up to heaven Bp. Patrick compares the classical expressions (Virg. neid. II. 223, 338, 488): Clamores simul horrendos ad sidera tollit; Sublatus ad thera clamor; Ferit aurea sidera clamor.Tr.]
HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
1. Though God brings the judgment on His house and people through world-powers without His kingdom and hostile to His name, He yet shows Himself towards these hostile powers a God that judges righteously in the punishment of the evil they do to the honor of His name in their purpose (though it be by His will or His permission) to oppose His kingdom and hinder its coming. The Philistines, by His counsel and will victorious over the children of Israel, had with His permission taken away the sign of His presence with His people, and brought it into the presence of the idol, that Israel might be right sorely humbled and punished; yet they are chastised as having refused to honor Him as the living God, though the manifestation of His might and glory was set before their eyes.
2. The downfall of the idol-image before the ark and the excision of its most important parts (head and hands) is not merely a symbol, but also a type13 of the truth which is illustrated in the history of Gods kingdom, even in its gloomiest periods, namely, that the powers of the world must sink again into the dust before His glory, after they, in truth taken into His service, have done their work, and that the time appointed by Him comes, when His enemies are made His foot stool. Comp. the declarations in Exo 9:16; Exo 14:18 in reference to Egypt. Where God comes with His ark and His testimony, there He smites the idols to the ground; idolatry must fall, where His gospel finds a place (Berlenb. Bible).
3. The heavy pressure and the hard blows of the hand of God, to which repeated and significant reference is made in connection with the severed hands of the idol-image, was intended not only as a deserved punishment for the Philistines, but also as a disciplinary visitation. All suffering is punishment, but also (as a chastisement of Gods hand) an instrument of correction; that is, under suffering and affliction, as the outflow and result of sin, man is not merely to recognize the causal connection between His sin and the divine punitory justice on the one hand, and the affliction on the other, but also to have His eyes opened to the purposes of Gods holy love, which by adversity and tribulation will draw him to itself, and humble him under Gods powerful hand to reverence His name.
4. When mans heart will not give up its worthless idols, though Gods hand draws 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.
5. 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 from a wholly 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 Gods hand.
6. The Philistines do not deride and scorn the sanctuary of the Israelites, but from their standpoint show it reverence and treat it with forbearance and awe; and herein is exemplified the truth that even the enemies of Gods kingdom and the opponents of the honor of His name in the affairs of His kingdom stand involuntarily and unconsciously under the influence of His power and glory, and a restraining higher power is near, from which they cannot withdraw. They cannot advance, whom the Lords greater power restrains. The supreme controller of affairs so orders all things that the wicked are restrained by fearthough their souls are haughty and they swell with pride and arrogance; and they cannot execute what their minds purpose. For God fetters and holds captive, as it were, their hands, and suffers not. His glory to be obscured (Calvin).
7. Often in the history of His kingdom, amid frightful victories by the hostile powers of the world, Gods hand seems bound, and His people fall into the deepest affliction, so that even the most sacred possessions seem to have fallen into the rapacious hands of the world, which is contending against God and His kingdom; yet even then He knows how to maintain His honor inviolate, and His hand is yet free, and (as in the history of this war between Israel and the Philistines) in secret makes the preparation for the liberation and redemption of His people, and the restoration of the sanctuary and the possession of His kingdom, while human eyes do not see it, and human thought does not suspect it. The Lord is mighty and powerful even in the sorest defeats of His kingdom in the battle with the world. He brings every thing to glorious accomplishment.
8. Calvin: The Philistines seek hiding-places from Gods presence. Let us learn that the same thing happens to all Gods enemies when they are given over to a reprobate mind. For though they are under the dominion of the lethargy of sin, yet, when God urges them more closely, and their own conscience presses them, they seek hiding-places against the majesty of God, and would save themselves by flight.
9. [This chapter, with the following, strikingly illustrates the non-missionary character of the Old Dispensation. For centuries the Israelites were near neighbors of the Philistines, and had some acquaintance (apparently not much) with their political and religious institutions. Yet the Philistines had at this time only a garbled and distorted account (1Sa 4:8) of the history of the Israelites, derived probably from tradition, and seemingly no particular knowledge at all 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 taint 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 moral isolation in ancient times, we shall find one in the narrowness of ancient civilization, 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. These might be overcome, as in Naamans case, but it was not easy to throw off ones nationality (as was necessary for the convert) either at home or by going to live in the land of Israel. All this may palliate the unbelief of the ancient heathen peoplespalliate, but not excuse it, for Jehovah revealed Himself in mighty works which ought to have carried conviction (comp. 1Sa 6:6) and led to obedience and love. On the other hand, the Israelite ought to have tried to bring the heathen to the true God, and indeed in the Pss. we find exhortations to them to come and acknowledge Him. But the Jews, as a nation, never freed themselves from the narrowness to which their institutions trained them.Tr.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
[Henry: God will show of how little account the ark of the covenant is, if the covenant itself be broken and neglected; even sacred signs are not things that either He is tied to, or we can trust to.Tr.]
1Sa 5:1-5. The ruinous folly of the idolatrous mind: 1) It places God beside the idols, as if one could serve two masters (1Sa 5:1-2; Mat 6:24); 2) It does not allow itself to be pointed to the living God by the nothingness of its idols in contrast with Him (1Sa 5:3); 3) In spite of the destruction of its idols through the power of the Lord before its eyes, it always sets up again the old idolatrous service, and carries it still further (1Sa 5:4); 4) Sinking from one degree of superstition to another, it gives itself up, and is given up by God ever deeper and deeper into selfish idolatry.Dagon before the ark, or Heathenism conquered at the feet of the living God: 1) In the domain of its power, its own abode (1Sa 5:1-2); 2) Through the secret demonstration of the power of the Lord (1Sa 5:3-4); 3) Amid the destruction of its power and glory (the face as a sign of its worthless glory and vain beauty struck down to the earth, the head also as the seat of the wisdom which is alienated from God and opposed to God, the hands as a symbol of the powers of darkness which work therein, cut off) (1Sa 5:3-5).The fall of heathenism: 1) It is thrown down before the power of God manifesting Himself as present in His word (the law and the testimony in the ark) (1Sa 5:1-3); 2) Its power (head and hands) is broken and destroyed through the secretly working power of the Spirit of God (1Sa 5:3-4); 3) There is an ever more and more glorious revelation of the power of God which casts down heathenism in the light of the day of salvation, which overcomes the darkness of heathenism.The defeat which the kingdom of the world suffers in its victory over the kingdom of God: 1) In quiet concealment; 2) Through the miraculous action of God; 3) In open publicity.
1Sa 5:6-7. Calvin: Here it is clearly shown how great is the stiff-neckedness of unbelievers in their error, that when the manifest signs of the divine judgments press ever nearer, and there is no more room at all for excuses, and when they can no longer conceal their fear of the judgment and the power of God, yet they do not recognize their contumacy, and lay aside their hardness of heart, but only seek hiding-places and places of refuge, in order to withdraw themselves as far as possible from the divine power that it may not reach them. What sort of effect do unbelievers let the experience and apprehension of the infinite power of God produce in them? Not a change of disposition, not a zealous striving after the knowledge of the truth in His word, and willingness to give Him the honor which belongs to Him, not humility of heart in subjection to the majesty of God, but rather fear and terror at His presence, and the striving to fly as far from Him as possible, and to keep God removed as far as possible from them.God avenges Himself on the enemies of His people, in that, even when they have obtained a victory over the people of God, it yet turns out worse for them than for the people of God who are defeated, Job 20:5-7.Cramer: God can even with ease constrain His enemies to confession.
1Sa 5:8. Starke: Foolish men, to think that the almightiness of God can be thwarted by change of place.Seb. Schmidt: Against God the devices of men, even the wisest, avail nothing. [1Sa 5:9. Boils. There are many other passages in our English version of the Bible in which an apparent indelicacy is due to erroneous translation.Hall: They judge right of the cause; what do they resolve for the cure? . They should have said: Let us cast out Dagon, that we may pacify and retain the God of Israel; they determine to thrust out the ark of God, that they might peaceably enjoy themselves, and Dagon.Tr.]
1Sa 5:10. God has the hearts of all men in His hands (Pro 21:1), and can speedily turn them to change their will and purposes, so as to promote His honor and the best interests of the Church.
1Sa 5:12. Calvin: We should not imitate the Ekronites, who fill heaven with their cry, but with their heart are far from God; rather should we, when the ark of God comes so near us, come with our heart to God. To Him should we cry, when He comes in His judgments, and beg Him for help without complaining, while we confess to Him our sins, and acknowledge that we receive from Him righteous punishment, and that the sufferings which He has inflicted on us are wholesome for us.Schlier: Then could Israel clearly see what an almighty God they had, stronger than the gods of all the heathens and that this strong God wished to be their God, and had interested Himself in behalf of His people.
Footnotes:
[1][1Sa 5:2; 1Sa 5:4. This verbal repetition is quite after the manner of Hebrew historical writing.Tr.]
[2][1Sa 5:3. Here Sept. inserts: and went into Dagons house and saw.a very natural explanation, but, for that very reason, suspicious as the probable addition of a copyist or annotator.Tr.]
[3][1Sa 5:4. It seems better to omit this explanatory phrase, which is not found in the Heb., and to leave the word Dagon to be explained in the exposition; for, though the phrase is probably correct (see Erdmanns account of Dagon), it is still an interpretation rather than a translation.Tr.]
[4][1Sa 5:6. The text of the Sept. here deviates decidedly from the Heb.; for attempts to reconcile the two see Thenius and Wellhausen, in loco. There is no good ground, however, for departing from the Heb.Tr.]
[5][1Sa 5:6. The versions here all follow the Qeri tehorim, which word most of them take to mean a part of the body (posteriora), and not a disease. Chald. and Syr. have this very word. Chald. marisc, Syr. posteriora, Arab. sedes, Vulg. in secretiori parte natium, Philippson schambeulen. Geiger thinks that the Kethib means posteriora, and the Qeri a disease of that part of the body, the change of reading having been made for decencys sake. This was probably the reason of the change, but the Kethib seems to mean the disease, while the Qeri means both a disease and a part of the body. No explanation has yet been given of the reading of the Sept. ships (); it may be simply an error of transcription for , which is found in 1Sa 5:9.Tr.]
[6][1Sa 5:7. The word coasts, not now used in its original sense of sides, has here been retained because of the difficulty of finding another equally good rendering of the Heb. word ().TR.
[7][1Sa 5:9. Erdmann: zu grossem schrecken, but it is better, with the versions, to take it as an independent sentence.Tr.]
