I Samuel 5-8

1 Sam 5

The Philistines take the Ark back to their country and place it next to an idol of Dagon. They next day, Dagon is facedown on the ground. They reset Dagon and the next day, Dagon is facedown on the ground again, but his arms and head have broken off as well.

Meanwhile, the local population starts getting plague of something. The French Bible says they got hemorrhoids, but the various English translations say it was tumors. Either way, the population gets scared and they decide to send it Gath. At Gath, an outbreak of tumors/hemorrhoids happens. The people of Gath decide to send it to Escron. Before it even arrives there, the people start getting tumors/hemorrhoids. So, they decide it send back to the Israelites.

1 Sam 6

The Ark has been with the Philistines for 7 months.

The Philistines send the Ark back with a guilt offering of 5 golden tumors/hemorrhoids and 5 golden rats (the French Bible said mice). The guilt offering represents the plagues, so it appears a plague of rats ravaged the land along with tumors/hemorrhoids. However, later on it says that the rats represent the areas surrounding the 5 main Philistine cities.

They put the Ark on a cart with oxen and let the oxen go wherever they wanted. The oxen take the Ark to an Israelite city, Beth-shemesh.

At Beth-shemesh, the people rejoice when the Ark arrives and sacrifice the cows. They were harvesting wheat, so that means the fall festivals were approaching. So, the Ark is back for the fall festivals. Yay.

However, in a scene reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark, 70 people die at Beth-shemesh because they looked into the Ark.

1 Sam 7

The Ark is moved to Kiriah-jeream where it stays for 20 years and the Israelites feel that God abandoned them.

Samuel leads a movement to get rid of their idols. He also gets them to assemble their army by Mispah. Here, Samuel is recognized as judge of the Israelites.

Meanwhile, the Philistines here of the army by Mispah, so they come and attack. God speaks with thunder and confuses the Philistines. The Israelites defeat the Philistines and recover some of the cities that had been taken by the Philistines.

Samuel remains judge for the remainder of his life. He travels around the country setting up court in various cities to hear the cases.

1 Sam 8

Samuel gets older and his 2 sons do not follow in his example. Rather, they are greedy judges. So, the Israelites request a king. Uh oh. Samuel has even their judge for a long time and now they want a king.

God tells Samuel that it is in fact God that they are rejecting, not Samuel. For after all, God selected among the people who should be judge. There was no dynastic line. Here though, their complaint and solution does not make sense. They are concerned that Samuel's sons are greedy and do not have the same heart as Samuel. So, they request a king. This would not solve the problem as a king would have a son that could easily be corrupt, but this would actually be worse because now this son is king.

I think this why Samuel warns them. He warns them with various examples how a king could be corrupt and take away their daughters and property for his own use.

But they still want a king. The advantage of a king is that he would leave them into battle. I suppose Samuel did not do that.

God tells Samuel that they can have a king. Yay!