For the Israelites in the Lord's army at Ebenezer, the loss of the ark meant that their God had been vanquished. The final outrage for a captured god was to be paraded through a city and then placed in the victor's temple, as at Ashdod. The Israelites were to understand only later that the Lord had allowed this to happen, perhaps to show his displeasure with Eli's sons at Shiloh.

The battle between the deities in Ashdod's temple was not witnessed by any Philistine priest, but was fought at night. After the third night the Philistines realized which deity had been victorious. This realization was reinforced by the fact that the people of Ashdod were afflicted with "tumors," which, when linked to the Philistine remedy "five gold tumors and five gold mice" (1 Sam. 6:4), has been thought to have been the bubonic plague (McCarter 1980, 123; Lind 1980, 97).

This is the passage that I cited earlier and linked with the plague account in the Iliad (pp. 71-76). Note that the biblical writer describes this plague as coming from the "hand of the Lord" (1 Sam. 5:6). The Lord had used this means before to wreak havoc on an enemy (Mendenhall 1973, 106-8). When the Philistines learned that the Israelites had brought the ark of the covenant into their camp before battle, they said, "Woe to us! Who can deliver us from the power of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with every sort of plague in the wilderness" (1 Sam. 4:8). And after the plague of tumors had struck them, the Philistines wondered, "Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts?" (1 Sam. 6:6). The events in Egypt, where the Philistines had also been and had fought, were similar enough to the present plague to influence their response. God would deliver the ark as he had delivered Israel from Egypt (Lind 1980, 97-98).

"So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines. . . " (1 Sam. 5:8). The word used in reference to the Philistine rulers in this passage, in the Samson saga, and later in 1 Samuel 29:2 is seren (plural seranim), a word whose precise meaning remains unclear to philologists. Most scholars believe it to be a Philistine word with either a Greek origin or a hieroglyphic Hittite origin (McCarter 1980, 123; ISBE 3:158). Here again is another possible signpost on the quest to determine the origin of the Philistines.

The Philistine lords operated together when necessary, as we have seen in the Samson stories (Judg. 16). In 1 Samuel 5 the lords decided to send the ark from Ashdod to another Philistine site. We are not told their reasoning here, but it seems a strange decision, knowing, as they did, that the ark was the source of their problems. One commentator suggests that perhaps the ark traveled to Ashkelon and Gaza before arriving in Gath as reported in 1 Samuel 5:8 (McCarter 1980, 101). This is hinted at later perhaps in 1 Samuel 6:4. However, we are told plainly that "the hand of the Lord was against the city [Gath], causing a very great panic; he struck the inhabitants of the city, both young and old, so that tumors broke out on them" (1 Sam. 5:9). So the ark was sent on to Ekron.

Here the story builds to a climax, for the ark's notoriety had preceded its arrival. "As the ark of God was entering Ekron, the people of Ekron cried out, `They have brought the ark of the god of Israel around to kill us and our people'" (v. 10 NIV). The Ekronites did not want the ark to enter their city due to what had happened at its previous stopping points. Ironically, as seems evident today, it was not the ark that was spreading the plague but the bearers of the ark and those who accompanied it ("Beware of Greeks bearing gifts"). The Ekronites even accused the bearers of trying to kill them. Note the phrase us and our people. These words may reflect a city-state mentality as found in their former homes in the Aegean.

Recent excavating seasons at Ekron have brought to light several intriguing finds that may help locate the events of this story. Remember that the city of Ekron was surrounded at the time by a massive mudbrick wall nearly eleven feet thick. A gateway has been uncovered that may have been the location for the scene where the Ekronites tried to prevent the ark from entering the town. This Iron II gateway, probably covering an Iron I gateway, is on the southern side of the city, and directly north of it, in the center of the city, are the remains of some monumental buildings. Two of them, one on top of the other, are labeled building 351 and building 350. It is the upper one (350) that probably dates to the time of the ark story in 1 Samuel 5. Building 350 was constructed in the eleventh century B.C. with a four-foot-thick foundation of boulder-sized stones, suggesting to the excavators that the structure may have been multi-storied. The mudbrick walls above the foundation were plastered white. Excavators T. Dothan and Gitin believe that building 350 was either a temple or a palace/temple complex, due to its architecture and the finds within.

Like the temple in Qasile, this building had a plastered mudbrick bamah or platform, which in this case was in one of the three rooms to the west of the main hall. If the ark made it into the city and within this building, it would most likely have been placed in front of the bamah. Trude Dothan likens this bamah to others at Qasile and Mycenae and on Cyprus.

Among the more interesting finds from building 350 in Ekron are three bronze wheels, each with eight spokes. These, together with a couple of other bronze pieces, have been enough for Dothan and Gitin to suggest that they were part of a bronze cultic stand like those known from a twelfth-century site on Cyprus. The top of this stand would have supported a basin, and the stand itself would have been a smaller version of those made by King Hiram of Tyre for Solomon's temple in Jerusalem about one century later (1 Kings 7:27-37).

In another one of the rooms of this building a cache of unusual ceramic bottles was found. Some of the bottles were crushed; others were whole or were missing only the neck. The various decorative styles were similar to the Philistine bichrome style of the twelfth/eleventh century. A large, ivory, Egyptian earring was recovered in the same room.

In the third room of building 350 a beautiful, whole specimen of an iron knife, with an ivory handle and bronze rivets holding the handle in place, was found. The Philistines of the Bible were noted for their iron chariots and weapons. Near the knife lay a bronze linchpin, a pin that would have kept the wheel of a chariot in place. This third room also contained a small bamah, and on top if that was a lump of iron, the significance of which is not known. (Perhaps a gift of iron as in the Iliad?)

The entryway into the twenty-six-by-thirty-three-foot main hall of this building was on the north side, and on the north-south axis of the building are two pillar bases seven and a half feet apart. Earlier, in discussing the story of Samson at Gaza, I described a temple at Qasile for comparative purposes. Here now is a possible second example of a temple with pillars.

The main hall also contained a series of three hearths, each about three feet in diameter. A hearth was a common central feature of a megaron at Aegean sites such as Mycenae and Cyprus (see p. 86). The only other Philistine hearths uncovered in Palestine thus far are at Qasile. Each of these hearths built on top of one another was lined with a layer of stream-washed (wadi) pebbles that was covered with a thick layer of ash and charcoal containing a mixture of animal bones.

This hall may have been the location for the gathering of the Philistine lords mentioned in 1 Samuel 5:11: "They sent therefore and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, `Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it return to its own place, that it may not kill us and our people.'" Note the translation its own place. The Hebrew word there is maqom, a common word sometimes used to refer to a shrine or a bamah. This is a reference to the platform upon which the ark would rest in its own sanctuary. The Philistines realized who had been afflicting them and wished to make amends by returning the ark of the Lord to Israel (McCarter 1980, 124).

The Philistine lords decided on an immediate but appropriate response to the God of the ark, "For there was a deathly panic throughout the whole city. The hand of God was very heavy there; those who did not die were stricken with tumors, and the cry of the city went up to heaven" (vv. 11b-12). Exodus 2:23-24 records another cry to heaven, which God heard and answered. Here in 1 Samuel, we should not anticipate such a favorable response (McCarter 1980, 124). According to Mendenhall, the Philistines used diviners and priests to accomplish the following: "[1] a consultation of the gods through various kinds of specialized divination to ascertain the cause of the outbreak, usually identified as a moral or ethical delict, [2] a confession of sin, and [3] appropriate action as a propitiatory ritual in order to remove the cause of the wrath" (1973, 107).

First Samuel 6 reports all three activities:

Is it possible that the models of the mice and the tumors were crafted at Ekron? Kilns and other industrial installations have been uncovered at two different locations in the tell thus far. Near the gateway in the industrial area of the city a large installation with a crucible containing traces of silver was found. This installation was lined with hamra, a hard, red, rough, sandy plaster. This is solid evidence that some metal crafting was being done there during the early Iron Age I. A gold, double-coiled hair ring was also found in the area. Several kilns were uncovered in field I (the upper tell), including a well-preserved one. It is certainly possible that the models of the tumors and mice were crafted in one of these kilns.

From Ekron the ark of the covenant was drawn on a cart by cows up the Sorek Valley to Beth-shemesh. Ownership of this city was disputed, according to archaeological research and biblical references (Josh. 15:10 assigns it to Judah; Josh. 19:41 to Dan [Ir-shemesh]). According to 1 Samuel 6:8-15, it was then an Israelite town. Its tell has only one Iron Age I level, which contains much Philistine pottery. As has been noted, its material culture is indistinguishable from that of its neighbor Timnah. The contention over this city alerts one to the care required in trying to determine ethnicity of material cultural remains. At the time that the story of the ark took place, Beth-shemesh, whose name means literally "House of the Sun (god)," evidently was controlled by Israelites but had a Philistine presence (A. Mazar 1990, 312; Wright 1966, 74-76; T. Dothan 1982a, 50-51). Disaster struck there, just as in the Philistine cities where the ark had been, for quite a few inhabitants died, according to the 1 Samuel account. The plague probably killed those men as well, but in this case they were said to have died because they had "looked into the ark of the Lord" (1 Sam. 6:19 niv, RSV). Perhaps because Beth-shemesh did not appear to have priests present or perhaps because the people feared further judgment from the Lord, the ark was sent on to Kiriath-jearim, to remain there for some twenty years.