“And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, What meaneth the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews? And they understood that the ark of the LORD was come into the camp.”
King James Version (KJV)
4:4 Bring the ark - This they should not have done without asking counsel of God.
4:5 Shouted - From their great joy and confidence of success. So formal Christians triumph in external privileges and performances: as if the ark in the camp would bring them to heaven, tho' the world and the flesh reign in the heart.
4:7 Heretofore - Not in our times; for the fore - mentioned removals of the ark were before it came to Shiloh.
4:8 Wo, &c. - They secretly confess the Lord to be greater than their gods, and yet presume to oppose him. Wilderness - They mention the wilderness, not as if all the plagues of the Egyptians came upon them in the wilderness, but because the last and sorest of all, which is therefore put for all, the destruction of Pharaoh and all his host, happened in the wilderness, namely, in the Red - sea, which having the wilderness on both sides of it, may well be said to be in the wilderness. Altho' it is not strange if these Heathens did mistake some circumstance in relation of the Israelitish affairs, especially some hundreds of years after they were done.