Musings in Samuel (9)

“Now the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod.” (1 Samuel 5:1).

“After they had brought it [the Ark] around, the hand of Yahweh was against the city [Gath] with very great confusion; and He smote the men of the city, both young and old, so that tumors broke out on them.” (1 Samuel 5:9). (Keil and Delitzsch notes, “Jehovah smote the people of the city, small and great, so that boils broke out upon their hinder parts.” (Italics mine – what a picture!).

“And the men who did not die were smitten with tumors and the cry of the city went up to heaven.” (1 Samuel 5:12).

What do we have here? There are a whole lot of tumors going on; Ashdod has tumors (verse 6), Gath has tumors (verse 9), and apparently there aren’t any other cities volunteering to host the Ark and have their own tumors. Furthermore, the poor folks can’t even sit down to talk about what to do because the tumors are “upon their hinder parts” to quote Hebrew scholars Keil and Delitzsch – now there is a pretty picture; howbeit a picture probably not portrayed in an illustrated Bible for children.

In addition to the tumors, there is a “confusion” that envelopes the people, “a very great confusion” (verse 9). I suppose tumors would drive folks to distraction – in fact, the confusion is “deadly” (verse 10). The hand of God is “very heavy” (verse 11).

As bad as things are for the Philistines, they will be perhaps worse for the Israelites when the Ark is returned – something we will touch on again in the next chapter. Later, when David is King and wants to bring the Ark up to Jerusalem, David will learn a similar lesson.

Yahweh is sending the Philistines a message that He is above all gods, including their gods. Just as they didn’t flee in terror when Israel brought the Ark into battle (1 Samuel 4:9), so we’ll see in Chapter 6 that they thought about what was happening (6:9) and decided to see if these calamities were coincidental or whether Yahweh really was judging them. I think we’ve got to give the Philistines credit for both courage and thoughtfulness – it must be hard to be thoughtful when you have boils on your hinder parts.

I think God, in the midst of His judgement, is also showing His mercy to the Philistines. After all, God could have allowed the Philistines to remain obstinate. “The cry of the city went up to heaven.” Yes, this could just be saying that they were making a lot of noise, but I imagine that God heard them and took pity on them – otherwise they would have perished in their confusion and pain.

The Philistines were not held to the same standard in their handling of the Ark that the Israelites were, for to whom much is given much is required. When the children of the world handle the things of God they do so in ignorance…and at times arrogance. Our Father is always just and He dispenses His justice according to His perfect Nature – we may not understand all of His ways or the depths of His wisdom, but we can always trust Him.

Those who make idols do not stop and think that they are worshipping things that they’ve made themselves – or had made for them. The material things we worship, the possessions, the philosophies, the transient values, the things we build, the positions we covet…all of these ideas and values and things originated with us…and yet we worship them…usually we arrogantly worship them.

Our Father will bring the wisdom of mankind to nothing (1 Corinthians 1:18 – 31); professing ourselves to be wise we have become fools (Romans 1:18- 32). See also Isaiah 44:9 – 20 for one of many depictions in Scripture of the folly of idolatry.

Unlike the Philistines, our generation persists in its folly, we insist in pursuing our own self-destruction. We are destroying ourselves, we are destroying animals, we are destroying our environment – we are pulling God’s wonderful creation down around us and upon us. We worship the dollar, the Euro, the yen…everything has its price…even the souls of men and women and children. Our idols fall down and we prop them back up (1 Samuel 5:3 – 4); they fall again and we prop them back up again. Unlike the Philistines we persist in our arrogance, in our stupidity.

It seems we are examples of having a strong delusion sent to us, so that we would believe what is false, since we did not believe the truth but took pleasure in wickedness (2 Thessalonians 2:11 – 12).

We should be on our knees…we aren’t…even the Philistines cried out to heaven.