Then said they, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden emerods, and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines: for one plague was on you all, and on your lords.
Five golden emerods. Votive or thank offerings were commonly made by the pagan in prayer for, or gratitude after, deliverance from lingering or dangerous disorders, in the form of metallic (generally silver) models or images of the diseased parts of the body. This is common still in Roman Catholic countries, as well as in the temples of the Hindus and other modern pagan.
Five golden mice. This animal is supposed by some to be the jerboa, or jumping mouse of Syria and Egypt (Bochart); by others, to be the short-tailed field-mouse, which often swarms in prodigious numbers, and commits great ravages in the cultivated fields of Palestine. Images of the destroyers were also formed to protect against the thing injuring; just as may be seen in Palestine at the present day, images of the eye to protect against 'the evil eye.' For the same reason, images of emerods and mice were made by the Philistines and sent with the ark. Apollonius ('Tyanaeus') is said to have swept off the flies from Antioch and storks from Byzantium by figures (images) of these objects made while certain constellations were in the ascendant. In many cases Pliny ('Maimonides,' translated by Townley, p. 118) notices the images of eagles and beetles carved on emeralds; and Marcellus Empiricus ('Maimonides,' translated by Townley, p. 118) speaks of the virtue of these beetles for diseases of the eye ('Palestine, Past and Present,' p. 261).