1Samuel 5:1 ¶ And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. 2 When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. 3 And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again. 4 And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him. 5 Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon’s house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day.
Dagon, a god of the Philistines, is first mentioned in Judges.
Judges 16:23 Then the lords
of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto
Dagon their god, and to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson
our enemy into our hand.
Strong’s dictionary says that Dagon was a Philistine god of
fertility with the face and hands of a man and the tail of a fish. John Gill
reported that Dagon morphed into Marnas, the lord of men. Since all of these
ancient manifestations of Satan are interconnected we can see Gill go on in his
commentary, which is free online in the public domain, to say, “and Diodorus Siculus relates that Derceto, a goddess
of Ashkelon, another of the five principalities of Palestine, its face was
human, and the other part of its body resembled a fish; and the same Lucian
says of the Syrian goddess; and Cicero testifies, that the Syrians
worshipped a fish, and Porphyry says they will not eat any; and Gaza being
a maritime city, a sea port, this might be their sea god in this form: but Ben
Gersom in the above place says, it was in the form of a man; and
Sanchoniatho making mention of Dagan, a brother of Saturn, Philo Byblius,
who translated his history into Greek, interprets it by Siton, which signifies
corn, deriving it from Dagan, which so signifies; as if this deity presided
over corn, as Ceres in other nations, and Jupiter Frumentarius, or Aratrius;
yea, he says he invented corn and the plough…”
The Philistines have taken the Ark of God to
Ashdod. Ashdod was a major Philistine city on the Mediterranean Sea, west of
Jerusalem. The ancient city lay a few miles Southeast of modern Ashdod, the
sixth largest city in Israel.
The head and hands of Dagon, the man part, are
taken off and only the fish remains. This may have signified, underscored, how
helpless Dagon was in the face of God’s power. Taking care not to step on a
threshold seems to have been an issue in the ancient world.
Zephaniah 1:9 In the same
day also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their
masters’ houses with violence and deceit.
The Chinese purportedly have a superstition of not stepping on a
door threshold as it represents life and stepping on it means someone in the
house will die as a result. It clearly has a religious significance in the
Bible as the intent in Zephaniah seems to indicate bad intent.
1Samuel 5:6 ¶ But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof. 7 And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, The ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us: for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our god. 8 They sent thereforeand gathered all the lords of the Philistines unto them, and said, What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel? And they answered, Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried about unto Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel about thither. 9 And it was so, that, after they had carried it about, the hand of the LORD was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts. 10 Therefore they sent the ark of God to Ekron. And it came to pass, as the ark of God came to Ekron, that the Ekronites cried out, saying, They have brought about the ark of the God of Israel to us, to slay us and our people. 11 So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go again to his own place, that it slay us not, and our people: for there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there. 12 And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods: and the cry of the city went up to heaven.
Emerods are
mentioned previously;
Deuteronomy 28:27 The LORD
will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the
scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.
Strong’s says that the word means hemorrhoids. That dictionary
also calls it tumors. In any event this is a nasty plague and very miserable. Tumors
might be a good interpretation of emerods in that the Bubonic Plague has as its
symptoms painful swelling of the lymph glands called a Bubo and people can die
very quickly from the onset of the symptoms. Hemorrhoids alone don’t usually
kill people, but only make them miserable. They are painful but not deadly.
Either way you look at it the Philistines were encouraged by God to return the
Ark of God to the people of God.
Deadly destruction and that it slay us not do
not seem to indicate just a plague of painful piles.
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