[8][1Sa 5:9. Eng. A. V. takes the verb as =, concealed, but the connection does not favour this. Gesenius suggestion broke out is adopted by Erdmann, and seems best, but Philippson, from the Arab. root which Gesen. compares, shatara, ruptus fuit, prefers broke, as indicating the culmination of the diseaseauforechen instead of hervorbrechen. Philippsons rendering is etymologically better founded, but does not so well suit the connection.Tr.]
[9][1Sa 5:10. The Sing. here points to the prince or other person who was spokesman for the people.Tr.]
[10][Dagon was probably originally an old Babylonian fish-deity.Tr.].
[11][Eusebius (Onom.) mentions two places called Gath, one between Antipatris and Jamnia (which cannot be the place here meant), the other five miles from Eleutheropolis (identified by Robinson, II. 59 sq., with Beit Jibrin) towards Diospolis. Mr. J. L. Porter, Art. Gath, in Smiths Bib. Dict., accordingly identifies Gath with the hill called Tell-es-Safieh, ten miles east of Ashdod, and about the same distance south by east of Ekron.Tr.]
[12][But on the reading of this verse see Textual and Grammatical note.Tr.]
[13][Dr. Erdmann here uses the word type, not in the scientific theological sense of a fact of the Old Dispensation, which is intended to set forth the corresponding (spiritually identical) fact of the New Dispensation, but in the general sense of a representative or specimen fact. It is a method of the divine providence inferred from the Scripture and illustrated in history, rather than a spiritual fact of Gods spiritual kingdom prefigured by an outward object or fact in His ancient people or service. The ark symbolized Gods presence in law and mercy, but was not in itself a type, except as a part of the Tabernacle which typified Gods people. The lesson from the punishment of the Philistines, then, is the same as that contained in the slaughter at Samsons death, the plagues of Egypt, the destruction of Babylon (Psa 137:8), and other cases in which God has interfered to save His cause; only here the procedure is more dramatically striking.Tr.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This chapter relates to us the history of the ark of God while in captivity. The Philistines for a short space rejoice over their spoil. But this joy is turned into sorrow. God visits the Philistines with plagues, till at length they are constrained to call a council in order to deliver them from what at the first they considered a great triumph.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
(1) And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. (2) When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon.
What the Philistines design was in bringing the ark into the house of their idolatrous God, is not so easy to determine. Whether it might be to give honor to Dagon, as they did in the case of their conquering Samson, or whether it might be that they intended to unite the ark of God with Dagon as the joint object of adoration, it is impossible to say. Strange, that the human mind should have sunk so low by the fall, as ever to give into the idea of worshipping the dunghill deities of a man’s own making. But the Holy Ghost by his servant the apostle, gives us the satisfactory reason of it. Rom 1:22-25 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
III
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF ELI, AND THE RISE OF SAMUEL
1Sa 4:1-7:17
I will give, in order, the passages showing the rise of Samuel over against the descent of Eli. Samuel, more than any other book of the Bible, excels in vividness of detail, and especially in showing progressiveness in character, either upward or downward growing either better or worse. Over against the iniquities of Eli’s sons and the doom pronounced on his house, we have in order, these passages: 1Sa 1:27-28 ; 1Sa 2:18 , and the last clause of 1Sa 2:21 ; 1Sa 2:26 ; 1Sa 3:1-4 ; 1Sa 1 Samuel 19-21; 1Sa 4:1 .
The progress is: (1) For this child I prayed. (2) The child prayed for is devoted to Jehovah. (3) His home is God’s house and there he serves and worships. (4) The child is called. (5) The child grew in favor with God and man. (6) The child kept on growing. (7) He is recognized as a prophet by all Israel from Dan to Beersheba. In the meantime Eli’s house steadily descends until the bottom is reached. Macaulay, in his History of England, in telling about the great men in power at a certain time, including Lord Halifax, substantially makes this remark: “These great men did not know that they were even then being eclipsed by two young men who were rising up, that would attain to greater heights and influence than the others had ever attained,” and he gives the names of the two young men as John Somers and Charles Montagu.
We may apply this throughout life: A train once in motion will run for a while on its own impetus, but in both cases the motion will gradually cease unless new power be applied. So in every community there are leaders holding positions from past momentum, while new men are rising that will eclipse and succeed them. As in nature when a tree quits growing it begins to die, and when a stream quits flowing its waters stagnate, so when a leader quits studying he begins to lose power and must give place to younger men who are studious. And it will some day be so with you, and you will enter what is called the declining period of your life. For a while it will astonish you that you are not cutting as wide a swath as you used to cut, and unless you live only in God, that will be the bitterest hour of your life. Very few people know how to grow old gracefully; some of them become very bitter as they grow old. The following is a summary of the events connected with the fall of the house of Eli:
1. An enemy is strengthened to smite them. The absence of purity, piety, veneration, and fidelity in God’s people, either his nominal people like Hophni and Phinehas, or his real people, as Eli, always develops a conquering enemy. The case of Samson, Eli’s contemporaneous judge, illustrates this. When he betrayed the secret of his strength, he went out as aforetime and knew not that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him, and so became an easy victim of the Philistines, bound, eyes put out, enslaved, grinding in the mills of God’s enemies, a sport to them, with the added despair that the cause suffered in his downfall.
The devil has known from the beginning that his only chance to win against God’s people is, by their sins, to turn God against them. He knows that as long as God is for you, nobody can be against you. He knows that he cannot fight against you when you have God back of you, but if you become estranged from God, the devil will show you very quickly that when it comes to a wrestle he can give you a fall, and it does not take him long to do it.
It was in this way that he influenced Balaam to suggest to Balak the plan to make Israel sin with women, as a step toward idolatry. His slogan was: “If you can make them sin against their God and put him against them, then you can down them.” The Phinehas of that day, how different from this Phinehas, Eli’s son! Naming a child after a great and good man does not make him like his namesake.
One of the most unpatriotic men I ever knew was named after George Washington; one of the greatest failures as a preacher was named after Spurgeon; one of the poorest excuses for a statesman was named after Sam Houston. Now here is Phinehas, the son of Eli, named after that other Phinehas of Balaam’s time.
The devil, here called Belial, is never more satisfied than when he can nominate his own children as ministers of religion. Hophni and Phinehas, children of Belial, were priests. The prevalent evils of today arise from the fact that children of Belial occupy many pulpits and many chairs in theological seminaries and Christian schools. Always they are the advance couriers of disaster to God’s cause, and herald the coming of a triumphant adversary.
When preachers and professors, in schools begin to hawk at and peck at the Bible, and rend it with their talons, or defile the spiritual feasts like harpies) you should not only count them as unclean birds of prey, but should begin to set your own house in order, for trouble is coming fast.
2. The Philistines won a battle. Four thousand Israelites were slain.
3. Stimulated by fear, the sons of Eli resorted to an expedient, tempting God. They sent for the ark of the covenant, taking it from its appointed place to be used as a fetish or charm. So used as an instrument of superstition it had no more power to avert evil than a Negro’s use of a rabbit’s foot, or the nailing up of a horseshoe over a door to keep off witches.
As religion becomes decadent its votaries resort to charms, amulets, relics of the saints, alleged pieces of the cross, images and other kinds of evil, instead of resorting to repentance, faith, and obedience. So used, the most sacred symbol becomes worse than any common thing.
We will see later in Jewish history the idolatrous worship of the brazen serpent made by Moses, and we will hear good King Hezekiah say, as he breaks it to pieces, “Nehushtan,” i.e., “it is only a piece of brass.” As a symbol, when lifted up, it was of great use, but when used as an object of worship it became only a piece of brass. A student of history knows that a multiplication of holy days, pyrotechnic displays, games, festivities, plays, and cruel sports, until there are no days to work, marks the decadence of a people. We need not be afraid of any nation that gives great attention to fireworks, a characteristic of the Latin races.
We shout in vain: “The ark of the Lord! The ark of the Lord!” when we fail to follow the Lord himself. No issue is made in that way, as it is not an issue of the Lord against Dagon, but a superstitious and impious use of sacred symbols against the devil, and the devil will whip every time. In the medieval times, early in the history of the crusades, we see that even the cross so used falls before the crescent, the sign of Mohammed followers.
We might as well seek the remission of sins in baptism, or salvation in the bread of the Supper, as to expect God’s favor sought by any such means.
When Elisha smote the Jordan with Elijah’s mantle, he trusted not to the mantle, nor did he say, “Where is Elijah?” but he said, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” and so he divided the waters.
4. The Philistines won another battle. Thirty thousand Israelites perished; Hophni and Phinehas were slain; the ark was captured; Eli died, and the wife of Phinehas died in premature labor, naming her new born babe, “Ichabod,” that is, “The glory is departed from Israel”; Shiloh was captured and made desolate forever, ceasing to be the central place of worship; both the ark and the tabernacle became fugitives, separating never to meet again, and so Israel lamented after the Lord.
5. The Philistines regarded the capture of the ark, (1). as a triumph of their god, Dagon, over Jehovah, the God of Israel, and so they placed it in a subordinate position before Dagon in their temple. (2) They regarded it as the capture of Jehovah himself, obligated by his captivity now to serve the Philistines as be had heretofore ministered to Israel.
The prevalence of such conceptions in ancient times is very evident. For ages the presence of a deity was associated with his symbol. To capture his symbol, or image, was to capture the deity, as in the story of Aladdin in The Arabian Nights, whoever held the lamp of the genie controlled the genie himself. Assyrian sculptures today exhibit the idols of vanished nations borne in triumphant procession, and the parade is always to show that they have triumphed over the gods of that country.
The Hebrew prophets allude to this custom frequently. The passages are: Isa 46:1 ; Jer 48:7 ; Jer 49:3 ; Hos 10:6 ; Dan 11:8 . Cyrus, when he captured Babylon, adopted its gods, but the Romans under Marcellus brought to adorn their own cities the captured images and pictures of the Greek gods. Nebuchadnezzar carried away the sacred symbols of Jerusalem when he captured that city, as did Titus after our Lord’s time, and we see in Rome today carved on the Arch, the sevenbranched golden candlestick which Titus carried from the Temple of Jerusalem in triumph to Rome. The Roman general, Fabius, when he captured the city of Tarentum, said to his soldiers, “Leave their gods here; their gods are mad at them; so let us leave them with their gods which they have offended,” and so they left the idols. It would have been a good thing, as after-events show, had Nebuchadnezzar done the same thing, for when Belshazzar, his successor, on a certain night at a drunken feast, used the sacred vessels of the Temple for desecration, it was then that the hand came out and wrote on the wall, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.
