Mouse plague. Photographer: Pestbrigade. Licensed (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0)
Plague of mice. Photo by Pestbrigade. License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (image cropped and reversed).

About…
mice in the Bible

Hebrew: עַכְבָּר —transliteration: akhbar —meaning: a mouse, probably field mouse or dormouse —occurrences: 5 (in the books of Leviticus, Samuel, and Isaiah)

Mice are mentioned in a book of Samuel.

Plague of Ashdod

The Philistines took the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites, and brought it to their temple of Dagon, and then to various Philistine cities. As a result, God sent a punishment on them that included a plague of mice and deadly disease.

So you shall make likenesses of your tumors and likenesses of your mice that bring the land to ruin, and you shall give glory to the God of Israel; perhaps He will ease His hand from you, your gods, and your land.

Then they said, “What shall be the guilt offering which we shall return to Him?” And they said, “Five golden tumors and five golden mice according to the number of the lords of the Philistines, for one plague was on all of you and on your lords. —1 Samuel 6:4-5

Leviticus and Isaiah

In Leviticus and `Isaiah the word akhbar might be used generically, and include similar creatures such as the rat, the jerboa (Mus jaculus), hamster (Cricetus), which, though declared to be unclean animals, were eaten by the Arabs and the Bedouins.

Now these are to you the unclean among the swarming things which swarm on the earth: the mole and the mouse and the great lizard in its kinds —Leviticus 11:29

“Those who sanctify and purify themselves to go to the gardens,
Following one in the center,
Who eat swine’s flesh, detestable things, and mice,
Will come to an end altogether,” declares Yahweh. —Isaiah 66:17 LSB

God “laid waste” the people of Ashdod by the terrible plague of field-mice, which are like locusts in their destructive effects (1 Samuel 6:4, 11, 18).

Sennacherib’s Assyrian army

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus accounts for the destruction of the army of King Sennacherib noted in 2 Kings 19:35 by claiming that in the night thousands of mice invaded the camp and gnawed through the bow-strings, quivers, and shields, and thus left the Assyrians helpless.

Herodotus’ story is in contradiction to Scripture which clearly says,

Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it.

By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the LORD.

For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake.

And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. —2 Kings 19:32-36 KJV

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Article Version: August 23, 2024