CHAP. VII. Vers. 1. And the first half of the second.
[Samuel 2] THE Ark setled in Kirjath-jearim, the City of the woods: to this the [Samuel 3] Psalmist speaketh, Psal. 132. 6. We heard of it at Ephratah, or at Shiloh [Samuel 4] in Ephraim: we found it in the fields of the wood; or at Kirjath-jearim: there an [Samuel 5] Eleazar looketh to it, when both the line of Eleazar and Ithamar are out of [Samuel 6] that service: And it came to pass while the Ark abode in Kirjath-jearim the time [Samuel 7] [Samuel 8] was long, for it was twenty years: This is not to be understood for the whole [Samuel 9] time that it was there, for it was above six and forty years there before David [Samuel 10] fetched it up, 2 Sam. 6. namely, thirty nine years of Samuel and Saul, and [Samuel 11] seven* 1.1 years of Davids reign in Hebron; but it is to be thus understood and construed, [Samuel 12] that the Ark was twenty years in Kirjath-jearim, before the people of Israel [Samuel 13] minded it or looked after it, but they followed and adhered to their former [Samuel 14] Idolatries and corruptions, and therefore it is said by Samuel afterward, vers. 3. [Samuel 15] [Samuel 16] If you do return unto the Lord, put away the strange gods Ashteroth from among [Samuel 17] you, &c. Their Idolatry and prophaneness was so deep rooted, having been so [Samuel 18] long and so customary with them, that neither the loss of the Ark, nor the [Samuel 19] slaughter of Israel had wrought upon them; but that twenty years together [Samuel 20] they are lost to the Ark, though the Ark were not then lost to them.