Bible Commentaries
1 Samuel 6

Verse 1

The Return of the Ark (6:1-7:1)

The Philistines consulted their priests and diviners, who advised returning the Ark to Israel with an appropriate guilt offering. Once more we see the priestly office associated with divination. The priest was the guardian of the oracle among the peoples of the Near East. It was usual in the case of a "guilt offering" (1 Samuel 6:3) to give reparation. Here it was to consist of five golden models of the boils which had afflicted the Philistines, together with five golden mice. The association of mice with boils is explained in the ancient Greek translation of this section, which indicates that a plague of mice swarmed across the land in connection with the plague of boils. If the word "mice" is representative of the divers pestilential rodents which carried the bubonic plague, the association is explained. The number of these golden images, five of each, was based on the number of cities and princes which constituted the Philistine confederation. There may have been an element of sympathetic magic in the gift of these images, the belief that if they were sent out of the country, then the ills which they represented would also disappear.

There remained the difficult issue of conveying the Ark back to Israel. By taking two cows from their calves, the Philistines argued that they could divine whether the Ark was really causing their trouble. The Ark was to be drawn by the cows, who were yoked to it. The calves were to be left at their sides, and then at the last moment taken away and penned up. The cows would naturally turn in the direction of the calves when allowed to move, and if they did, then the association of the Ark with the trouble in Philistia was pure chance. But if the cows acted contrary to nature and conveyed the Ark back to Israel, then the holiness and power of the Lord would be disclosed, and it would be evident that it was he who had sent the pestilence. When the cows took the latter course, the Philistines were confident that their trouble was of divine origin and that they were right in making their golden images to "give glory to the God of Israel," that is, to acknowledge his power and supremacy (vs. 5).

The cows drew the Ark back to the land of Israel to Bethshemesh, and came to the field of a man named Joshua, who was reaping his wheat harvest. The men of Bethshemesh left their reaping and joyfully sacrificed the cattle which had drawn the visible seat of God’s invisible presence back into their midst. We are told that the Levites offered the sacrifice, but this is probably a later addition to the text, coming from the days when the priests did not merely direct but alone administered sacrifices. The fact that the sacrifice was made upon a great stone is a reminder that an altar had to be improvised. Against it the blood of the slain beasts would be poured out to God and on it the carcasses would be burned.

The end of the chapter records a tragic concomitant. We are told that many men were slain because they looked on the Ark. The number of men (see margin) seems incredible and the reason for the judgment is difficult to understand since looking on the Ark (the correct rendering of the Hebrew) was not an offense. Here the Greek translation helps us. It tells us that seventy men were slain because they did not rejoice with the rest when they looked on the Ark. The number is more reasonable, even though the reason is still somewhat unintelligible. Probably the same pestilence struck which had struck the Philistines and which could have been carried in the Ark. The Hebrew author, convinced that all suffering was inextricably bound up with sin, sought for a theological answer. Such was certainly the hard-core doctrine of the Deuteronomists who were responsible for the writing of the Books of Samuel. The effect of this disaster was the removal of the Ark to Kiriath-jearim, a Canaanite city, possibly located nearby.