Jehovah showed the Philistines that their victory was not over him: (1) By causing the image of Dagon to fall down before the ark, and when they set it up again, caused it to fall down again, and to break its head and arms off; (2) by sending two great plagues: tumors or boils, violent and fatal, under which thousands died, and field mice that swarmed so as to destroy the great harvests of grain that made their land famous; (3) by causing the cessation of the worship of Dagon in Ashdod, for after taking the falls and breaking his head and arms off, no man would go in and worship Dagon.
A natural inquiry when an individual or a people is subject to a series of severe and extraordinary disasters is, What sin have we committed and how may we expiate it, or avert its judgment? Such an inquiry is inseparably connected with any conception of the moral government of God. Men may indeed often fail to note that all afflictions are not punitive, some being disciplinary, or preparatory to greater displays of mercy. We see this problem discussed in the case of Job and his friends; also to those who asked Jesus, “Who did sin, this man or his parents?” He answered that this affliction did not result from personal sin of either of them, but that the glory of God might be manifested. It is the most natural thing in the world for anybody who has suffered one buffet of ill fortune after another, to ask, “What have I done?” and it is perfectly natural for the neighbors to point out that one and say, “Ah, you have been doing something against the Lord: your sin is finding you out.” Therefore it was the most natural thing in the world for the Philistines, when they saw such disasters coming in connection with the capture of the ark, to put the question, “What is our sin?”
We will see what expedients the Philistines adopted to determine whether their calamities came only in a natural way, or were supernatural afflictions connected with the ark and coming from the offended Jehovah, and if from Jehovah, how be was to be appeased. 1Sa 5:7-11 gives us the first expedient: “We will move this ark from Ashdod to the next one of the five cities, and see what happens then. If the same things happen there, we will move it to the next city, and if the same things happen there we will move it to the next city, and so on around the circle of the five cities, and if the same results follow all of these cities, such a series of incidents will be regarded as full proof that the judgments are from Jehovah.”
We recall the story of the boy and the cow bells: He said, “When my father found a cow bell, Ma and I were mighty glad, for we needed one. And when he found another cow bell we were glad again, for we really needed another one, but when Dad found another cow bell, Ma and I became suspicious.” A man would not naturally find three cow bells one after another, so they thought that “Dad” had stolen them. So when five cities, one after the other, had the same afflictions, they could not call that chance.
I knew of a general in a terrible battle who, when a bombshell as big as a water bucket came from a gunboat, cut through a tree and sank into the ground, making an excavation that you could put a house in, ran and put his head right into the hole where the shell came. Somebody asked him why, and he said that such a shell as that would never come twice in the same place. And so the Philistine idea was to move the ark from Ashdod to the next city, and if nothing happened, then they were mistaken about this being chastisement from Jehovah, but if wherever they took it there came the mice and boils on the inhabitants, they were not mistaken, and they could not misunderstand.
That was their first expedient. Their second expedient was to call upon their religious leaders, their diviners and soothsayers, and to ask them to tell them how they could conciliate Jehovah. And the diviners told them that the ark must be sent back, and it must be sent back with a gift, and the gift must signify their confession of sin. In the olden times if a man was healed of a wound in his hand, the Lord was presented with a silver offering to commemorate the healing of the hand. So they had five golden mice made, one for each city, and five golden tumors, one for each city, to symbolize their conception that the evils had come upon them for this offense to Jehovah. But as there still might be a question as to whether these afflictions were natural or supernatural, they tested it in this way: They went to the pen where were cows with young calves (you know what a fool a cow is over her first calf when it is little) and hitched two of these cows to a cart, put the ark on it, to see if the cows, against nature, would go away and leave their calves willingly, and still thinking about the calves and calling them, would carry the ark back to some city of the Levites; that would show that Jehovah was in it.
That was a pretty wise idea of those Philistines, and so when they took a new cart and put the ark on it, and took those two mother cows, they never hesitated but struck a beeline for the nearest Levite city, about twelve miles, and they went bellowing, showing that they felt the absence from their calves. These were their two expedients.
1Sa 6:19-20 says that some of the people at Bethshemesh looked into the ark to see what was in there, and the blow fell in a minute. No man was authorized to open that sacred chamber over which the mercy seat rested and on which the cherubs sat, but the high priests of God. If you will turn to the Septuagint, you will find another remarkable thing which does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, viz.: all of the Levites of the city of Bethshemesh rejoiced at the return of the ark of God, except one man, Jeconiah, and his family, who refused to rejoice at its homecoming, and God smote that family in a moment.
Now, a later instance: The ark, at the request of the citizens of Bethshemesh, was moved to Kirjathjearim, and stayed there until David had been reigning a long time; he sent after it, and Uzzah, when the ark was shaken by the oxen stumbling, reached up his hand to steady the ark and God struck him dead. His attempt was well meant, but it presumed that God was not able to take care of himself. It was a violation of the law for any man to touch that ark except the ones appointed by Jehovah. Which one of the Psalms commemorates the capture and restoration of the ark?
After twenty years Samuel led Israel to repentance and victory. 1Sa 7:3-12 tells us all about it. It says that Samuel called upon them to repent truly of their sins; if they ever wanted the favor of God any more, to cast off their idols and obey God. This is like John the Baptist saying, “Repent ye, repent ye.” Every prophet, in order to be a reformer, was a preacher of repentance. The people repented of their sins, turned from their idols, and returned to God. He assembled all Israel at Mizpah; the Philistines heard of it and came with a great army. Samuel and Israel met them and smote them hip and thigh, and broke their power.
The next paragraph in the Harmony tells how Samuel judged Israel and the regular circuit he made while living at Ramah. He would go to Beth-el, Gilgal, and Mizpah, then come back, holding special courts of judgment, and with such wisdom, purity, and impartiality that he must be classed as the last, best, and greatest of the judges.
QUESTIONS
1. Cite, in order, the passages showing Samuel’s rise over against the descent of Eli.
2. What said Macaulay on this point, and what other examples cited by the author?
3. Give a summary of the events connected with the fall of the house of Eli.
4. How did the Philistines regard the capture of the ark?
5. Show the prevalence of such conceptions in ancient times.
6. How did Jehovah show the Philistines that their victory was not over him?
7. What is the natural inquiry when an individual or a people is subject to a series of severe and extraordinary disasters?
8. To what expedients did the Philistines resort to determine whether their calamities came only in a natural way, or were supernatural afflictions connected with the ark and coming from the offended Jehovah, and if from Jehovah, how was he to be appeased?
9. How else did Jehovah manifest the sanctity of his ark, both at Bethshemesh and later, as we will find in the history?
10. What Psalm commemorates the capture and restoration of the ark?
11. How does Samuel lead Israel, after twenty years, to repentance and victory?
12. What cities did Samuel visit in his judgeship, and what can you say of the judgments rendered by him?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
IV
THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS
The more important passages bearing on this subject are 1Sa 3:1-4 ; 1Sa 10:5 ; 1Sa 10:9-12 ; 1Sa 18:13-24 ; 1Ki 19:18 ; 1Ki 19:20-21 ; 1Ki 20:35 ; 2Ki 2:3-5 ; 2Ki 4:38 ; 2Ki 6:1 ; 1Ch 29:29 ; 2Ch 9:29 ; 2Ch 12:15 ; 2Ch 13:22 and other chapters in that book I do not enumerate. The last one is Amo 7:14-15 . The reader will understand that I give these instead of a prescribed section in the Harmony. These constitute the basis of this discussion.
Let us distinguish between the prophetic gift and the prophetic office , and give some examples. Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, his seventy elders, Balaam, Joshua, and others before Samuel’s time had the gift, but not the office; perhaps we may except Moses as in a measure having the office. After Samuel’s time, David, many of his singers, and particularly Daniel, had the gift in a high degree, but not the office. Moreover, the high priests from Aaron to Caiphas in Christ’s time, were supposed to have officially the gift of prophecy that is, to hear and report what the Oracle said but Samuel is the first who held the office.
The distinction between a prophet and a son of a prophet is this: A son of a prophet was a candidate for the office, ministering to the prophet, a disciple instructed by him, consecrated to the work, and qualifying himself to perform the services of the office with the highest efficiency. A prophet is one who, through inspiration of the Holy Spirit, speaks or writes for God. In this inspiration he is God’s mouth or pen, speaking or writing not his own words, but God’s words. This inspiration guides and superintends his speech and his silence; what is recorded and what is omitted from the record. The gift of prophecy was not one of uniform quantity nor necessarily enduring. The gifts were various in kind, and might be for one occasion only. As to variety of kinds, the revelation might come in dreams or open visions, or it might consist of an ecstatic trance expressed in praise or song or prayer. If praise, song, or prayer, its form was apt to be poetic, particularly if accompanied by instrumental music.
As to the duration of the gift, it might be for one occasion only, or a few, or many. The scriptures show that the spirit of prophecy came upon King Saul twice only, and each time in the form of an ecstatic trance. In his early life it came as a sign that God had chosen him as king. In his later life the object of it was to bar his harmful approach to David. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12-14 inclusive, explains the diversity of these gifts and their relative importance.
There are two periods of Hebrew history in which we find clearest notices of the schools of the prophets, the proofs of their persistence between the periods, and their influence on the nation. The notices are abundant in the time of Samuel, and in the time of Elijah and Elisha, but you have only to study the book of Chronicles to see that the prophetic order, as an office, continued through these periods and far beyond. Later you will learn that in the time of persecution fifty of these prophets were hidden in a cave and fed regularly. The object of the enemy was to destroy these theological seminaries, believing that they could never lead the nation astray while these schools of the prophets continued. Their object, therefore, was to destroy these seats of theological education. Elijah supposed that every one of them was killed except himself, but he was mistaken.
Samuel was the founder of the first school of the prophets, and the scripture which shows his headship 1Sa 19:20 , where Saul is sending messengers to take David, and finally goes himself and finds the school of the prophets, with Samuel as its appointed head. The reason for such a school in Samuel’s time is shown, first, by an extract from Kirkpatrick’s Commentary on 1 Samuel, page 33. He says:
Samuel was the founder of the prophetic order. Individuals in previous ages had been endowed with prophetic gifts, but with Samuel commenced the regular succession of prophets which lasted through all the period of the monarchy, and did not cease until after the captivity. The degeneracy into which the priesthood had fallen through the period of the judges demanded the establishment of a new order for the religious training of the nation.
For this purpose Samuel founded the institutions known as the schools of the prophets. The “company of prophets” at Gibeah (1Sa 10:10 ) and the scene at Ramah described in 1Sa 19:18 ff., imply a regular organization. These societies are only definitely mentioned again in connection with the history’ of Elijah and Elisha but doubtless continued to exist in the interval. By means of these the Order was maintained, students were educated, and common religious exercises nurtured and developed spiritual gifts.
