1 Samuel 4:3

4:3 When the army¹ came back to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why did the Lord let us be defeated today by² the Philistines? Let’s take with us the ark of the covenant of the Lord from Shiloh. When it is with us, it will save us³ from the hand of our enemies.

1 Samuel 4:6

4:6 When the Philistines heard the sound of the shout, they said, “What is this loud shout in the camp of the Hebrews?” Then they realized that the ark of the Lord had arrived at the camp.

1 Samuel 4:13

4:13 When he arrived in Shiloh, Eli was sitting in his chair watching by the side of⁴ the road, for he was very worried⁵ about the ark of God. As the man entered the city to give his report,⁶ the whole city cried out.

1 Samuel 4:17-19

4:17 The messenger replied, “Israel has fled from⁷ the Philistines! The army has suffered a great defeat! Your two sons, Hophni and Phineas, are dead! The ark of God has been captured!”

4:18 When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli⁸ fell backward from his chair beside the gate. He broke his neck and died, for he⁹ was old and heavy. He had judged Israel for forty years.

4:19 His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phineas, was pregnant and close to giving birth. When she heard that the ark of God was captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she doubled over and gave birth. But her labor pains were too much for her.

1 Samuel 5:4

5:4 But when they got up early the following day, Dagon was again lying on the ground before the ark of the Lord. The head of Dagon and his two hands were sheared off and were lying at the threshold. Only Dagon’s body was left intact.¹⁰

1 Samuel 5:7

5:7 When the people¹¹ of Ashdod saw what was happening, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel should not remain with us, for he has attacked¹² both us and our god Dagon!”

1 Samuel 5:11

5:11 So they assembled¹³ all the leaders of the Philistines and said, “Get the ark of the God of Israel out of here! Let it go back to its own place so that it won’t kill us¹⁴ and our¹⁵ people!” The terror¹⁶ of death was throughout the entire city; God was attacking them very severely there.¹⁷

1 Samuel 6:3

6:3 They replied, “If you are going to send the ark of¹⁸ the God of Israel back, don’t send it away empty. Be sure to return it with a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and you will understand why his hand is not removed from you.”

1 Samuel 6:8

6:8 Then take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart, and put in a chest beside it the gold objects you are sending to him as a guilt offering. You should then send it on its way.

1 Samuel 6:15

6:15 The Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the chest that was with it, which contained the gold objects. They placed them near the big stone. At that time the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the Lord.

1 Samuel 6:18-19

6:18 The gold mice corresponded in number to all the Philistine cities of the five leaders, from the fortified cities to hamlet villages, to greater Abel,¹⁹ where they positioned the ark of the Lord until this very day in the field of Joshua who was from Beth Shemesh.

6:19 But the Lord²⁰ struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070²¹ of the men. The people grieved because the Lord had struck the people with a hard blow.

¹tn Or “people.”

²tn Heb “before.”

³tn Heb “and it will come in our midst and it will save.” After the cohortative (see “let’s take”), the prefixed verbal forms with the prefixed conjunction indicate purpose or result. The translation understands the ark to be the subject of the third masculine singular verbs, although it is possible to understand the Lord as the subject. In the latter case, one should translate, “when he is with us, he will save us.”

⁴tc Read with many medieval Hebrew mss, the Qere, and much versional evidence יַד (yad, “hand”) rather than MT יַךְ (yakh).

⁵tn Heb “his heart was trembling.”

⁶tn Heb “and the man came to report in the city.”

⁷tn Heb “before.”

¹⁰tn Heb “he”; the referent (Eli) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹¹tn Heb “the man.”

¹³tc Heb “only Dagon was left.” We should probably read the word גֵּו (gev, “back”) before Dagon, understanding it to have the sense of the similar word גְּוִיָּה (gÿviyyah, “body”). This variant is supported by the following evidence: The LXX has ἡ ῥάχις (Jh rJacis, “the back” or “trunk”); the Syriac Peshitta has wegusmeh (“and the body of”); the Targum has gupyeh (“the body of”); the Vulgate has truncus (“the trunk of,” cf. NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT). On the strength of this evidence the present translation employs the phrase “Dagon’s body.”

¹⁶tn Heb “men.”

¹⁷tn Heb “for his hand is severe upon.”

¹⁹tn Heb “and they sent and gathered.”

²⁰tn Heb “me.”

²¹tn Heb “my.”

²²tn Or “panic.”

²³tn Heb “the hand of God was very heavy there.”

²²tc The LXX and a Qumran ms add “the covenant of the Lord.”

²⁵tc A few Hebrew mss and the LXX read “villages; the large rock…[is witness] until this very day.”

²⁸tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

²⁹tc The number 50,070 is surprisingly large, although it finds almost unanimous textual support in the MT and in the ancient versions. Only a few medieval Hebrew mss lack “50,000,” reading simply “70” instead. However, there does not seem to be sufficient external evidence to warrant reading 70 rather than 50,070, although that is done by a number of recent translations (e.g., NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT). The present translation (reluctantly) follows the MT and the ancient versions here.