1 Samuel 6 – Showing Respect To The LORD

by Nate Wilson, delivered 13 Sept.2020 at Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan KS

Introduction (vs. 1-2)

• Tell story from Farmer Boy (By Laura Ingalls Wilder, pp. 101-106) of Almanzo training his oxen to pull a sled and how they ran him right into a ditch. This is what happens when you try to hitch up untrained cattle to pull a load. But in our story today, God did a miracle and caused two untrained cows to transport the ark from Philistia to Israel all by themselves.

• The ark narrative started in chapter 4, then the Philistines conquered the Israelite army, killed the priests, and captured the ark. In chapter 5 we saw how God can hold His own with His enemies, and we’re going to look at the conclusion of the story in chapter 6.

• The first couple verses of chapter six introduce the problem that the story of this chapter is about. The ark of the covenant that had been built by the Israelites under Moses’ supervision as the centerpiece of their worship of God had been captured and put on display in Philistine cities. During the seven months that it was among them, God struck the Philistines with plagues and other serious troubles. So the Philistines are trying to figure out, “How do we get this god off our backs? How do we disentangle ourselves from this irate deity?”

• The text of v.1 literally says that the ark had been in “the field of the Philistines,” leading, among others¹, the Puritan commentator, Matthew Henry to write, “...having tried it in all their cities, and found it a plague to the inhabitants of each, at length they sent it into the open fields, upon which mice sprang up out of the ground in great multitudes, and destroyed the [grain] which was now nearly ripe and marred the land.” When I look at the use of the word “field” in Hebrew, especially where it occurs again in vs. 14 & 18, I have to concurr.

• Not only had God shown the impotence of the Philistine Dagon god, but also the impotence of their human leaders. God is restoring respect to Himself. After all, it is a primary purpose of His that all nations worship Him. He had shown Himself superior to all that the Philistines worshiped, but rather than bow to this great God, they just wanted to get rid of Him. People still do this today, don’t they?

• Here’s my translation of chapter 6:1 Now, the ark was in the countryside of the Philistines for seven months. 2 And the Philistines called for their priests and for their diviners {and for their shamans}, saying, “What are we going to do about the ark of Yahweh? Let us know what we should send with it to the place it belongs.” 3 So the [priests] said, “When y’all send away the ark of the {covenant of Yahweh,} God of Israel, don’t send it away with nothing, because y’all really must send back a guilt-offering to Him. Then y’all may be healed, and it may be atoned for you as for why His hand did not move away from you.” 4 Then the [Philistines] said, “What is the guilt-offering which we should send back to Him?” And the [priests] said, “Five golden lumps, the number of the lords of the Philistines, because the same plague is against all of you and against your lords. 5 Therefore, y’all should make images of your swellings and images of your mice laying waste to the land, and you should give glory to Yahweh. Perhaps He will lighten up His hand from upon you and from upon your gods and from upon your land. 6 Indeed, why harden your heart like the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their heart? Won’t it be like when He terrorized them, and they sent the [Israelites] away, and they went? 7 So make one new cart right now, and get two nursing cows which have never had a yoke raised onto them, and hitch the cows to the cart, then lead their offspring away from them, back toward their stall. 8 Then y’all should take the ark of Yahweh and commit it to the cart, along with the gold articles which y’all are sending back to Him. Y’all should place the guilt-offering in the treasure-box beside it, and you should send it away wherever it may go. 9 And you should observe: if it goes up the road of His territory of Beth Shemesh, He did this great calamity against us, but if not, then we will know that it was not His hand that plagued us; it was fate that happened to us.” 10 Well, the men did accordingly, and they got two nursing cows and hitched them to the cart, and corralled their offspring into the stall. 11 Then they set the ark of Yahweh to the cart, along with the treasure-box with the golden mice and the images of their swellings. 12 Then the cows went straight along the way on the road of Beth Shemesh. They went, walking and lowing, using a single highway, and did not turn aside right or left. The lords of the Philistines were were also walking behind them up to the territory of Beth Shemesh. 13 Now, the Beth Shemites were harvesting a wheat harvest in the valley, and they raised their eyes and saw the ark, and how happy they were to see [it]! 14 Then the cart came to the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh, and it stood there, and there was a big rock there. Then they ripped apart the planks of the cart and offered up the cows as a whole-burnt-offering to Yahweh. 15 Now, the Levites had taken the ark of Yahweh down – and the treasure-box that was with it, which had in it the gold articles, and they had set them on the big rock, and the men of Beth Shemesh offered up whole-burnt-offerings and sacrificed sacrifices on that day to Yahweh. 16 Meanwhile, the five lords of the Philistines observed, and then they returned to Ekron on that day. 17 So, these are the gold lumps which the Philistines sent back as a guilt-offering to Yahweh: for Ashdod - one, for Gaza - one, for Ashkelon - one, for Gath - one, for Ekron – one, 18 and gold mice the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, from the fortified city even to the unwalled village. And the big [rock of] mourning, on which they rested the ark of Yahweh, is [a witness] up to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh. 19 Nevertheless, some of the men of Beth Shemesh [were] struck down because they looked into the ark of Yahweh; indeed He caused to strike down among the people seventy men, a fifth of a clan of men, and the people mourned because Yahweh had caused a great blow to be struck among the people. 20 Then the men of Beth Shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before the face of Yahweh, this holy God, and to whom shall the {ark of Yahweh} go up from among us?” 21 So they sent messengers to the residents of Kiriath Jearim, saying, “The Philistines have returned the ark of Yahweh! Come down and bring it up to yourselves."

