1 Samuel 5

6–12 While Dagon’s hands lay broken, the LORD’s hand²⁷ remained active. The Lord sent a plague upon the people of Ashdod. The specific plague was the bubonic plague, a plague that is carried by rats (1 Samuel 6:4–5) and which causes the lymph nodes of infected humans to swell up like tumors (verse 6). As the people of Ashdod began to get sick and die, they realized it was Israel’s God who was causing their distress; He was angry because His ark had been taken (verse 7). They asked the rulers of the other Philistine cities what to do.

The rulers evidently didn’t believe that Israel’s God had sent the plague, so they said the ark should be sent to Gath, another of the five Philistine cities (verse 8). But when the plague came upon Gath and then upon Ekron, the next city the ark was sent to (verse 10), the rulers of the Philistines finally wised up. Instead of the Philistines overpowering God, God was overpowering them! It turned out that they couldn’t manipulate or control God any more than the Israelites could.