But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and struck them with tumors, even Ashdod and the territory thereof.
All Commentaries on 1 Samuel 5:6 Go To 1 Samuel 5
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Emerods. The particular disorder which attacked them, (Psalm lxxvii. 66,) is very uncertain. Some say it was the dysentery, or the fistula, or the venereal disease Eusebius believes that it was in punishment of their incontinency. It was very painful, and sometimes proved mortal, ver. 12. Aristophanes assures us that the Athenians were punished with a shameful disorder, because they had not received the mysteries of Bacchus with due respect; and they were ordered, by the oracle, to make and carry aloft some obscene figures, before they could obtain a cure. (Acharn. ii. 6.)
And in The remainder of this verse is not found in Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, Arabic, nor in many Greek and Latin copies. But it is conformable to the truth of history, since we read that figures of these animals were placed beside the ark, in memory of this event, chap. vi. 6.
Mice, or rats. Such vermin have often obliged people to abandon their country. (Pliny, viii. 28.)
Bellon. (ii. 78,) testifies that he saw, near Gaza, such multitudes, as to depopulate whole fields; and, if Providence had not caused the birds, called boudres, to destroy them, the people could have had no harvest.
