1 Samuel 4:12

there ran a man of Benjamin Cp. 2 Samuel 18:19. The distance from Ebenezer to Shiloh was probably not more than twenty miles, so that a swift runner could easily arrive the same evening. Cp. to-dayin 1 Samuel 4:16.

There is a strange Jewish tradition that the man was Saul, who seized the tables of the law out of the hand of Goliath and fled!

out of the army Out of the battle-array, as in 1 Samuel 4:2.

with his clothes rent and with earth upon his head Signs of the deepest mourning. Cp. Joshua 7:6; 2 Samuel 1:2; Homer, Il.XVIII. 23, and an exact parallel in Virg. Aen. XII. 609 611, describing the mourning of Latinus on the suicide of his queen Amata:

"It scissa veste Latinus

Coniugis attonitus fatis urbisque ruina,

Canitiem immundo perfusam pulvere turpans."

"Bowed to the earth with woe on woe,

His consort dead, his town brought low,

The hapless king his raiment tears,

And soils with dust his silver hairs."