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This desire of the people of
Ashdod was not disagreeable to those of Askelon, so they granted them that
favor. But when they had gotten the ark, they were in the same miserable
condition; for the ark carried along with it the disasters that the people of
Ashdod had suffered, to those who received it from them. Those of Askelon also
sent it away from themselves to others: nor did it stay among those others
neither; for since they were pursued by the same disasters, they still sent it
to the neighboring cities; so that the ark went round, after this manner, to
the five cities of the Philistines, as though it exacted these disasters as a
tribute to be paid it for its coming among them.
2. When those that had
experienced these miseries were tired out with them, and when those that heard
of them were taught thereby not to admit the ark among them, since they paid so
dear a tribute for it, at length they sought for some contrivance and method
how they might get free from it: so the governors of the five cities, Gath, and
Ekron, and Askelon, as also of Gaza, and Ashclod, met together, and considered
what was fit to be done; and at first they thought proper to send the ark back
to its own people, as allowing that God had avenged its cause; that the
miseries they had undergone came along with it, and that these were sent on
their cities upon its account, and together with it.
However, there were those that
said they should not do so, nor suffer themselves to be deluded, as ascribing
the cause of their miseries to it, because it could not have such power and
force upon them; for, had God had such a regard to it, it would not have been
delivered into the hands of men. So they exhorted them to be quiet, and to take
patiently what had befallen them, and to suppose there was no other cause of it
but nature, which, at certain revolutions of time, produces such mutations in
the bodies of men, in the earth, in plants, and in all things that grow out of
the earth. But the counsel that prevailed over those already described, was
that of certain men, who were believed to have distinguished themselves in
former times for their understanding and prudence, and who, in their present
circumstances, seemed above all the rest to speak properly.
These men said it was not
right either to send the ark away, or to retain it, but to dedicate five golden
images, one for every city, as a thank-offering to God, on account of his
having taken care of their preservation, and having kept them alive when their
lives were likely to be taken away by such distempers as they were not able to
bear up against. They also would have them make five golden mice like to those
that devoured and destroyed their country (2) to put them in a bag, and lay them upon the ark; to make
them a new cart also for it, and to yoke milch kine to it (3) but to shut up their calves, and keep them from them,
lest, by following after them, they should prove a hinderance to their dams,
and that the dams might return the faster out of a desire of those calves; then
to drive these milch kine that carried the ark, and leave it at a place where
three ways met, and So leave it to the kine to go along which of those ways
they pleased; that in case they went the way to the Hebrews, and ascended to
their country, they should suppose that the ark was the cause of their
misfortunes; but if they turned into another road, they said,
"We will pursue after
it, and conclude that it has no such force in it."
3. So they determined
that these men spake well; and they immediately confirmed their opinion by
doing accordingly. And when they had done as has been already described, they
brought the cart to a place where three ways met, and left it there and went
their ways; but the kine went the right way, and as if some persons had driven
them, while the rulers of the Philistines followed after them, as desirous to
know where they would stand still, and to whom they would go. Now there was a
certain village of the tribe of Judah, the name of which was Bethshemesh, and
to that village did the kine go; and though there was a great and good plain
before them to proceed in, they went no farther, but stopped the cart there.
This was a sight to those of that village, and they were very glad; for it
being then summer-time, and all the inhabitants being then in the fields
gathering in their fruits, they left off the labors of their hands for joy, as
soon as they saw the ark, and ran to the cart, and taking the ark down, and the
vessel that had the images in it, and the mice, they set them upon a certain
rock which was in the plain; and when they had offered a splendid sacrifice to
God, and feasted, they offered the cart and the kine as a burnt-offering: and
when the lords of the Philistines saw this, they returned back.
4. But now it was that
the wrath of God overtook them, and struck seventy persons (4) of the village of Bethshemesh dead,
who, not being priests, and so not worthy to touch the ark, had approached to
it. Those of that village wept for these that had thus suffered, and made such
a lamentation as was naturally to be expected on so great a misfortune that was
sent from God; and every one mourned for his own relation. And since they
acknowledged themselves unworthy of the ark's abode with them, they sent to the
public senate of the Israelites, and informed them that the ark was restored by
the Philistines; which when they knew, they brought it away to Kirjathjearim, a
city in the neighborhood of Bethshemesh. In this city lived one Abinadab, by
birth a Levite, and who was greatly commended for his righteous and religious
course of life; so they brought the ark to his house, as to a place fit for God
himself to abide in, since therein did inhabit a righteous man. His sons also
ministered to the Divine service at the ark, and were the principal curators of
it for twenty years; for so many years it continued in Kirjathjearim, having
been but four months with the Philistines.
Footnotes
(1) Dagon, a famous maritime god or idol, is generally
supposed to have been like a man above the navel, and like a fish beneath it.
(2) Spanheim informs us here, that upon the coins of Tenedos,
and those of other cities, a field-mouse is engraven, together with Apollo
Smintheus, or Apollo, the driver away of field-mice, on account of his
being supposed to have freed certain tracts of ground from those mice; which
coins show how great a judgment such mice have sometimes been, and how the
deliverance from them was then esteemed the effect of a divine power; which
observations are highly suitable to this history.
(3) This device of the Philistines, of having a yoke of kine
to draw this cart, into which they put the ark of the Hebrews, is greatly
illustrated by Sanchoniatho's account, under his ninth generation, that
Agrouerus, or Agrotes, the husbandman, had a much-worshipped statue and temple,
carried about by one or more yoke of oxen, or kine, in Phoenicia, in the
neighborhood of these Philistines. See Cumberland's Sanchoniatho, p. 27
and 247; and Essay on the Old Testament, Append. p. 172.
(4) These seventy men, being not so much as Levites, touched
the ark in a rash or profane manner, and were slain by the hand of God for such
their rashness and profaneness, according to the Divine threatenings, Numbers
4:15, 20; but how other copies come to add such an incredible number as fifty
thousand in this one town, or small city, I know not. See Dr. Wall's
Critical Notes on 1 Samuel 6:19.
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