1 Samuel 5:6

But the hand of the Lord Rather, And. "The hand of the Lord" = the putting forth of His might. Chastisement now overtook the people as well as the god.

he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods A double calamity fell upon them (1) Their land was ravaged by a plague of mice. The present Heb. text leaves this to be inferred from ch. 1 Samuel 6:5, but the Sept. inserts here "And mice sprang up in the midst of their land, and there was a very deadly destruction in the city." This may be merely an inference from 1 Samuel 5:11 and 1 Samuel 6:5, but the numerous divergences of the Sept. from the existing Heb. text in chaps, 5 and 6 (making full allowance for obvious glosses and errors of transcription) seem to shew that the Greek translators employed a text which had not been subjected to the final revision which fixed our present Heb. text.

(2) Their bodies were attacked by a loathsome and painful disease, either (a) emerods = haemorrhoidsor bleeding piles; or more probably (b) boils, which are a characteristic symptom of the oriental plague. The latter explanation agrees better with the infectiousness and fatality of the scourge.

the coasts thereof = the bordersthereof. Coastis derived from costa, a rib, or side, and originally meant any border or frontier-line, not the sea-line only, cp. Joshua 1:4.