1 Samuel 5:6

6. Hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod Not only did Dagon suffer shame, but the persons and lands of his worshippers were visited with plagues.

Destroyed them Made them desolate and terror-stricken by fearful diseases on their bodies, and wasting devastation in their fields. The Hebrew word may be rendered, He caused them to be amazed, that is, by the fearful judgments with which he afflicted them.

Emerods There is some uncertainty as to the nature of the disease here indicated. The more proper English word is hemorrhoids, from the Greek αιμορροος , a flow of blood. Accordingly, Josephus and some English commentators understand it here to mean dysentery. Josephus says: “God sent a very destructive disease upon the city and country of Ashdod, for they died of the dysentery and flux, a sore distemper, that brought death upon them very suddenly; for before the soul could, as usual in easy deaths, be well loosed from the body, they brought up their entrails, and vomited up what they had eaten, and what was entirely corrupted by the disease.” But 1 Samuel 5:12 clearly shows that the disease was not necessarily fatal. A more plausible explanation is, that which makes the word mean bleeding piles, and this is favoured by the English and several ancient versions of 1 Samuel 5:9, where see note. The Hebrew word is the plural of עפל , a hill, and, used to designate some disease of the body, it would most naturally mean some rising or swelling of the flesh. Hence Gesenius, Furst, and Keil appropriately render the word by tumours or boils. In 1Sa 6:11 ; 1 Samuel 6:17, the word שׂחורים is used, whose root, according to Furst, means to glow, to burn, to kindle, and may therefore be properly rendered inflammatory tumours. The Masoretes have substituted this latter word in the keri for עפלים , perhaps, as some suggest, to make the reading more euphemistical. In 1 Samuel 5:9 the disease is spoken of as a breaking out, ( נשׂתר ,) an expression most naturally used of boils or tumours. We may safely conclude, therefore, that the word has essentially this sense. See further on 1 Samuel 5:9.

Ashdod and the coasts thereof These words are grammatically in apposition with them, and are added to indicate the extent of the plague. The Septuagint, evidently in anticipation of what is said in 1 Samuel 6:5, adds the following: “And in the midst of that region were produced mice, and there was a great confusion of death in the city.” Besides this, the Vulgate also has, “The villas and fields in the midst of that region burst up.” These are doubtless interpolations from other passages, though Thenius takes them as evidences of corruption in the Hebrew text.