What Does 1 Samuel 5:1 Mean?

(1) **The Philistines took the ark of God.**—The sacred writer concerns himself after the battle of Aphek only with the future of the Ark of the Covenant, and says nothing of the fate of Shiloh after the rout of the Israelites and the death of the high priest. We can, however, from Psalm 78:60-64, and two passages in Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:12; Jeremiah 26:9), complete the story of the sanctuary city after the death of Eli. After the victory of Aphek, the Philistines, flushed with success, probably at once marched on Shiloh, where, from the words of the above quoted Psalm, they seem to have revenged themselves for past injuries by a terrible massacre, and then to have razed the sacred buildings of the city to the ground. The awful fate of the priestly city seems to have become a proverb in Israel. “This house shall be like Shiloh,” wrote Jeremiah, hundreds of years later, and “this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant.” Yet, in spite of this crushing blow, the national life of the Hebrew people was by no means exterminated; we shall soon hear of its revival under happier auspices. There were others in Israel like Samuel, who, as we have seen, with all their hearts trusted in that Lord who, “when Israel was a child, then He loved him;” others like that weak but still righteous judge Eli, who for one great weakness had paid so awful a penalty; many others, like the wife of Phinehas, the wicked priest, and Elkanah and Hannah, the pious father and mother of Samuel, who dwelt in “Ramah of the Watchers.”