What does 1 Samuel 5:12 mean?

Reading these verses might cause one to ask, how does someone die from panic? Some among the people of Ekron did just that. History shows that during times of disease, disaster, or sudden catastrophe, people often react with terror. This can lead to self-destructive behaviors, increased violence, fear-based decision-making, and so forth. Some casualties of disasters are harmed not by the disaster, itself, but by how they or others respond to it. This panic seems to be more than the terror-stricken response of the people to presence of the ark and the plague of tumors that has followed it from city to city (1 Samuel 5:6–11). The panic itself was apparently part of God's "heavy hand" against the Philistines.

The panic and tumors afflict the people in each of the cities the ark arrived at. Worse, the impact seems to have been magnified each time the ark was moved. In Ekron, every man who did not die from the panic got the tumors. The intense suffering and fear caused the people to cry out loudly, seeking divine help. It's unclear if this means the Philistine people cried out to the Lord of Israel (Judges 10:14) to spare them. Or it might simply indicate how loud and desperate the people became in their suffering and mourning.

In either case, everyone knew something—anything—must be done to get the ark away from them.