Chapter Five

The stay of the Ark of the Covenant in the land of the Philistines.

1 Samuel 5:1. And the Philistines took the Ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Ashdod, Gath (1 Sam 5:8), Ashkelon (1 Sam 5:10), Gaza, Ekron (1 Sam 6:17) — Philistine cities, located to the west of Jerusalem and Hebron.

1 Samuel 5:2. And the Philistines took the Ark of God, and brought it into the temple of Dagon, and set it beside Dagon. Dagon — a pagan deity of the Philistines, with the head and arms of a man and the body of a fish. For the heathens Dagon was the expression and protector of fertility. (For more details, see M. Palmov’s work “Idolatry among the ancient Hebrews.” St. Petersburg, 1897, pp. 285–292.)

1 Samuel 5:6. And the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the inhabitants of Ashdod, and He smote them and afflicted them with grievous tumors, in Ashdod and in its surroundings, [and mice multiplied throughout the land, and there was great ruin in the city]. “And the hand of the Lord was heavy” upon the Philistines (cf. 1 Sam 5:7): the fearsome signs which accompanied the presence of the Ark of the Covenant in the land of the Philistines were to show them the impropriety of dedicating the Ark to pagan idols, the greatness and might of the God of Israel, and the complete powerlessness of their own gods, unable to help not only others, but even themselves (1 Sam 6:5-6). “And the Lord smote them (the Philistines) and afflicted them with grievous tumors”: “The Seventy translators,” remarks the blessed Theodoret, “translated: ‘were smitten on their seats’; Aquila — ‘had gangrenous sores’; Josephus shows that they suffered from dysentery. ‘Let no one regard these explanations as contradictory, for dysentery was followed by a disease of the sitting parts — frequent discharge inflamed (in the Slavic translation it is said: ‘and it was inflamed upon their seats’) the discharging parts; and in the course of time the inflammation became gangrenous” (commentary on 1 Samuel, question 10).