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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Samuel 6:15 - 6:15
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1Sa 6:15 contains a supplementary remark, therefore הֹורִידוּ is to be translated as a pluperfect. After sacrificing the cart, with the cows, as a burnt-offering to the Lord, the inhabitants of Bethshemesh gave a further practical expression to their joy at the return of the ark, by offering burnt-offerings and slain-offerings in praise of God. In the burnt-offerings they consecrated themselves afresh, with all their members, to the service of the Lord; and in the slain-offerings, which culminated in the sacrificial meals, they sealed anew their living fellowship with the Lord. The offering of these sacrifices at Bethshemesh was no offence against the commandment, to sacrifice to the Lord at the place of His sanctuary alone. The ark of the covenant was the throne of the gracious presence of God, before which the sacrifices were really offered at the tabernacle. The Lord had sanctified the ark afresh as the throne of His presence, by the miracle which He had wrought in bringing it back again. - In 1Sa 6:17 and 1Sa 6:18 the different atoning presents, which the Philistines sent to Jehovah as compensation, are enumerated once more: viz., five golden boils, one for each of their five principal towns (see at Jos 13:3), and “golden mice, according to the number of all the Philistian towns of the five princes, from the fortified city to the village of the inhabitants of the level land” (perazi; see at Deu 3:5). The priests had only proposed that five golden mice should be sent as compensation, as well as five boils (1Sa 6:4). But the Philistines offered as many images of mice as there were towns and villages in their five states, no doubt because the plague of mice had spread over the whole land, whereas the plague of boils had only fallen upon the inhabitants of those towns to which the ark of the covenant had come. In this way the apparent discrepancy between 1Sa 6:4 and 1Sa 6:18 is very simply removed. The words which follow, viz., וגו עָלֶיהָ הִגִּיחוּ עֲשֶׁר, “upon which they had set down the ark,” show unmistakeably, when compared with 1Sa 6:14 and 1Sa 6:15, that we are to understand by הַגְּדֹולָה אָבֵל the great stone upon which the ark was placed when it was taken off the cart. The conjecture of Kimchi, that this stone was called Abel (luctus), on account of the mourning which took place there (see 1Sa 6:19), is extremely unnatural. Consequently there is no other course left than to regard אבל as an error in writing for אֶבֶן, according to the reading, or at all events the rendering, adopted by the lxx and Targum. But וְעַד (even unto) is quite unsuitable here, as no further local definition is required after the foregoing הַפְּרָי כֹּפֶר וְעַד, and it is impossible to suppose that the Philistines offered a golden mouse as a trespass-offering for the great stone upon which the ark was placed. We must therefore alter וְעַד into וָעֵד: “And the great stone is witness (for וְעֵד in this sense, see Gen 31:52) to this day in the field of Joshua the Bethshemeshite,” sc., of the fact just described.