1883 Haydock Douay Rheims Bible

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I Samuel 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.

Psalm 77:66.

Emerods. The particular disorder which attacked them, (Psalm 77:66,) is very uncertain. Some say it was the dysentery, or the fistula, or the venereal disease, etc. 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. 2:6.) --- And in, etc. The remainder of this verse is not found in Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, Arabic, etc., 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, 1 Kings 6:6. --- Mice, or rats. Such vermin have often obliged people to abandon their country. (Pliny, [Natural History?] 8:28.) --- 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.