1 Kings 5:6
And the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the Azotians, and he destroyed them, and afflicted Azotus and the coasts thereof with emerods. And in the villages and fields in the midst of that country, there came forth a multitude of mice, and there was the confusion of a great mortality in the city.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Aggravata est autem manus Domini super Azotios, et demolitus est eos : et percussit in secretiori parte natium Azotum, et fines ejus. Et ebullierunt villæ et agri in medio regionis illius, et nati sunt mures et facta est confusio mortis magnæ in civitate.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ἐβαρύνθη χεὶρ Κυρίου ἐπὶ Ἄζωτον καὶ ἐπήγαγεν αὐτοῖς, καὶ ἐξέζεσεν αὐτοῖς εἰς τὰς ναῦς, καὶ μέσον τῆς χώρας αὐτῆς ἀνεφύησαν μύες· καὶ ἐγένετο σύνχυσις θανὰτου μεγάλη ἐν τῇ πόλει.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַתִּכְבַּ֧ד יַד יְהוָ֛ה אֶל הָאַשְׁדּוֹדִ֖ים וַיְשִׁמֵּ֑ם וַיַּ֤ךְ אֹתָם֙ בעפלים אֶת אַשְׁדּ֖וֹד וְאֶת גְּבוּלֶֽיהָ
Haydock's commentary
Emerods. The particular disorder which attacked them, (Psalm lxxvii. 66,) is very uncertain. Some say it was the dysentery, or the fistula, or the venereal disease, &c. Eusebius believes that it was in punishment of their incontinency. It was very painful, and sometimes proved mortal, ver. 12. Aristophanes assures us that the Athenians were punished with a shameful disorder, because they had not received the mysteries of Bacchus with due respect; and they were ordered, by the oracle, to make and carry aloft some obscene figures, before they could obtain a cure. (Acharn. ii. 6.)
And in, &c. The remainder of this verse is not found in Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, Arabic, &c., nor in many Greek and Latin copies. But it is conformable to the truth of history, since we read that figures of these animals were placed beside the ark, in memory of this event, chap. vi. 6.
Mice, or rats. Such vermin have often obliged people to abandon their country. (Pliny, [Natural History?] viii. 28.)
Bellon. (ii. 78,) testifies that he saw, near Gaza, such multitudes, as to depopulate whole fields; and, if Providence had not caused the birds, called boudres, to destroy them, the people could have had no harvest.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXXVIII
33. “And He smote His enemies in the hinder parts” ( ver. 66 ): those, to wit, who were rejoicing that they were able to take His Ark: for they were smitten in their back-parts. Which seemeth to me to be a sign of that punishment, wherewith a man will be tortured, if he shall have looked back upon things behind; which, as saith the Apostle, he ought to value as dung. For they that do so receive the Testament of God, as that they put not off from them the old vanity, are like the hostile nations, who did place the captured Ark of the Testament beside their own idols. And yet those old things even though these be unwilling do fall: for “all flesh is hay, and the glory of man as the flower of hay. The hay hath dried up, and the flower hath fallen off:” but the Ark of the Lord “abideth for everlasting,” to wit, the secret testament of the kingdom of Heaven, where is the eternal Word of God. …