1 Samuel 4:3
Context4:3 When the army 1 came back to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why did the Lord let us be defeated today by 2 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 us 3 from the hand of our enemies.
1 Samuel 4:6
Context4:6 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
Context4:13 When he arrived in Shiloh, Eli was sitting in his chair watching by the side of 4 the road, for he was very worried 5 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
Context4:17 The messenger replied, “Israel has fled from 7 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, Eli 8 fell backward from his chair beside the gate. He broke his neck and died, for he 9 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
Context5:4 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
Context5:7 When the people 11 of Ashdod saw what was happening, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel should not remain with us, for he has attacked 12 both us and our god Dagon!”
1 Samuel 5:11
Context5:11 So they assembled 13 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 us 14 and our 15 people!” The terror 16 of death was throughout the entire city; God was attacking them very severely there. 17
1 Samuel 6:3
Context6:3 They replied, “If you are going to send the ark of 18 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
Context6:8 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
Context6:15 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
Context6:18 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 Lord 20 struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070 21 of the men. The people grieved because the Lord had struck the people with a hard blow.


[4:3] 3 tn 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.”
[4:13] 4 tc Read with many medieval Hebrew
[4:13] 5 tn Heb “his heart was trembling.”
[4:13] 6 tn Heb “and the man came to report in the city.”
[4:18] 10 tn Heb “he”; the referent (Eli) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[5:4] 13 tc 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.”
[5:7] 17 tn Heb “for his hand is severe upon.”
[5:11] 19 tn Heb “and they sent and gathered.”
[5:11] 23 tn Heb “the hand of God was very heavy there.”
[6:3] 22 tc The LXX and a Qumran
[6:18] 25 tc A few Hebrew
[6:19] 28 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the
[6:19] 29 tc 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