1 Samuel 6:1 Commentary and Bible Study

The passage doesn’t specifically say this, but it would seem that, following God’s affliction on the people of Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron, no other towns would take the ark, and so the Philistines bundled it into the countryside to get it out of the cities, and as a result the Lord chose a plague of rats or mice to destroy the harvest, and reduced the area to famine. This went on for seven months, which was long enough to make the Philistines regret ever having taken it from the Israelites. ‘And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, What shall we do to the ark of the LORD? tell us wherewith we shall send it to his place.’ The priests’ answer was, ‘Yes, you have got to send it back to Israel, but don’t send it empty; send it with accompanying offerings.’ The offerings are not to be scoffed at, because although they are pretty disgusting – gold representations of the tumours they had suffered, and the rats sent among them, one for every lord of the Philistines, for they too had suffered and were under the same judgment – although the offerings are very pagan and very curious, they show an awareness of why these things had happened. The reasoning of the priests of the Philistines is this: we acknowledge that these diseases are sent from the God of Israel, and that he has brought these plagues upon us. It was an acknowledgement that God was angry with them in treating them this way, and they also knew that God required them to confess their fault in taking the ark, before he would lift his hand of judgment off them. The tumours and rats were to be made of gold, because their offering should cost them something, and because there must be no suggestion that God was at fault in treating them in this way. By making them of gold, they were saying that God had done the right thing in punishing them as he had, and were humbling themselves beneath his hand of punishment. Even pagans know that the right thing to do is to humble themselves before him and acknowledge he is righteous in all he does, whereas to resist God and to fight against him is to invite even more heavy punishments. God, they believed, would not their offering and the thinking that lay behind it. In verse 8 this is called a trespass offering, but it is not a blood sacrifice. It is a sacrifice consistent with works religion: man can make a payment to God to cover his sins. So that is why they propose, in their own twisted reasoning, this kind of offering.