Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 4:10

"And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man to his tent: and there was a very great slaughter; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen." — 1 Samuel 4:10 (ASV)

And Israel was smitten. —The result was strictly in accordance with those immutable laws that have always guided the connection of Israel and their God-Friend.

As long as they clung to the invisible Preserver, served Him with their whole heart and soul, and kept themselves pure from the pollution of the idolatrous nations around them, so long was He among them, and so long would they be invincible.

But if, as in this instance, they chose to revel in impure joys and delight in the selfish, shameless lives of the idolatrous world around them, merely carrying the Ark on their shoulders with no memory in their hearts of Him whom the mercy-seat and the overshadowing cherubim of that Ark symbolized, then—to use the solemn words of the hymn of Asaph—Then God was wroth, and greatly abhorred Israel, and forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, and delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy’s hand (see Psalms 78:59-61, where the crushing defeat of Aphek and the signal victory of the Philistines is recounted in detail).