Meditation Points:
- The superstitious parading of religious art was not invented by early Christian heretics (1 Samuel 4:3). Nor did it stop with them.
- At first the Philistines, too, believed some great power was inherent in the gold-covered box; but (at least) they discovered that without God, even members of the right group can do nothing (John 15:5).
- Ichabod-no glory. Yes, the glorious ark of the covenant had been captured by the Philistines; and the glorious protector husband (and his father) had died. But the God of Glory had long since departed and left Israel to its own devices. Like Samson (Judges 16:20), the nation shook itself, but didn’t know that God was nowhere around.
- The Philistines started their own superstitious custom of not stepping on the threshold of Dagon’s temple (1 Samuel 5:4-5).
- If emerods are “hemorrhoids” or another painful, bloody disease, we can understand why the men of Ashdod were quick to move the ark (1 Samuel 5:7) and why the men of Gath wanted to be rid of it, too (1 Samuel 5:10); and why the men of Ekron demanded that it be taken away from their city (1 Samuel 5:11). One might think it was a container of nuclear waste.
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