Verse 18
18. Both of fenced cities, and of country villages From which it appears that many more images of the mice were sent than of the boils.
Perhaps the plague of mice had marred the whole land, while that of boils was confined to the places where the ark had been. This statement is not a contradiction of 1 Samuel 6:4, as Thenius asserts, but additional information which the writer paused not there to record.
Even unto the great stone of Abel ועד אבל , and unto Abel. Instead of אבל , Abel, two codices of Kennicott and one of De Rossi read אבן , a stone, as in 1 Samuel 6:14-15, and this reading is sustained by the Septuagint and Chaldaic versions, and is most probably the true one. If, now, we simply change the pointing of עד , unto, to עד , a witness, we relieve the latter part of this verse of all the obscurity that clings to it in the English version. Thus amended it reads: And a witness is the great stone whereon they set down the ark of the Lord unto this day, in the field of Joshua, the Beth-shemite; that is, the stone is a witness unto this day of the facts related in 1 Samuel 6:14-18. This construction has the sanction of Thenius and Keil.
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