Kirkpatrick’s is a fine commentary. The priests indeed were instructors of the people, but the tendency of the priesthood was to rest in external sacrifices, and to trust in a mere ritualistic form of sacrifice. That is the trouble always where you have a ritual. And after a while both priest and worshiper began to rely upon the external type, and on external conformity with the ritual. God needed better mouthpieces than those, hence while in the past there was a prophetic gift here and there, he now establishes the prophetic school, or society, in which training, bearing upon the prophetic office, should be continuous. The value of these schools of the prophets is also seen from Kirkpatrick, page 1 Samuel 34:
The value of the prophetic order to the Jewish nation was immense. The prophets were privy-counsellors of kings, the historians of the nation, the instructors of the people. It was their function to be preachers of righteousness to rich and poor alike: to condemn idolatry in the court, oppression among the nobles, injustice among the judges, formality among the priests. They were the interpreters of the law who drew out by degrees the spiritual significance which underlay ritual observance, and labored to prevent sacrifice and sabbath and festival from becoming dead and unmeaning forms. Strong in the unshaken consciousness that they were expressing the divine will, they spoke and acted with a fearless courage which no threats could daunt or silence.
Thus they proved a counterpoise to the despotism of monarchy and the formalism of priesthood. In a remarkable passage in his essay on “Representative Government,” Mr. John Stuart Mill attributes to their influence the progress which distinguished the Jews from other Oriental nations. “The Jews,” he writes, “had an absolute monarchy and hierarchy. These did for them what was done for other Oriental races by their institutions subdued them to industry and order, and gave them a national life. . . . Their religion gave existence to an inestimably precious institution, the order of prophets. Under the protection, generally though not always effectual, of their sacred character, the prophets were a power in the nation, often more than a match for kings and priests, and kept up in that little corner of the earth the antagonism of influences which is the only real security for continued progress.”
I was surprised the first time I ever saw the statement from Mill. He was a radical evolutionist and infidel, but a statesman, and in studying the development of statesmanship among the nations, he saw this singular thing in the history of the Jews, unlike anything he saw anywhere else, and saw what it was that led that nation, when it went into backsliding, to repentance; what power it was that brought about the reformation when their morals were corrupted; what power it was that was the real light of the nation and the salt of the earth, and saw that it was this order of prophets which was the conservator of national unity, purity, and perpetuity. I have the more pleasure in quoting that passage, as it comes from a witness in no way friendly to Christianity, just as when I was discussing missions I quoted the testimony of Charles Darwin to the tremendous influence for good wrought by the missionaries of South America.
Particularly in this case of the schools of the prophets we find their value, by noting very carefully the bearing on the case under Samuel. We have already noticed the corruption of the priesthood under Eli, Hophni, and Phinehas; how the ark was captured, the central place of worship desecrated; how Samuel, called to the office of prophet, needed assistance, and how he instituted this school of the prophets. He gathered around him the brightest young men of the nation and had the Spirit of God rest on them, and in order that their instruction might be regular he organized them into companies, or schools; he would go from one to another, and these young “theologs” were under the instruction of Samuel and for twenty years worked as evangelists in making sensitive the national conscience. It took twenty years to do it, and he could not have done it by himself, but with that tremendous power, the help he had, at the end of twenty years, he saw the nation repentant and once more worshiping God. I am for a theological seminary that will do that.
I give a modern example somewhat parallel: Mr. Spurgeon was called to the city of London, when about nineteen years old, to be the pastor of the old historic church of Dr. Gill, and in his evangelical preaching impressed a number of men to feel that they were also called to preach (if your preaching does not impress somebody else to preach, you may be sure that you are not called to preach), and it impressed the women and a multitude of laymen to do active Christian service. Therefore, Mr. Spurgeon organized what is called “The Pastoral College.” He wouldn’t let a drone be in it; he did not want anybody in it that was not spiritually minded. In other words, he insisted that a preacher should be religiously inclined, and should be ready to do any kind of work. He supported this institution largely through his own contributions, although the men and women all over England, when they saw what it was doing, would send money for its support. I used to read the monthly reports of the contributions and the list of donors that accompanied them.
Mr. Spurgeon determined to work a revolution, just as Samuel did, and he used this school of the prophets for that purpose. Consequently, hundreds of young preachers belonging to that school of the prophets preached in the slums of the city, in the byways, in the highways, in the hedges, in the mines, on the wharves to the sailors, and in the hospitals. Hundreds of laymen said, “Put us to work,” and he did; he had pushcarts made for them, and filled them with books and so sent out over the town literature that was not poisonous. He put the women to work, and established) or rather perpetuated in better form, a number of the almshouses for the venerable old women who were poor and helpless, following out the suggestion in 2 Timothy, and he erected a hospital. Then they got to going further afield. They went all over England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, crossed over into the Continent, crossed the seas to Australia, and the islands of the seas, and into heathen lands. I have always said that Spurgeon’s Pastoral College came nearer to the Bible idea of a seminary than any other in existence. There was not so much stress laid on mere scholarship as on spiritual efficiency.
It is important to note particularly what I am saying now, because it was burnt into my heart as one of the reasons for establishing a theological seminary. The nature of that society was that it was a school. They left their homes and came to stay at this school, with what we now call a mess hall in which all the theological students, by contributing so much, have their table in common. It was that way then; they had their meals in common. In preparing dinner one day for the sons of the prophets, somebody put a lot of wild gourds into the pot, and when they began to eat it, one of them cried out: “Ah, man of God, there’s death in the pot!” Once I preached a sermon on this theme: “Wild Gourds and Theological Seminaries,” to show that to feed the students in theological seminaries on wild gourds of heresy is to put death in the pot; they will do more harm than good, as they will become instruments of evil.
In determining what were their duties, we must consult quite a number of passages. We gather from this passage that they were thoroughly instructed in the necessity of repentance, individually and nationally, and of turning from their sins and coming back to God with faithful obedience. That lesson was ground in them. They were taught the interpretation of the spiritual meaning of the law, all its sacrifices, its feasts, its types, and therefore when you are studying a prophet in the Old Testament you will notice how different his idea of types and ceremonies from that of the priests. They will tell you that to do without eating is fasting, but the prophet will show that literal fasting is not true fasting; that there must be fasting at heart; that there must be a rending of the soul and not the garment as an expression of repentance; that to obey God w better than a formal sacrifice.
Another thing they were taught, which I wish particularly to emphasize, was music, both vocal and instrumental. In that school of the prophets started the tremendous power of music in religion so wonderfully developed by David, who got many of his ideas from associating with the schools of the prophets. And from that time unto this, every evangelical work, and all powerful religious work, has been associated with music, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament; not merely vocal, but instrumental music. The heart of a religion is expressed in its songs, and if you want to get at the heart of your Old Testament you find it in the hymnbook of the Hebrew nation the Psalter. It is indeed an interesting study to see what has been the influence of great hymns on the national life. There is an old proverb: “You may make the laws of the people, if you will let me write their ballads.” Where is there a man capable of measuring the influence of “How Firm a Foundation,” or “Come, Thou Fount,” or “Did Christ O’er Sinners Weep?” There is a rich literature on the influence of hymns on the life.
In the awful times of the struggle in England, Charles I against the Parliament, one faction of the nation held to ritualism, while the other followed spirituality, even to the extreme of not allowing any form, not even allowing any instruments of music. One of the finest stories of this period is the account of a church that observed the happy medium, using instrumental as well as vocal music, and congregational singing as well as the use of the choir; every sabbath somebody’s soul was melted in the power of that mighty singing. I can’t sing myself, but I can carry the tunes in my mind, and I can be more influenced by singing than by preaching. It was singing that convicted me of sin. It was on a waving, soaring melody of song that my soul was converted. I once knew a rugged, one-eyed, homely, old pioneer Baptist preacher, who looked like a pirate until his religion manifested itself, and then he was beautiful. I heard him one day when a telegram was put into his hand stating that his only son had just been killed by being thrown from a horse. While weeping, his face became illumined; he got up and clapped his hands and walked through that audience, singing, “O, Jesus, My Saviour, to Thee I Submit.”
John Bunyan wrote that song while in Bedford Jail. They had put him there to keep him from preaching, and looking out through the bars of the dungeon he saw his poor blind girl, Mary, begging bread, and he sat down and wrote that hymn. The effect of the old preacher’s singing John Bunyan’s song was a mighty revival.
The relation of the schools of the prophets to modern theological seminaries is this: The purpose was the same. And so in New Testament times, Jesus recognized that if he wanted to revolutionize the world by evangelism he must do it with trained men. He did not insist that they be rich, great or mighty men. He did not insist that they be scholars. He called them from among the common people, and he kept them right with him for three years and a half, and diligently instructed them in the principles and spirit of his kingdom. He taught them in a variety of forms; in parables, in proverbs, in exposition, illustrating his teachings by miracles, and in hundreds of ways in order that they might be equipped to go out and lead the world to Christ. You cannot help being impressed with this fact: That the theological seminaries in Samuel’s time and in Christ’s time were intensely practical, the object being not to make learned professors, but to fill each one with electricity until you could call him a “live wire,” so that it burnt whoever touched it.
This is why I called Samuel a great man, and why in a previous discussion, counting the men as the peaks in a mountain range, sighting back from Samuel to Abraham, only one other peak comes into line of vision, and that is Moses.
QUESTIONS
1. What are the more important passages bearing on the schools of the prophets?
2. Distinguish between the prophetic gift and the prophetic office and illustrate by examples.
3. Distinguish between a prophet and a son of a prophet.
4. What is the meaning of prophet?
5. In what two periods of Hebrew history do we find the clearest notices of the school of prophets, what are the proofs of their persistence between these periods, and what is their influence on the nation?
6. Who was the founder of the first school of the prophets?
7. What scripture shows his headship?
8. What was the reason for such school in Samuel’s time?
9. What was the value of these schools of the prophets, and particularly in this case, and what illustration from modern instances?
10. What was the nature of that society, and what was the instruction given?
11. What was the relation of the schools of the prophets to modern theological seminaries?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
1Sa 5:1 And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod.
Ver. 1. And the Philistines took the ark of God. ] Which had been so greatly abused by the Israelites, that God justly suffered it to be taken from them by the Philistines; to whom also it proved as fatal as the gold of Tholouse to the Romans. See 1Sa 4:11 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
God. Hebrew. Elohim. See App-4.
Eben-ezer. Compare 1Sa 4:1; 1Sa 7:12.