• We basically have three scenes: first the Shaman’s advice, then the return of the ark, and then the receiving of the ark by the Israelites.

1) vs. 3-9 The Witchdoctors’ Advice

• Only the priests and diviners are mentioned in the midieval-era Hebrew manuscripts followed by most English Bibles, but the Septuagint and Dead Sea manuscripts from a thousand years earlier mention that there was also a third group of soothsayers or witchdoctors.

• In the New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Dr. Tsumura suggests that the Philistine priests, along with their special class of fortune-telling, diviner-priests², had probably been consulted early on in those seven months, but the Philistine lords had not, at first, wanted to follow their suggestion of admitting defeat and paying tribute to this foreign god, so they had strung it out for several months hoping to find a more face-saving solution, but they could not.

• Why did the Philistines call for their own priests and diviners? They should have called for an Israelite priest of Jehovah! But that's the way the world is; they would rather go to an M.D. or a psychologist or some new-age fortune-teller than to church elders (James 5:14).

  • The prophet Isaiah said, “...let us go up to... the house of the God of Jacob, so He may teach us from His ways... let us walk in the light of Yahweh... [instead of looking to] the East and fortune-tellers³ like the Philistines...” (Isa. 2:6-8, NAW)

• At any rate, the Philistine religious experts said in v.3, “Do not send it empty... send a guilt offering”

  • This may have been mere common-sense advice,

    • for instance, in Exodus 3:21, after the 10 plagues convinced Pharaoh to release his Hebrew slaves, the Egyptians gave valuable things to the Israelites as parting gifts to make up for offending them and their God.

    • It was also pretty common practice among pagan religions in the area, for instance, among the Greeks and Romans, "any who escaped [from a shipwreck] presented a tab­let to Isis, or Neptune, with the representation of a shipwreck upon it; gladiators offered their weapons, and emancipated slaves their fetters. In some of the nations of antiquity even representations of [body] parts, in which a cure had been obtained from the deity, were hung up in the temples in honour of the gods... and it also perfectly agrees with a custom which has prevailed in India... that when a pilgrim takes a journey to a pagoda to be cured of a disease, he offers to the idol a present either in gold, silver, or copper, according to his ability, of the shape of the diseased or injured member..." ~K&D

  • This may also be an echo of Deut. 16:16 where God told His people that when they come to worship Him in the temple, “...they shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed.” (NKJV) By which He meant that they must bring animal sacrifices and food offerings.

  • The Philistine priests and diviners told their leaders to send a guilt offering, but they were ignorant of the right way to do it. God required the sacrifice of an animal and the transfer of guilt (Lev. 5:14-26). Rather than doing this, the Philistines sent a coffer of gold shapes! If only they had asked a priest of Jehovah. If only a prophet of God had come to them at this strategic time, think of the "people-movement" that might have occurred!

  • The author of the New International Commentary on the Old Testament, David Tsumura, argues that there were only a total of five gold nuggets offered by the Philistines, and that those five nuggets are alternately described as being in the shape of hemhhoroids, tumors, or mice, all of which might look kind-of like lumps.

    • That would require translating the Hebrew conjunction, when it stands between the word for “tumors” and the word for “mice,” with the English word “namely” rather than the English word “and.” The meaning of the Hebrew conjunction vav is wide enough to be interpreted that way fairly.

