Could this really have happened?

I Samuel 5 and 6 always seemed a little past bizarre to me: the Philistines take the holy Ark as spoils of battle, get smitten by death, mice, and "emerods", send the ark back home with little golden mice and emerods to make up for being meanies. And then when the ark got back to the Israelites, they set it on a stone, "19 And he smote the men of Bethshemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the LORD had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter.""Not quite plausible" seems a little charitable.

OK. I Samuel 4-6 or so is a complete passage. It's about a little war, and maybe some bubonic plague, and the death of 50,070 men from one village for looking in a box. And it's sublimely ridiculous.Interpret, ye literalists, until I quit giggling about golden images of hemorrhoids.