Ashdod = fortified. Now Esdud. Compare Jos 13:3. See note on Gen 10:14.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 5
Now the Philistines took this ark of the covenant, and they brought it to one of their cities on the coast the city of Ashdod. And they put the ark of the covenant in their temple of their god Dagon, next to the idol of Dagon. And in the morning, when they came in to worship their god Dagon, they found that the idol was fallen on its face on the floor. So they set him up on the pedestal again. And the next morning when they came in, their god Dagon was lying on the floor but both of his hands had been snapped off, and his neck, his head is rolled out and away from him. So they, and then all of the many men in Ashdod began to break out with boils all over them. [So they began to relate these things to the Ark of the Covenant being with them.] And so they carried the ark of the covenant to another Philistine city, the city of Gath. They said, Here you fellows keep this thing. And then the men of Gath began to break out in boils all over them and so they gathered together with the lords of the Philistines and said, What shall we do with this thing? And they said, Well let’s take it to Ekron. And the men of Ekron said, Oh no, you’re not bringing that thing here. We don’t want it ( 1Sa 5:1-11 ).
So here they were plagued with this thing, they didn’t know exactly what to do with it. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
This is a story of supreme and arresting interest, showing as it does how, when the people of God fail to bear testimony for Him among the nations, He becomes His own witness.
The Ark was not a charm equal to delivering disobedient Israel. It was, however, the center and symbol of their life, and Jehovah would not permit Philistia to trifle with it. If men hold their peace stones will cry out; and if the chosen people are unfaithful to God, then the very Ark, which is the symbol of His presence among them, becomes the instrument, wherever it is brought, of judgment on His enemies.
They first lodged it at Ashdod in the house of the fish-god Dagon, with disastrous results to the idol, which was brought to the ground, and broken. With speed and in fear, the people then carried it to Gath. There judgment fell on the inhabitants which, in all probability, was a plague of mice. While this is not stated in our text, it is found in the Septuagint Version, and the subsequent action of making images of mice makes it probable. In any case, some discomfiture came to the people with the coming of the Ark.
Again they moved it as hastily to Ekron, where painful and troublesome tumors broke out among the people. Thus, at every move, judgment became more severe, and Philistia found that if she had been able to conquer and break the power of Israel, it was a different matter when she came to deal with Israel’s God.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
the Captured Ark Brings Trouble
1Sa 5:1-12
Dagons fall before the Ark of God has a sublime significance. In the evening, as the priests left the temple, the hideous image stood erect on its pedestal; in the morning, it was found prostrate before the sacred symbol. A repetition of the incident proved that it was no coincidence. So shall it be with all the idols of the heathen. They shall be utterly abolished, and the demons of whom they are the grotesque representations, together with the Devil whom they obey, shall be cast into the bottomless pit, Rev 20:3. Thus has it been in many countries already. They have cast their idols to the moles and bats, Isa 2:20.
Let this scene be reproduced in your heart! Let Jesus enter and the dearest idols you have known will yield before Him. The presence of Christ, which brings terror to his foes, will bring blessing and deliverance to those that love Him. The dying thief passes from his cross to Paradise, while Judas goes to his own place. Dare to admit the Savior into the secret place of your heart. He will utterly destroy the works of Satan, and will drive out the evil things that have too long infested it.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
6. The Ark in the Hands of the Philistines and Its Return
CHAPTER 5
1. The ark in the house of Dagon (1Sa 5:1-5)
2. The Philistines smitten by Jehovah (1Sa 5:6-12)
The ark was brought to Ashdod, the leading city of the Philistines, and set up in the temple dedicated to Dagon, the chief god of the people. It was half fish and half man, the symbol of fertility. Before this idol the ark was set up. In their blindness they imagined that Dagon had conquered the God of Israel. The next morning they found Dagon fallen with his face to the earth before the ark. It was the Lord who did it and not an accident. The next morning the whole idol-image, except the fish-part, is fallen upon the ground. The head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands lay cut off upon the threshold. The God of Israel demonstrated His power over the gods of the Philistines, yet they continued to reverence even the threshold where the fragments of their idol had lain. Such is the darkness of fallen man.
A severer visitation came upon the Philistines; they were smitten with malignant boils. At the same time a plague of field mice destroyed the fields and the harvest (4:4, 11, 18). It reminds us of the plagues of Egypt. Yet the Philistines did not repent of their sins, but carried the ark of God about, but wherever it was carried the same punishment came upon the people. Yet there was no repentance from the side of the Philistines. All this becomes still more interesting if we consider what the Philistines as the enemies of the people of God represent. (See annotations on Judges.) The world is to experience the judgments and plagues of God in a future day foreshadowed in these plagues which came upon the land of the Philistines; and there will be no turning to God. In the book of Revelation, where these final judgments upon a wicked world and an apostate world-church are described, we hear not a word of repentance. The answer God receives will be blasphemy of His name. And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and sores, and repented not of their evil deeds (Rev 16:11).
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
took: 1Sa 4:11, 1Sa 4:17, 1Sa 4:18, 1Sa 4:22, Psa 78:61
Ebenezer: 1Sa 4:1, 1Sa 7:12
Ashdod: Ashdod, called Azotus by the Greeks, was one of the five satrapies of the Philistines, and a place of great strength and consequence. It was situated near the Mediterranean, between Askelon and Jamnia, thirty-four miles north of Gaza, according to Diodorus Siculus, and the Antonine and Jerusalem Itineraries. It is now called Shdood; and Dr. Richardson says they neither saw nor heard of any ruins there. “The ground,” he observes, “around Ashdod is beautifully undulating, but not half stocked with cattle. The site of the town is on the summit of a grassy hill; and, if we are to believe historians, was anciently as strong as it was beautiful.” Jos 11:22, Act 8:40, Azotus
Reciprocal: Jos 15:46 – near 1Sa 6:1 – the ark 1Sa 6:17 – Ashdod 2Ch 26:6 – about Neh 4:7 – Ashdodites Neh 13:23 – Ashdod Dan 5:23 – and they Amo 3:9 – Ashdod
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
The Ark in the Land of the Philistines
1Sa 5:1-12; 1Sa 6:1-11
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
There are several things we think should be emphasized.
1. Ebenezer means “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” What! Was the Ark of God taken from the place “where the Lord helped us,” to the place of utter and ignominious defeat? Even so.
It is written that He could do no mighty works in Nazareth because of their unbelief. Why was Christ helpless to demonstrate His power and His glory in the city where He had been brought up? It was because, to them, He was, “Jesus the carpenter’s son,” or, “Jesus, the son of Joseph.” They did, to be sure, marvel at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth; but yet, when He made manifest His Deity, they dragged Him to the brow of the hill, on which the city was built, intent on casting Him off to His death.
Unbelief is not the only thing that limits the power of God in behalf of His own. It is also written, “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God.” If any man regards sin in his heart the Lord cannot hear, and will not hear. David in sin, was David in the place of defeat.
2. From Ebenezer to Ashdod, and from Ashdod to the house of Dagon. It seems that we are now reading the impossible. Surely there is no place for our God in the city of Ashdod, and in the temple of Dagon. He might, indeed, go there to give a testimony for the truth, to preach the Gospel; but how can He be dragged there by His opponents? How can He be placed there, in company with Dagon, as another of the Philistines’ false gods?
Is it not written “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”?
I. DAGON WAS FALLEN ON HIS FACE (1Sa 5:3-4)
When the disciples sought to make three tabernacles, it did not take God long to rebuke them with “This is My beloved Son: hear Him!”
When the Ark was taken into the house of Dagon, it did not take God long to cast down Dagon. His keepers set Dagon once again on his pedestal, but the next morning Dagon was again prostrate on his face to the ground before the Ark. This time the head of Dagon and both his hands were cut off upon the threshold, and only the stump of Dagon was left to him.
1. The supremacy of God over all is clearly before us. No hand lifted up against the Lord can prevail. He only is God, and there is none other.
In Isaiah it is written: “The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low * *. And the idols He shall utterly abolish.”
It is at the Name of Jesus that every knee shall bow; everything in Heaven, everything on earth, or under the earth-all must bend the knee to Him. Think you then that the Ark, where God met His people, the Ark that stood for things Divine, could be housed alongside of false gods? Nay! Down fell Dagon, his head and hands broken off.
2. The power of God over all powers is clearly before us. Not only is God to be first in all things, and every power to fall at His presence, but God is able to subdue all things that lift up themselves against Him. Every high thing, and every thing mighty, must succumb to God’s almightiness.
Even we, as saints, are panoplied with power from on High, for the weapons of our warfare are mighty, through God, to the pulling down of strongholds. To Christ seated at the Father’s right hand, God says, “Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.”
II. THE MEN OF ASHDOD WERE DESTROYED (1Sa 5:6-7)
1. God works His judgments unseen and unheard. Not alone did God break down the idol Dagon, but He brought low the people of Ashdod, who worshiped the idol.
The Philistines thought that they could conquer God, for they had met Him on the field of battle and vanquished His armies, and taken the Ark which was the symbol of His presence with His people Israel.
If they could conquer so great a people, what had they to fear of the people’s God? Little did they know of the might of Jehovah. God who created the heavens and the earth with His Word, could easily send forth His judgments by His Word. God is not dependent upon armies and men. He uses His own when they are faithful to work His purposes; but when men fail, He can work marvels unseen by men.
Thus it was in the days of Elisha. “For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host * *. Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses,” etc. Thus God worked when no man lifted a hand to fight.
2. God works His judgments with unlikely things. We read, “The hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and He destroyed them, and smote them with emerods.”
The men who gather themselves together against God should remember that He who sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh at them, and hold them in derision. God may, for a while suffer men to continue in their evil ways. He is longsuffering, and not willing that any should perish. However, when the harvest of their iniquity is ripe, and the time of opportunity is past, He will arise and send upon them the judgment that is meet.
So it was that the men of Ashdod cried out, and said, “The Ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us.”
III. SEEKING TO GET RID OF THE ARK (1Sa 5:7-8)
1. The men of Ashdod were afraid of God. Someone says, “And well they might have been afraid.” Dost thou think so? “Certainly,” you say; “look at the way He killed them off.”
Yes, we suppose the sinner always has, and always will be afraid of God, when he sees the judgments of God falling upon him.
In Rev 6:1-17 the wicked are so filled with the fear of His wrath that they cry for the rocks and mountains to fall upon them and hide them from His face. Yes, they are afraid. Adam and Eve were afraid and hid themselves in the trees of the Garden.
No doubt the wicked will be filled with fear at the Great White Throne, as they are judged according to their works.
