1 Samuel 6

1 in the country. Here the LXX adds, “their land swarmed with mice.” The Ark, having been sent away in terror from the cities, is supposed to have been left in the open country, which was then wasted by a large increase of mice.

4 five golden mice. The ancient heathen used to consecrate to their gods memorials of their deliverance representing the evils from which they were freed.

12 turned not aside. That two kine, which had never before been under the yoke, should draw quietly and keep the road without a driver, neither halting nor turning aside; and that while lowing for their calves, to which natural instinct would have led them to return, they should be nevertheless urged forward by a stronger impulse to the very place mentioned by the Philistines, and should there stop, was clearly miraculous, and would tend the more deeply to impress upon the minds of the Philistines the lessons taught them by the plagues.

14 a great stone. Suitable to be used as an altar, and pointed out for this purpose by the halting of the kine.

15. And the Levites took down. Or, “For the Levites had taken down.” Beth-shemesh was one of the priests’ towns (Josh. xxi. 16).

18 of country villages. As the fields had suffered severely from the mice, they contributed their share to the trespass-offering.

Abel. For the word “Abel,” some Hebrew manuscripts, with the Septuagint and Chaldee, read “Aben,” signifying a stone. (So R.V.) This agrees with vers. 14, 15; and renders the insertion of the words “stone of” unnecessary. Then, putting a full stop after “villages,” the rest may be read, “And the great stone on which they set the Ark of Jehovah still stands,” etc.

19 they had looked into the ark of the Lord. This was to gratify an irreverent curiosity respecting things which God had thought fit to conceal. The Septuagint reads, “The sons of Jeconiah did not rejoice along with the men of Beth-shemesh when they saw the ark of the Lord, and he smote of them seventy men.”

fifty thousand and threescore and ten. “Fifty thousand” is clearly a copyist’s error. “Probably the threescore and ten is all that was originally in the text” (W. G. Blaikie in Expositor’s Bible). Bethshemesh was but a small town or village.