    • “So in this narrative five gold mice, which stand for tumors, were sent by the Philistines to Israel as a compensation and a tribute. The compensation was made not just for the cities proper, but for the cities and their environs.” ~Tsumara

    • Try reading through it again with that interpretation and see what you think.

  • At any rate, a “coffer was placed in a purse or bag hung at the side of the ark, with the golden mice and emerods in it.” ~John Gill

• The hope stated in v.6 was that Yahweh would reverse the position He had taken in dealing with a “heavy hand” (5:6) upon the Philistines and instead “lighten his hand.” (Tsumura)

  • Actually, Yahweh’s hand is admitted to be – not only against the Philistines but – against their gods as well: “besides Dagon at Ashdod, there were Baalzebub at Ekron, and Marnas at Gaza, and Derceto at Ashkelon; and perhaps another at Gath...” (Gill) Worship of those idols was taking a hit, and the Philistine priests wanted to get rid of Yahweh’s competi­tion so that their people would come back to worship their idols and keep wealth flowing to the priests.

• The Philistine religious experts also said in v.5, “Give glory to God”

  • v.6 There were enough religious skeptics among the Philistines that this religious proposal which took seriously the existence of a supernatural God, encountered some opposition. It was still possible that these sicknesses and emergencies were not caused by the God of Israel but were rather merely natural disasters – coincidences/chance happenings.

  • Again, I can see the same thing happening today: the "priests" of our country's religion of secular humanism are scientists. They won't accept God's miracles as a display of His power. They figure the earth could have evolved by chance. They explain away creation and miracles and try to do scientific tests, just like the Philistines did.

  • Why should they think that sending a wooden box with lumps of gold to their enemy neighbors should have anything to do with the mice and disease troubling them? This took some persuasion on the part of the Philistine priests, so they bring up some history, “Don’t harden your hearts like Pharaoh did!” The Philistines were reminded that God sent very similar plagues on Egypt 380 years ago (or so), and it didn’t do Pharaoh any good to simply put up with plagues and tough it out. This God doesn’t let up until He wins.

  • So they must “give glorie to God in confessing the truth, and yeelding themselues to be iustly punished of him.” ~Andrew Willett, 1607

• “By sending gifts in the form of their physical afflictions they would acknowledge that it was the God of Israel Who had afflicted them, and would thus give glory to Him.” ~Goldman, Soncino Books of the Bible, 1949

• So that’s what they did.

2) vs. 10-16 What the Philistines Observed

• It’s hard to know sometimes whether Josephus, the Jewish historian from the first century, is being accurate or whether he’s embellishing the truth, but he wrote that the Philistines set the cart in a place where three ways met, so that the cows would have to choose which way they would go (Antiquities l. 6. c. 1. sect. 2).

• The Philistines city-states lined the Mediterranean coast and plain West of Judah, so to get back into Israelite country, one had to go East, following a ravine up into the hills of Judah. Amazingly, those cows headed straight for Beth-shemesh, in the Judean hill country, about halfway between the Philistine coastal cities and Jerusalem.

• The cows trotting some 10 miles⁴, mooing all the way to call their calves to come with them – and maybe complaining that what they were doing was against their will, but, under the supernatural influence of God, who was revealing His power over not only mankind but also over nature itself, those cows walked away from their babies, away from everything that was famliar to them; they didn’t buck or wander around as any untrained animal would have, but made a beeline for Israel.

• Now it’s wheat-harvest time as spring turns to summer in Israel, and most everybody is outdoors helping cut and shock wheat stalks down in the valley in front of the town, so most everybody in Beth Shemesh saw the whole thing as the cart with the ark approached from the opposite side, followed by the five Philistine kings.

  • “The lords of the Philistines, with a suitable retinue no doubt, went after them, wondering at the power of the God of Israel; and thus those who thought to triumph over the ark were made to go like menial servants after it… God will be no loser in his glory, at last, by the successes of the church's enemies against his ark, but will get himself honour from those that seek to do dishonour to him…” ~Matt. Henry

• The Israelites knew what to do when they received the ark; they sacrificed the oxen to the Lord, but they didn't know what to do with the coffer of golden hemorrhoids and rats. Perhaps it was at this time that the Philistines told these Jews about all that had happened.