2. The men of Ashdod sought to send away their greatest friend. Suppose they had believed God; suppose they had gladly sought His grace, and had come to Him under a true token; He surely would have gladly received them. It is written, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” There was the Ark, where they could have found the mercy seat, and have come to God as suppliants of grace. But they did not.
Why should the wicked fear the wrath of God, when the God of wrath is the God of love? In the Book of Revelation where the Lord Jesus is treading out the winepress of God’s wrath, it says, “He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” The word “Almighty” refers to the God who is enough.
Wrath never falls until mercy has spent its all in behalf of the wicked. Sinner, there is One standing at your side even now. He is the once crucified, but now risen and exalted Christ. Wilt thou send Him away? He is thine only Hope of peace.
“There’s a Stranger at the door,
Let Him in;
He has been there oft before,
Let Him in;
Let Him in, ere He is gone,
Let Him in, the Holy One,
Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son;
Let Him in.”
IV. SENDING THE ARK BACK TO ISRAEL (1Sa 5:11)
1. The Ark sent from Ashdod to Gath. We would not say that it was exactly kind of the citizens of Ashdod to send the Ark to the people of Gath. That is just what they; did. Perhaps the lesson for us to learn is that everyone who sins passes his penalties on to others.
Perhaps we should consider that it is a poor way to rid oneself of any evil by passing it over to another town. How can this be done?
We remember in a Georgia town when the people got aroused because of the houses of shame in their midst, that a committee waited on a certain judge and urged him to issue orders to make the evil women leave the city. The judge quietly said, “To which of the neighboring cities would you suggest that I send them?” Then he soberly asked the committee, “Gentlemen, have you tried to save these wicked women from their sins?”
2. The people of Gath suffered a very great destruction. Wherever there is sin, there is wrath revealed from Heaven. God is not a respecter of persons. Neither are sinners so different; for the people of Gath sent the ark to Ekron. Then the Ekronites cried out, saying, “They have brought about the Ark of the God of Israel to us, to slay us and our people.”
Thus the lords of the Philistines hastened together, and they decided to send the Ark back to its own place.
Back went the Ark. Not only was the Ark returned but it was returned in a very brilliant way. This we will consider shortly. Let us now admit that the Philistines had learned something of the greatness and the power of the God of Israel. They may have discovered the folly of fighting against God. When they had been victor over the Israelites, and had taken the Ark away from them, they no doubt thought themselves worthy of praise and they re-joked greatly. However, they now saw that what seemed a victory was a defeat.
V. SENDING THE ARK BACK TO ISRAEL WITH GREAT POMP (1Sa 6:2-4)
1. “Send it not empty.” The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. The Philistines called for the priests and the diviners to inquire as to how the Ark should be sent back. “Send it not empty,” said they. We are reminded of the folly of the king of Syria when he sent Naaman to be healed of his leprosy. First of all, he sent him to the king instead of to the Prophet; secondly He sent him with ten talents of gold, and six thousand pieces of silver, and ten changes of raiment.
People, to this day, think God can be bought. The song may say
“Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy Cross I cling,”
but not so says the religion of the twentieth century before, or of the twentieth century after Christ.
O foolish priests and diviners, think ye to appease the wrath of God by the works of the flesh? Is this what God requires at your hand?
2. “In any wise return Him a trespass offering.” Yes, the Israelites were instructed as to a trespass offering; but their trespass offering lost all of its blessing, as the people of Israel lost all of its Calvary significance.
The Philistines knew nothing of Christ and the Cross; they were not pleading the merits of the Atonement. They were more like the unbelieving prophets of Baal, who sacrificed their bullock, and cried aloud, and cut themselves with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them; yet there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.
“There is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
3. The Philistines made images of emerods and of mice to give glory unto God. These were images of the very things that God commanded should not be made. They made images of the things which God had sent to bite them, and to slay them. Most of the gods and idols of the heathen are made in order to appease the wrath of the god whom they ignorantly worship.
VI. THE WARNING OF THE PRIESTS AND DIVINERS (1Sa 6:5-6)
1. Grasping at straws. The diviners and the priests said: “Do this, and do that, peradventure the God of Israel will lighten His hand from off you, and from off your gods, and from off your lands.” They gave to the Philistines no positive assurance and no certain hope.
The best they could say was “Peradventure.” As we see it the whole worship of heathendom centers in a “peradventure.” They are always trying to appease the wrath of the gods. They are always hoping to find God, or to make themselves like God. They never know anything of peace or of a certain rest, such as the Christians know.
To them the pathway to peace is a long and arduous one-an unhill climb, through which they hope, sometime, to attain unto a place of rest. In heathendom, peace is the final goal that lies at the top or summit of all human endeavor; to the Christian, peace lies at the foot of the mountain, and is given to the lost sinner the moment he believes.
2. Building a new cart. The next thing the priests and diviners of the Philistines suggested was that they should make a new cart, and take two milk kine, on which there had come no yoke. Thus they were to take the Ark of the Lord home again. It was some gorgeous affair they had. The cart was only to carry the Ark, but along with the Ark they were to send jewels of gold, in a coffer, by the side of the Ark as a trespass offering.
We feel sure that the church is losing the simplicity of worship and service. More and more we are looking to fine structures, embellished and made beautiful to behold. Embellishment has nothing whatsoever to do with our approach to God. There is but one thing necessary to come to the Father, and that is, the Son. “No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”
Would that we might get back to the simplicity of the Gospel, and spend our excess wealth on preaching Christ to the ends of the earth.
VII. THE HOMEWARD MARCH (1Sa 6:11-12)
1. A sad combination. Think of it! There was the cart, something that had absolutely no affiliation with the Ark, for the Ark was made to be carried and not carted. There was the coffer, within which were placed the mice of gold, and the images of their emerods. There were the kine that drew the cart. There were the Philistines who were servants of Belial. You will all grant me that the combination was most unhallowed and almost uncanny.
We write with a tinge of sadness. Is it not so even today? We are tagging on or tying on to the worship of our God, many, many things that are altogether obnoxious to Him and wholly contrary to both His Person and His command.
We have plenty of men and women taking active part in the service of the Lord who are altogether unholy, and are even children of Belial.
If we marvel that God would permit the combination we set forth, in the days of the Philistines, should we not, the rather, marvel that God permits so many unhallowed affiliations in our own day?
2. A satisfied people. When at last the march was over and the Ark was delivered into the hands of Israel, the Philistines felt that they had gotten rid of a great and dark cloud that had hung over their land. God, at least, was gone and they thought that perhaps they would get along all right now with Him away.
Alas, alas, that such is the conception of many today.
The prodigal son wanted to get away from the father, from the environments of home life, and from the constraints of parenthood. Young people, themselves, too often want to break the ties that bind them to the church, to God, and to holy living. The spirit of the Philistines is still abroad in the land.
AN ILLUSTRATION
We are in India with idols all around us. Are the Hindus and the Philistines all the peoples who have their Dagons?
How many hours-how many days-years-are wasted kneeling before some idol-an idol who is not fit to tie the shoe latchet of the true and only King. Here is a pastor who is endeavoring to put his son through college. Unmindful of the spiritual life of his church, he strives assiduously to get his salary. But the Lord said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” Business men cry, “My business! I must look out for my business!” A mother exclaims, “My girl go to Africa? I will not permit it!” Some fascinating personality comes on the scene. Down on their knees, in absolute thralldom, fall the people. Could anyone, they say, be more wonderful?
And all the while the Saviour stands patiently by, waiting for the scales to fall from blinded eyes. Yes, He lives in our hearts. Shall He have second place, or will you give Him the throne? Remember, He must be “Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all.”
Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
1Sa 5:1. The Philistines took the ark of God Abarbinel gives several reasons why God suffered the ark of his presence to fall into the hands of these uncircumcised heathen: 1st, The Israelites were such great sinners that they were unworthy of this symbol of the divine presence among them: 2d, The idolatry of Micah remained to this day in the land, therefore God fulfilled his threatening, Lev 26:19-31 : 3d, The sin of the priests highly provoked him to deliver up the ark, which was in their hands when they were killed: 4th, The Israelites greatly offended in carrying the ark into the battle without asking counsel of God: 5th, He resolved to demonstrate his power even among the enemies of Israel. And brought it from Eben-ezer Where the Israelites were encamped before the battle, chap. 1Sa 4:1; to Ashdod One of their chief cities, in which, as also at Gaza and Garb, some of the Anakims, the giants, remained till the time of David.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Sa 5:1. Ashdod, afterwards called Azotus. Act 8:40.
1Sa 5:2. The arkand set it by Dagon. See Jdg 10:6; Jdg 16:23. Some make Dagon to be the same as Nereid, Triton, and the Syrens. Virgil, in several places, speaks of the spoiling of the temples as a great calamity. neid. 7. It is a custom of high antiquity to deposit in temples the trophies taken in war, and latterly in churches. During the late war with France we had many flags and standards suspended in St. Pauls Cathedral, at Whitehall, &c.
1Sa 5:4. Only the stump. Hebrew, the dagon, the lower part of a fish, which gave the name to the idol: the superior formations were those of a woman.
1Sa 5:6. The hand of the Lord was heavy upon them. The LXX, and the Vulgate, both contain the following addition to this verse. And the towns and fields throughout that region were broken up, and mice were produced, and the confusion of a great mortality prevailed in the city. This explains, probably, 1Sa 6:4, where golden mice are mentioned as part of the trespass offering sent up with the ark.
1Sa 5:12. Emerods. The critics here generally say boils, or sores. The silver images, 1Sa 6:5, would seem to intimate some species of vermin. Yet the critics in Pooles Synopsis, and Stockius, contend that piles and dysenteries are here understood; diseases frequent in camps and wars from excessive fatigues.
REFLECTIONS.
We have just seen the scattered fragments of Israel return; but unaccompanied by either ark or priest. The ear of him that heard tingled, and I-chabod was written on every countenance. On the contrary, Philistia shouted for joy; and more for the capture of the ark and its golden cherubim, than for the defeat of Israel; because they could now profanely boast that Dagon had vanquished Israels God, who had filled Egypt with the terrors of his name. But the war of the ark soon taught them better wisdom. Twice did Dagon fall before it; and twice were its priests obliged to aid and assist their god to recover his station; the latter time they could not dissemble its dismembered body. The Lord, who had taken vengeance on the gods of Egypt, on the gods of Canaan, and now on Dagon, next took vengeance on the people. Many in Ashdod sickened of the pestilence, and were consumed: and while these calamities prevailed in the city, vermin consumed the increase of the field. At length the people, afflicted on every side, not daring to retain the cause of all their calamities, sent away the ark to Gath. But here, as in Ashdod, in Askelon, and Ekron, the plagues of heaven were repeated.
