o Years.

From The Death Of Eli To The Death Of Saul.

CHAPTER 1. The Destruction That Came Upon The Philistines, And Upon
Their Land, By The Wrath Of Go On Account Of Their Having Carried
The Ark Away Captive; And After What Manner They Sent It Back To The
Hebrews.

1. When the Philistines had taken the ark of the Hebrews captive, as I
said a little before, they carried it to the city of Ashdod, and put it
by their own god, who was called Dagon, [1] as one of their spoils; but
when they went into his temple the next morning to worship their god,
they found him paying the same worship to the ark, for he lay along, as
having fallen down from the basis whereon he had stood: so they took him
up, and set him on his basis again, and were much troubled at what had
happened; and as they frequently came to Dagon and found him still lying
along, in a posture of adoration to the ark, they were in very great
distress and confusion. At length God sent a very destructive disease
upon the city and country of Ashdod, for they died of the dysentery or
flux, a sore distemper, that brought death upon them very suddenly; for
before the soul could, as usual in easy deaths, be well loosed from
the body, they brought up their entrails, and vomited up what they had
eaten, and what was entirely corrupted by the disease. And as to the
fruits of their country, a great multitude of mice arose out of the
earth and hurt them, and spared neither the plants nor the fruits. Now
while the people of Ashdod were under these misfortunes, and were not
able to support themselves under their calamities, they perceived that
they suffered thus because of the ark, and that the victory they had
gotten, and their having taken the ark captive, had not happened for
their good; they therefore sent to the people of Askelon, and desired
that they would receive the ark among them. This desire of the people
of Ashdod was not disagreeable to those of Askelon, so they granted
them that favor. But when they had gotten the ark, they were in the same
miserable condition; for the ark carried along with it the disasters
that the people of Ashdod had suffered, to those who received it from
them. Those of Askelon also sent it away from themselves to others: nor
did it stay among those others neither; for since they were pursued by
the same disasters, they still sent it to the neighboring cities; so
that the ark went round, after this manner, to the five cities of the
Philis