• The Israelites had been deprived of God’s special presence for over half a year. Jewish tradition has it that the Israelite priests did not offer any sacrifices for that whole time, but when they saw the ark, they determined that since there was no sanctuary currently designated for offering sacrifices, they could offer sacrifices right there on a high place where the ark had come to rest. (Goldman)

• They rejoiced when they saw it return, but I have to wonder, how important it was to them. If it meant everything to them to have the special presence of God with them, why hadn’t they send armies to recapture it? Why hadn’t they send ambassadors to bargain it back, or spies to sneak in and spirit it away back to Shiloh? This opens a window into understanding the spiritual lukewarmness of the Israelites at the time of Samuel.

3) vs. 17-19 God’s Responses to the Philistines and Israelites

• God’s response to the Philistines is not what you might expect. We’d expect God to suddenly bless the Israelites again upon this reunion while firing parting shots at the Philistines in the form of lightening or something, but what happened is the very opposite:

• God received the offerings made by the Philistines, and the Philistines went in peace.

  • Meanwhile the golden objects are laid out on this rock by the Levites, and I’m sure people stared in wonder at them. Perhaps they inferred that the five lumps stood for the five Philistine Emirates; maybe they even had the name of each cities engraved on them.

  • Many Bible scholars⁵ think that a lot more than 5 mice were offered, translating v.19 as saying that there were as many golden mice as there were little villages and hamlets outside the walled cities. But I tend to agree with other Bible scholars⁶ who think that “A fortified city and the unfortified villages of its vicinity were treated as one unit,” totalling only 5 mice.

  • The Bible doesn’t tell us what happened to these golden objects after they arrived in Israelite territory. Perhaps the priests in Beth Shemesh or Kiriath Jearim kept them or added them to the tabernacle treasury.

• God’s response to the Israelites, on the other hand, is a severe punishment of the Beth Shemites for mistreating the ark.

  • God’s law states in Numbers 4:5-20 "When the camp prepares to journey, Aaron and his sons shall come, and they shall take down the covering veil and cover the ark of the Testimony with it. Then they shall put on it a covering of badger skins, and spread over that a cloth entirely of blue; and they shall insert its poles... And when Aaron and his sons have finished covering the sanctuary and all the furnishings of the sanctuary, when the camp is set to go, then the sons of Kohath shall come to carry them; but they shall not touch any holy thing, lest they die. These are the things in the tabernacle of meeting which the sons of Kohath are to carry... But they shall not go in to watch while the holy things are being covered, lest they die."

  • Bethshemesh was a town where priests lived, according to Joshua 22:16, so it seems safe to presume that qualified priests were present to handle the ark properly and to offer animal sacrifices.

  • But priests should have known that God required male animals to be sacrificed as guilt offerings for such acts of profanation rather than female cows (Lev. 5:15).

  • Also, priests should have known God’s command not to allow the ark to be uncovered and exposed to the gaze of everyone. V.13 mentions specifically the excitement generated among the crowd in gazing upon the ark. This would stand to reason if they had never seen it uncovered before. (Willett)

  • Furthermore, the Hebrew text of v.19 adds the preposition “into the ark” after the word “looked.” The Israelites must have worried that the Philistines had perhaps stolen some of the contents of the ark, so they opened the ark up and looked into it, which was an even greater intrusion into God’s privacy than merely looking at the ark without a cover over it.

  • So God killed them. Josephus adds that they died from being struck by lightening.

    • Now, if you’re reading an NIV or ESV or CEV or NLT Bible in v.19, they say He killed 70 men.

    • But if you’re looking at a Geneva Bible or King James or a Douay-Rheims or NASB or NET Bible, they all say He killed 50,000 and 70 men.

    • 50,000 is a surprisingly large number of people, and I can understand why some scholars might balk at it⁷. But the word translated “thousand” and the word for “five or fifty” are in all the known Hebrew manuscripts as well as in the ancient Greek and Latin and Aramaic ones, so it must be taken seriously as God’s word.

    • Could there really have been that many Israelites living in Beth Shemesh? It seems unlikely, but that many could have come in from all over Israel (Willett).

    • Other scholars suggest that the 70 were Israelites and the 50,000 is how many Philistines had died.

    • Could a different translation make better sense of it? I think so. Matthew Henry mentioned in his 18^th century commentary – and David Tsumura explained in his recent commentary on 1 Samuel – that the Hebrew word translated “fifty” could instead be interpreted as a singular, meaning 5 or 1/5 instead of 50⁸. He also explained that the Hebrew word translated “thousand” can also legitimately be translated “clan⁹.” In this case it could be explaining how the number 70 came to be: perhaps the clan in Beth Shemesh had 350 men in it and a fifth of them died, totalling 70 deaths¹⁰.

