1 Samuel 6
The full text of 1 Samuel 6 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew. Free to read.
1 When the ark of the LORD had been in Philistine territory seven months,
2 the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, "What shall we do with the ark of the LORD? Tell us how we should send it back to its place."
3 They answered, "If you send the ark of the God of Israel away, do not send it back empty, but by all means send a guilt offering to him. Then you will be healed, and you will know why his hand has not been lifted from you."
4 The Philistines asked, "What guilt offering should we send to him?" They answered, "Five gold tumors and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers.
5 Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel's God. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land.
6 Why harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did? When he treated them harshly, did they not let the Israelites go so they could leave?
7 Now then, get a new cart ready, with two cows that have calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up.
8 Take the ark of the LORD and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way,
9 but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth-Shemesh, then the LORD has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us; it happened to us by chance."
10 So they did this. They took two such cows and hitched them to the cart and penned up their calves.
11 They placed the ark of the LORD on the cart, along with the chest containing the gold rats and the models of the tumors.
12 Then the cows went straight up toward Beth-Shemesh, keeping on the road and lowing all the way; they did not turn to the right or to the left. The rulers of the Philistines followed them as far as the border of Beth-Shemesh.
13 Now the people of Beth-Shemesh were harvesting their wheat in the valley, and when they looked up and saw the ark, they rejoiced at the sight.
14 The cart came to the field of Joshua of Beth-Shemesh, and there it stopped beside a large rock. The people chopped up the wood of the cart and sacrificed the cows as a burnt offering to the LORD.
15 The Levites took down the ark of the LORD, together with the chest containing the gold objects, and placed them on the large rock. That day the people of Beth-Shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the LORD.
16 The five rulers of the Philistines saw all this and returned that same day to Ekron.
17 These are the gold tumors the Philistines sent as a guilt offering to the LORD: one each for Ashdod, Gaza, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron.
18 And the gold rats were according to the number of all the Philistine towns belonging to the five rulers—the fortified towns and their country villages. The large rock on which the Levites set the ark of the LORD is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua of Beth-Shemesh.
19 But God struck down some of the men of Beth-Shemesh because they looked into the ark of the LORD, and he struck down seventy of them. The people mourned because the LORD had dealt them this heavy blow.
20 And the people of Beth-Shemesh asked, "Who can stand in the presence of the LORD, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?"
21 Then they sent messengers to the people of Kiriath Jearim, saying, "The Philistines have returned the ark of the LORD. Come down and take it up to your place."
Translation notes (6)
- 1 Samuel 6:3a 'Guilt offering' translates a term for reparation made to remove guilt; the Philistines apply an Israelite concept in their own way.
- 1 Samuel 6:4a The golden models represent the afflictions, an act of sympathetic magic intended to send the plague away with the images; 'rats' may also be translated as 'mice.'
- 1 Samuel 6:6a The Philistine advisers refer to the exodus: when God dealt severely with Egypt, the Egyptians finally released Israel; the warning is not to repeat Pharaoh's stubbornness.
- 1 Samuel 6:18a 'The large rock' follows a reading supported by the Septuagint and the parallel with verses 14-15; the standard Hebrew text here reads 'Great Abel' (a place name), which is evidently a corruption of 'great stone.'
- 1 Samuel 6:19a This number is one of the most difficult in the Hebrew Bible. The standard Hebrew text literally reads 'seventy men, fifty thousand men,' with no conjunction; many manuscripts and witnesses omit the fifty thousand, and a small town could not lose that many people. The lower figure of seventy is given here, with the fuller reading from the standard Hebrew text noted; the text is not changed further.
- 1 Samuel 6:19b 'Because they looked into the ark': some witnesses read 'because they did not rejoice when they looked on the ark.' The reason and the severity of the blow are not explained or softened here.
About this translation
The Trinity Bible Version (TBV) is Trinity Bible's own translation of Scripture, made directly from the original Hebrew rather than revised from an older English Bible. Completed in 2026, it is the most modern English Bible translation available, and it is exclusive to Trinity Bible. Reading the TBV here on the web is free — the full study edition, with original-language tools and notes on every verse, lives in the Trinity Bible app.
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