a. The hand of the LORD was heavy on the people of Ashdod: They would not listen when God struck down their statue of Dagon; they just set it up again. When we close our ears to God, He often finds another way to speak to us, and we may not like the second way.
b. He ravaged them and struck them with tumors: What were these tumors? Older commentators often describe them as hemorrhoids, and newer commentators often describe them as signs of the bubonic plague.
i. “According to the Rabbins, swellings on the anus.” (Keil and Delitzsch) “Beating Dagon upon his own dunghill, and smiting his worshippers on their hinder parts, paying their posteriors, as men used to deal with puny boys.” (Trapp) “The word apholim, from aphal, to be elevated, probably means the disease called the bleeding piles, which appears to have been accompanied with dysentery, bloody flux, and ulcerated anus.” (Clarke)
ii. “Of the numerous suggested identifications of the specific malady that struck the Philistines, bubonic plague remains the most likely: ‘It is a disease characterized by an epidemic occurrence, by the appearance of tumours, by the production of panic amongst the affected population, by a high mortality rate, and by an association with mice or rats.’” (Wilkinson cited in Youngblood)
iii. The Septuagint adds this to verse six: “And the cities and the fields of all that region burst up, and mice were produced, and there was the confusion of a great death in the city.” Some think this was originally in the Hebrew text, and explains why golden images of rats were included in the return of the ark (1 Samuel 6:5).
iv. In Legends of the Jews, Ginzberg is much more graphic: “This new plague consisted in mice crawling forth out of the earth, and jerking the entrails out of the bodies of the Philistines while they eased nature. If the Philistines sought to protect themselves by using brass vessels, the vessels burst at the touch of the mice, and, as before, the Philistines were at their mercy.”
c. Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried away to Gath: Instead of submitting to the God of Israel, they decided to get rid of Him. Yet we can’t get rid of God. We can do things to push Him away but even the best of those attempts are temporary. We must all face God and stand before Him one day. (Guzik)
You can run but you can’t hide!
”But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And he said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me.”“ Jonah 1:3, 12 NKJV
The Philistines had two warnings but paid it no mind and just like Jonah we can run but we can’t hide from God! There will come a day when every knee will bow before Jesus.
The question we need to ask ourselves is, will you be counted with the goats or the sheep?j
Blessings
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