1 Samuel 6:9
6:9 But keep an eye on it. If it should go up by the way of its own border to Beth Shemesh, then he has brought this great calamity on us. But if that is not the case, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us; rather, it just happened to us by accident.”
1 Samuel 6:14-15
6:14 The cart was coming to the field of Joshua, who was from Beth Shemesh. It paused there near a big stone. Then they cut up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord.
6:15 The Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the chest that was with it, which contained the gold objects. They placed them near the big stone. At that time the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the Lord.
1 Samuel 6:18-19
6:18 The gold mice corresponded in number to all the Philistine cities of the five leaders, from the fortified cities to hamlet villages, to greater Abel, 1 where they positioned the ark of the Lord until this very day in the field of Joshua who was from Beth Shemesh.
6:19 But the Lord 2 struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070 3 of the men. The people grieved because the Lord had struck the people with a hard blow.
1 tc A few Hebrew mss and the LXX read “villages; the large rock…[is witness] until this very day.”
2 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
3 tc The number 50,070 is surprisingly large, although it finds almost unanimous textual support in the MT and in the ancient versions. Only a few medieval Hebrew mss lack “50,000,” reading simply “70” instead. However, there does not seem to be sufficient external evidence to warrant reading 70 rather than 50,070, although that is done by a number of recent translations (e.g., NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT). The present translation (reluctantly) follows the MT and the ancient versions here.