• Any number of deaths is a tragedy. Think of the families ruined and the political upheaval of having all those leaders dead! Why such a severe punishment?

  • “The Philistims... were punished for their part, for their grosse rudenesse in profaning the Arke, and consecrating it as one of their cheife spoiles to their Idol, so making the great God inferiour to their abhominable inuention: this beeing a breach of the naturall and morall law, did not escape unpunished. But the other beeing a ceremoniall law, given only to the Israelites, not to come neere the Arke, or to gaze upon it, was given only unto them, the heathen were ignorant of it: and therefore therein the Lord requireth a stricter obed­ience at the hands of his owne people, then of the ignorant Gentiles.” ~Andrew Willett

  • Remember all the way back to the Garden of Eden: “We were all ruined by an ambition of forbidden knowledge. That which made this looking into the ark a great sin was that it proceeded from a very low and mean opinion of the ark. The familiarity they had with it upon this occasion bred contempt and irreverence. Perhaps they presumed upon their being priests; but the dignity of the ministerial office will be so far from excusing that it will aggravate a careless and irreverent treatment of holy things. They should, by their example, have taught others to keep their distance and look upon the ark with a holy awe. Perhaps they presumed upon the kind entertainment they had given the ark, and the sacrifices they had now offered to welcome it home with, for which they thought the ark was indebted to them, and they might be allowed to repay themselves with the satisfac­tion of looking into it. But let no man think that his service done for God will justify him in any instance of disrespect or irreverence towards the things of God.” ~Matthew Henry

  • God was teaching people to revere Him – and they sure enough did after that!

• The big rock there was used as a memorial to remind people for generations to come of the tragedy that occurred due to the lack of total respect shown to the LORD by His people.

• There is a play on words in the Hebrew text in v.18 which is lost in most English Bibles. The Hebrew word for “stone” is “EBEN,” and that is the first label used to describe this big rock in v.14, but after God killed so many people there, the label of the stone is changed in the Hebrew text in v.18 to “EBEL,” changing only the last letter of the Hebrew word, which changes the meaning of the word from “stone” to “mourning.”

  • The Geneva Bible, King James, New King James, and NET Bible render it “Abel,” following the Masoretic Hebrew and Latin Vulgate,

  • while the NAS, NIV, ESV, and CEV follow the Greek Septuagint and Chaldean Targums in rendering it “rock/stone.”

  • In this event, both labels were true: it was still a rock, and it became a place of mourning, and the rock reminded them as a witness of the tragic event that happened that day which made them fear God more.

Conclusion (vs. 20-21) “Who Can Stand Before This Holy God?”

• Malachi 3:2 prophecies the coming of Jesus, "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire... v.5 I will come near you for judgment; I will be a swift witness Against sorcerers, Against adulterers, Against per­jurers, Against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, And against those who turn away an alien—Because they do not fear Me," Says the LORD of hosts. (NKJV)

• The men of Bethshemesh saw the testimony of God’s judgment against the Philistines lying in gold figures on the rock, and they looked around at all the dead bodies of their relatives in the field and said, “Who is able to stand before this holy LORD God?”

  • This is certainly a statement of great awe, but it is not a statement of great faith.

  • Notice the word “this” (“this holy God”). They say it like they have other alternatives for gods: “This god Yahweh is too holy for us; let’s use another one instead that doesn’t challenge us so much, another one that tolerates a little disobedience and lets us indulge in evil from time to time.”

  • And so, much like the Philistines had done, the Levites of Beth Shemesh decided to move this dangerous God off to a safe distance where they wouldn’t feel threatened by Him.

  • “Kiriath-jearim is… about 15 miles east-northeast of Beth-shemesh… on a hill at the junction of the boundaries of Judah, Dan, and Benjmin.” ~Tsumura

  • “[T]hey might choose [Kiriath Jearim] because it was at a greater distance from the Philistines... and because it might be a place of greater [social] eminence and [military] strength, and besides lay in the way to Shiloh, whereby they might suppose it was intended to be had...” ~John Gill, 1766

  • The folks in Beth Shemesh spoke as thought it were a given that no one can stand before this holy LORD God. But that’s where the good news about Jesus comes in. Jesus did what none of us can do and lived a completely perfect life, doing only good without a single compromise with evil. The New Testament book of Hebrews explains how Jesus can - and does - stand before the holy God, the Father in heaven, interceeding for us and reconciling sinners with God.

1 Samuel 6 - Side-by side comparison of versions^A