From the greatness and the variety of punishments inflicted on the cities and lands of the Philistines, we must infer the greatness of their sin. They knew, they well knew the character of the God of Israel, and the miracles his arm had wrought, both in Egypt and in the land of Canaan. They ought therefore to have surrounded the ark with devotion, not with insults in the house of their idols. Hence also, as this ark and its covenant were figurative of Christ, of the gospel, and of eternal glory, the christian world should learn to reverence a religion revealed from heaven. Let us never in thought, word, or deed, offer the slightest insult to the living God, or to the word of truth which is the only ground of all our hope. Especially, let us beware of doing this when in company with the wicked. An insult in the house of Dagon, heaven will not overlook.
If religion should happen to be oppressed, as it now was in Israel; if as in our own age and nation, we find the gayer circles of society inclined to disregard sacred things; and the poor, from the example of the rich, taking a license which dishonours the christian name; or if, as has often been the case, we find Gods people in exile and affliction, let us beware that we never reproach them, nor flatter the enemies of the Lord; for he will avenge every indignity offered to his name. How low soever we may find the people of God, he has afflicted his sanctuary for its purification, and for the instruction of the world. Zion shall yet arise and shine in all the glory of his covenant and promises; and they who have despised his name shall be put to confusion.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1 Samuel 5. The Ark in the Philistine Cities.
1Sa 5:1. Ashdod. 1Sa 5:8. Gath. 1Sa 5:10. Ekron: see Jos 11:22; Jos 13:3; p 28.
1Sa 5:2. Dagon: see Jdg 16:23*.
1Sa 5:3. The Ark is thought of as possessing marvellous inherent powers; it brings disaster on those who treat it disrespectfully, Philistines, Bethshemites, Uzzah; and blessing on those whom it favours, Obed-edom (Jos 3:4*).
1Sa 5:4. stump: this word, absent from the Heb., is found in the versions, and belonged to the original text.
1Sa 5:5. Erroneous theory; the rite is found elsewhere [Zep 1:9. For the probable explanation see Exo 12:22*.A. S. P.]
1Sa 5:6. tumours: better plague boils (mg.). A natural theory would be that contagion was carried from one Philistine city to another, and then to Beth-shemesh.[8. The advice seems strange, for if the Ark inflicted such mischief on Ashdod, similar calamities might be expected to fall on Gath; and the Ekronites in fact anticipate fatal consequences after its deadly work at Ashdod and Gath. The principle seems to be analogous to that on which Balak acts. When after sacrifice on one spot Balaam is forced to bless Israel, Balak changes the place, hoping that Yahweh who has frustrated his purpose in one locality will prove more amenable in another (*Num 23:13; Num 23:27). So the Philistines seem to argue; at first the thought does not occur to them to send back this most precious trophy, this powerful talisman. But obviously the deity resident in the Ark dislikes Ashdod, perhaps Gath will be more agreeable.A. S. P.]
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Though God had allowed the Philistines to gain the victory, He very soon spoils their pleasure in having captured the ark, taking it to Ashdod. They think the most fit place for it is in the house of Dagon, the fish-god (half fish, half man). No doubt they even considered they were patronizing Israel’s god by giving it this place!
But the next morning Dagon was found fallen on its face before the ark, and they were given the work of lifting their god back into its place! The second morning, however, they were not able to restore the damage; for as well as being fallen again, the head of Dagon and the palms of his hands had been cut off. It was a message to the Philistines that if they thought Dagon had intelligence, he had not even a head: if they thought he could do anything, he had no hands to do it. Since the damage had been done on the threshold of his house, the priests of Dagon adopted the superstitious custom of never stepping on the threshold as they came in the door. They did not come to the sensible conclusion, however, that they should give up the worship of this impotent idol.
But not only did their idol suffer at the hand of God: the people themselves were afflicted by an epidemic of painful hemorrhoids, or boils. The evidence was so clear that this was all connected with the presence of the ark among them that they wanted this removed somewhere else immediately. They decide on Gath, further inland from Ashdod, perhaps because it had no temple of Dagon, as did Ashdod and Gaza. Where it was put in Gath we are not told, but its presence in the city was quickly felt by a great destruction and an epidemic of hemorrhoids that left the whole city in consternation.
What can they do? They try a third city, Ekron, but only to further spread the scourge of death and painful disease. The people themselves cry out in fear of the results when the ark is brought there, and their fears are quickly realized. They have learned now that it would be folly to take it to another Philistine city, and yet the awful scourge continues to plague the Ekronites. Finally in desperation they convene a gathering of the Lords of the Philistine cities to make a decision as to what to do with the ark. Of course the answer was to return it to Israel. How good to see in all this that God was caring for His glory when Israel had failed to do so.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
5:1 And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto {a} Ashdod.
(a) Which was one of the five principal cities of the Philistines.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
B. Pagan Fertility Foiled by God ch. 5
The primary purpose of this chapter, I believe, is to demonstrate the superiority of Yahweh over Dagon, the fertility god of the Philistines. There are several similarities between this chapter and the record of God sending plagues on the Egyptians (Exodus 7-12), an earlier demonstration of His sovereignty.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Having captured the ark, the Philistines brought it from Ebenezer to their main city, Ashdod, which stood about 30 miles to the southwest and three miles from the Mediterranean coast. Archaeologists have excavated Ashdod more extensively than any of the five major Philistine cities.
Dagon was the principle deity of the Philistines. The popular teaching that the Philistines pictured him as being part man and part fish finds support in 1Sa 5:4. Dag in Hebrew means fishy part. Dagon (cf. Heb. dagan, grain) was a grain god whom the Philistines worshipped as the source of bountiful harvests (fertility). Worship of him began about 2500 B.C. in Mesopotamia, especially in the Middle-Euphrates region. [Note: The New Bible Dictionary, 1962 ed., s.v. "Dagon," by Kenneth A. Kitchen.]
The writer clarified that the Philistines regarded the fact that the image representing Dagon had fallen on its face before the ark as indicating Yahweh’s superiority. Falling on one’s face was a posture associated with worship. The fact that the Philistines had to reposition the idol is another allusion to Dagon’s inferiority. He could not act on his own (cf. Isa 46:7). Later Goliath, the Philistine champion, would also fall on his face before David, Yahweh’s champion (1Sa 17:49).
The following night the symbol of Dagon toppled again before the ark, the symbol of Yahweh. This time Dagon’s head, suggestive of his sovereign control, and his palms, suggesting his power, broke off (1Sa 5:4). In the ancient Near East, warring armies cut off and collected the heads and hands of their enemies to count accurately the number of their slain (cf. 1Sa 29:4; Jdg 8:6). [Note: Antony F. Campbell, The Ark Narrative, p. 86, n. 1.] Earlier Samson’s defeat had involved the cutting of the hair of his head and the weakening of his hands (Jdg 16:18-21). Later David would cut off Goliath’s head (1Sa 17:51), and the Philistines would cut off King Saul’s head (1Ch 10:10).
The breaking of Dagon’s head and hands on the threshold of his temple rendered the threshold especially sacred. From then on the pagan priests superstitiously regarded the threshold as holy (cf. Zep 1:9). The ancients commonly treated sanctuary thresholds with respect because they marked the boundary that divided the sacred from the profane. [Note: Gordon, p. 99.] This incident involving Dagon made the threshold to his sanctuary even more sacred. This is another ironical testimony to the utter folly of idolatry and to Yahweh’s sovereignty (cf. Exo 20:3).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
CHAPTER VII.
THE ARK AMONG THE PHILISTINES.
1Sa 5:1-12; 1Sa 6:1-21
ALTHOUGH the history in Samuel is silent as to the doings of the Philistines immediately after their great victory over Israel, yet we learn from other parts of the Bible (Psa 78:60-64 ) Jer 7:12; Jer 26:9) that they proceeded to Shiloh, massacred the priests, wrecked the city, and left it a monument of desolation, as it continued to be ever after. Probably this was considered an appropriate sequel to the capture of the ark – a fitting mode of completing and commemorating their victory over the national God of the Hebrews. For we may well believe that it was this unprecedented feature of their success that was uppermost in the Philistines’ mind. The prevalent idea among the surrounding nations regarding the God of the Hebrews was that He was a God of exceeding power. The wonders done by Him in Egypt still filled the popular imagination (1Sa 6:6); the strong hand and the outstretched arm with which He had driven out the seven nations of Canaan and prepared the way for His people were not forgotten. Neither in more recent conflicts had any of the surrounding nations obtained the slightest advantage over Him. It was in His name that Barak and Deborah had defeated the Canaanites; it was the sword of the Lord and of Gideon that had thrown such consternation into the hearts of the Midianites. But now the tide was completely turned; not only had the Hebrew God failed to protect His people, but ruin had come on both Him and them, and His very sanctuary was in Philistine hands. No wonder the Philistines were marvelously elated Let us sweep from the face of the earth every trace and memorial of His worship, was their cry. Let us inflict such humiliation on the spot sacred to His name that never again shall His worshippers be able to regain their courage and lift up their heads, and neither we nor our children shall tremble any more at the mention of His terrible deeds.
We have not one word about Samuel in connection with all this. The news from the battlefield, followed by the death of Eli and of the wife of Phinehas, must have been a terrible blow to him. But besides being calm of nature (as his bearing showed after he got the message about Eli’s house), he was habitually in fellowship with God, and in this habit enjoyed a great help towards self-possession and promptitude of action in sudden emergencies and perplexities. That the ill- advised scheme for carrying the ark into battle implied any real humiliation of the God of Israel, or would have any evil effect on the covenant sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he could not for a moment suppose. But the confusion and trouble that would arise, especially if the Philistines advanced upon Shiloh, was a very serious consideration. There was much left at Shiloh which needed to be cared for. There were sacred vessels, and possibly national records, which must not be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy. By what means Samuel was able to secure the safety of these; by what means he secured his own personal safety when “the priests fell by the sword” (Psa 78:64), we cannot say. But the Lord was with Samuel, and even in this hour of national horror He directed his proceedings, and established upon him the work of his hands.
The fact to which we have drawn attention, that it was over the God of Israel that the Philistines had triumphed, is the key to the transactions recorded so minutely in the fifth and sixth chapters. The great object of these chapters is to show how God undeceived the Philistines on this all-important point. He undeceived them in a very quiet, undemonstrative manner. On certain occasions God impresses men by His great agencies, – by fire and earthquake and tempest, by “stormy wind fulfilling His word.” But these are not needed on this occasion. Agencies much less striking will do the work. God will recover His name and fame among the nations by much humbler forces. By the most trifling exertion of His power, these Philistines will be brought to their wit’s end, and all the wisdom of their wisest men and all the craft of their most cunning priests will be needed to devise some propitiation for One who is infinitely too strong for them, and to prevent their country from being brought to ruin by the silent working of His resistless power.
1. First of all, the ark is carried to Ashdod, where stood the great temple of their God, Dagon. It is placed within the precincts of the temple, in some place of subordination, doubtless, to the place of the idol. Perhaps the expectation of the Philistines was that in the exercise of his supernatural might their god would bring about the mutilation or destruction of the Hebrew symbol. The morning showed another sight. It was Dagon that was humiliated before the ark – fallen to the ground upon his face. Next day a worse humiliation had befallen him. Besides having fallen, his head and hands were severed from the image, and only the stump remained. And besides this, the people were suffering extensively from a painful disease, emerods or hemorrhoids, and this too was ascribed to the influence of the God of the Hebrews. The people of Ashdod had no desire to prolong the contest. They gathered the lords of the Philistines and asked what was to be done. The lords probably concluded that it was a case of mere local ill-luck. But what had happened at Ashdod would not happen elsewhere. Let the ark be carried to Gath.
2. To Gath, accordingly, the ark is brought. But no sooner is it there than the disease that had broken out at Ashdod falls upon the Gittites, and the mortality is terrible. The people of Gath are in too great haste to call again on the lords of the Philistines to say what is to be done. They simply carry the ark to Ekron.
3. And little welcome it gets from the Ekronites. It is now recognized as the symbol of an angry God, whose power to punish and to destroy is unlimited. The Ekronites are indignant at the people of Gath. “They have brought about the ark of the God of Israel to us, to slay us and our people.” The destruction at Ekron seems to have been more awful than at the other places – “The cry of the city went up to heaven.” The lords of the Philistines are again convened, to deliberate over the failure of their last advice. There is no use trying any other place in the country. The idea of local ill-luck is preposterous. Let it go again to its own place! is the cry. Alas that we have destroyed Shiloh, for where can we send it now? We can risk no further mistakes. Let us convene the priests and the diviners to determine how it is to be got quit of, and with what gifts or offerings it is to be accompanied. Would only we had never touched it!
The priests and the diviners give a full answer on all the points submitted to them. First, the ark when sent away must contain an offering, in order to propitiate the Hebrew God for the insults heaped on Him. The offering was to be in the form of golden emerods and golden mice. It would appear that in addition to the disease that had broken out on the bodies of the people they had had in their fields the plague of mice. These field-mice bred with amazing rapidity, and sometimes consumed the whole produce of the field. There is a slight difficulty about numbers here. There are to be five golden emerods and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines (1Sa 6:3); but it is said after (1Sa 6:18) that the number of the golden mice was according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both of fenced cities and country villages. It is surmised, however, that (as in the Septuagint) the number five should not be repeated in the middle of the first passage (1Sa 6:4-5), but that it should run, “five golden emerods, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, and golden mice, images of the mice that destroy the land.” The idea of presenting offerings to the gods corresponding with the object in connection with which they were presented was often given effect to by heathen nations. “Those saved from shipwreck offered pictures of the shipwreck, or of the clothes which they had on at the time, 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, eyes, etc., in return for cures effected in those members respectively in answer to prayer. This was probably a heathen custom transferred into the Christian Church; for a similar usage is still found among the heathen in India” (Speakers Commentary).
4. Next, as to the manner in which the ark was to be sent away. A new cart was to be made, and two milch cows which had never been in harness before were to be fastened to the cart. This was to be out of respect to the God of Israel; new things were counted more honourable, as our Lord rode on a colt “whereon never man had yet sat,” and His body was laid in a new sepulchre. The cows were to be left without guidance to determine their path; if they took the road to Judea, the road up the valley to Bethshemesh, that would be a token that all their trouble had come from the God of the Hebrews; but if they took any other road, the road to any place in the Philistine country, that would prove that there had only been a coincidence, and no relation of cause and effect between the capture of the ark and the evils that had befallen them. It was the principle of the lot applied to determine a grave moral question. It was a method which, in the absence of better light, men were ready enough to resort to in those times, and which on one memorable occasion was resorted to in the early Christian Church (Act 1:1-26). The much fuller light which God has given men on moral and religious questions greatly restricts, if it does not indeed abolish, the lawful occasions of resorting to such a method. If it be ever lawful, it can only be so in the exercise of a devout and solemn spirit, for the apostles did not make use of it by itself, but only after earnest prayer that God would make the lot the instrument of making known His will.
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. We are reminded of a scene in Gospel history, that took place at Gadara after the devils drove the herd of swine over the cliff into the lake. The people of the place besought Jesus to depart out of their coasts. It is a solemn truth that there are aspects of God’s character, aspects of the Saviour’s 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. As the apostle puts it, he does not like to retain God in his knowledge (Rom 1:28). He says to God, “Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways” (Job 31:14). Nay, he goes a step further – “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psa 14:1). Where he still makes some acknowledgment of Him, he may try to propitiate Him by offerings, and to make up for the transgressions he commits in some things by acts of will-worship, or voluntary humiliation in other things. But alas! of how large a portion even of men in Christian lands is it true that they do not love God. Their hearts have no yearning for Him. The thought of Him is a disturbing, uncomfortable element. Heart communion with Him is a difficulty not to be overcome. Forms of worship that leave the heart unexercised are a great relief. Worship performed by choirs and instruments and aesthetic rules comes welcome as a substitute for the intercourse and homage of the soul. Could anything demonstrate more clearly the need of a great spiritual change? What but the vision of God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself can effect it? And even the glorious truths of redemption are not in themselves efficacious. The seed needs to fall on good soil. He that commanded the light to shine out of darkness must shine in our minds to give the light of the glory of God in the face of His Anointed. But surely it is a great step towards this change to feel the need of it. The heart that is honest with God, and that says, “O God Almighty, I do not love Thee, I am not happy in Thy presence, I like life better without Thee; but I am convinced that this is a most wretched condition, and most sinful. Wilt Thou, in infinite mercy, have compassion on me? Wilt Thou so change me that I may come to love Thee, to love Thy company, to welcome the thought of Thee, and to worship Thee in spirit and in truth?” – such a heart, expressing itself thus, will surely not be forsaken. How long it may be ere its quest is granted we cannot tell; but surely the day will come when the new song shall be put in its mouth – “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
5. And now the ark has reached Bethshemesh, in the tribe of Judah. The lords of the Philistines have followed it, watching it, as Miriam watched her infant brother on the Nile, to see what would become of it. Nor do they turn back till they have seen the men of Bethshemesh welcome it, till they have seen the Levites take it down from the cart, till they have seen the cart cleft, and the cows offered as a trespass offering, and till they have seen their own golden jewels, along with the burnt-offerings and sacrifices of the people of Bethshemesh, presented in due form to the Lord.
Thus far all goes well at Bethshemesh. The ark is on Hebrew soil. The people there have no fear either of the emerods or of the mice that so terribly distressed their Philistine neighbours. After a time of great depression the sun is beginning to smile on Israel again. The men of Bethshemesh are reaping their barley-harvest – that is one mercy from God. And here most unexpectedly appears the sight that of all possible sights was the most welcome to their eyes; here, unhurt and unrifled, is the ark of the covenant that had been given up for lost, despaired of probably, even by its most ardent friends. How could Israel hope to gain possession of that apparently insignificant box except by an invasion of the Philistines in overwhelming force – in such force as a nation that had but lately lost thirty thousand men was not able to command? And even if such an overwhelming expedition were to be arranged, how easy would it not be for the Philistines to burn the ark, and thus annihilate the very thing to recover which the war was undertaken? Yet here is the ark back without the intervention of a single soldier. No ransom has been given for it, no blow struck, nothing promised, nothing threatened. Here it comes, as if unseen angels had fetched it, with its precious treasures and still more precious memories just as before! It was like a foreshadow of the return from the captivity – an experience that might have found expression in the words, “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.”
Happy men of Bethshemesh, for whom God prepared so delightful a surprise. Truly He is able to do in us exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! Never let us despair of God, or of any cause with which He is identified. ” Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him;” “The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought; He maketh the devices of the people of none effect. The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, and the thoughts of His heart to all generations.”
But alas! the men of Bethshemesh did not act according to the benefit received. Their curiosity prevailed above their reverence: they looked into the ark of the Lord. As if the sacred vessel had not had enough of indignity in the din of battle, in the temples of the uncircumcised Philistines, and in the cart drawn by the kine, they must expose it to a yet further profanation! Alas for them! their curiosity prevailed over their reverence. And for this they had to pay a terrible penalty. “The Lord smote of the men of Bethshemesh fifty thousand and three score and ten men.” It is the general opinion, however, that an error has slipped into the text that makes the deaths amount to fifty thousand threescore and ten. Bethshemesh was never more than a village or little town, and could not have had anything like so great a population. Probably the threescore and ten, without the fifty thousand, is all that was originally in the text. Even that would be ”a great slaughter” in the population of a little town. It was a very sad thing that an event so joyous should be clouded by such a judgment. But how often are times and scenes which God has made very bright marred by the folly and recklessness of men!
The prying men of Bethshemesh have had their counterparts many a time in more recent days. Many men, with strong theological proclivities, have evinced a strong desire to pry into the ”secret things which belong to the Lord our God.” Foreknowledge, election, free will, sin’s punishment – men have often forgot that there is much in such subjects that exceeds the capacity of the human mind, and that as God has shown reserve in what He has revealed about them, so men ought to show a holy modesty in their manner of treating them. And even in the handling of sacred things generally, in the way of theological discussion, a want of reverence has very often been shown. It becomes us all most carefully to beware of abusing the gracious condescension which God has shown in His revelation, and in the use which He designs us to make of it. It was an excellent rule a foreign theologian laid down for himself, to keep up the spirit of reverence – never to speak of God without speaking to God.
God has drawn very near to us in Christ, and given to all that accept of Him the place and privileges of children. He allows us to come very near to Him in prayer. “In everything,” He says, “by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make your requests known unto God.” But while we gratefully accept these privileges, and while m the enjoyment of them we become very intimate with God, never let us forget the infinite distance between us, and the infinite condescension manifested in His allowing us to enter into the holiest of all. Never let us forget that in His sight we are “as dust and ashes,” unworthy to lift up our eyes to the place where His honour dwelleth. To combine reverence and intimacy in our dealings with God, – the profoundest reverence with the closest intimacy, is to realize the highest ideal of worship. God Himself would have us remember, in our approaches to Him, that He is in heaven and we on the earth. “Thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity and whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, but with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the hearts of the contrite ones.”