Wednesday Bible Study: Lost in translation

I have warned you that some weirdness goes down in 1 Samuel. Exactly how weird Chapter 6 is depends on whether you ' re reading the King James or the New International Version and kindred later translations. The Philistines realize that holding on to the Ark is probably not a good idea so they ask their priests how to appease Yahweh. In the KJV they propose sending the Ark back accompanied by 5 golden mice and 5 golden hemorrhoids. In the NIV it ' s 5 golden rats and 5 golden tumors. The tumors seem strange enough but it ' s hard to imagine what a golden hemorrhoid would look like. (I suspect the Hebrew word encompasses both mice and rats, so take your pick.)What happens to the gold sculptures is not revealed. Some Levites grab them, but apparently the high priesthood is currently vacant so one wonders who eventually gets them. As for the number of Beth Shemeshites who die for looking into the ark, KJV has 50,070, NIV has 70. As the footnote states, manuscripts differ on this but the population of the town in the early iron age could not have been more than a few hundred. Also, 50,070 is a very strange number, so 70 seems more plausible. However, it would be a strange error indeed to accidentally add 50,000 to the total! The footnote does not state what the Masoretic text has.  FYI Beth Shemesh was a town founded by Canaanites and named after their sun God. Apparently Hebrews took it over at some point, but kept the name. It was destroyed by Sennacharib in 701 B.C.,...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs