1st Samuel Chapter 5 verse 2 Holy Bible

1st Samuel 5 : 2 Bible Verse Songs

• Fall of Dagon by Leeland

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 2. - When the Philistines, etc. The words are exactly the same as those in ver. 1, viz. "And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it," marking the simplicity of ancient narrative. Dagon is derived by Philo from dagan, "corn," and is explained by him as an emblem of the earth's fertility; but as the shape of this national deity of the Philistines was certainly that of a man to the waist, ending in the body and tail of a fish, the true derivation is doubtless that from dag, "a fish." It represented, however, not so much the sea, on which the Philistines trafficked, as the fruitfulness of water, which in the East is looked upon as the active principle of life (comp. Genesis 1:20). In one of the sculptures brought from Khorsabad there is a representation of a battle between the Assyrians and the inhabitants of the Syrian sea coast, and in it there is a figure, the upper part of which is a bearded man with a crown, while from the waist downwards it has the shape of a fish (Layard's 'Nineveh,' 2:466). Moreover, it is swimming in the sea, and is surrounded by a multitude of marine creatures. Doubtless this figure represents Dagon, who, nevertheless, is not to be regarded as a sea god, like Neptune; but as the fish is the product of water, he is the symbol of nature's reproductive energy. Together with Dagon a female deity was commonly worshipped, called Atergatis, half woman and half fish, whose temple is mentioned in 2 Macc. 12:26. In the margin there she is explained as being Venus; but the ideas have only this in common - that Venus also, as rising out of the sea, symbolises life as springing out of water. As Dagon had a temple also at Gaza (Judges 16:23), and at the other cities of Philistia (Jerome on Isaiah 46:1), he was evidently the chief deity of the nation, and the solemn depositing of the ark in his temple, and by Dagon, - literally, "at his side," - was intended as a public demonstration that the God of the Israelites was inferior to, and had been vanquished by, the national deity of the Philistines.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(2) They brought it into the house of Dagon.--The conquerors, we are told, in the meantime, with triumph, carried the captured Ark from the battle-field to Ashdod. This was one of the capital cities of the five Philistine princes. It is built on a hill close to the Mediterranean Sea, and was in after days known as Azotus (Acts 8:40).In Ashdod they placed it in the temple of the popular Philistine god, Dagon. This was their vengeance for the slaughter of the 3,000 Philistine worshippers in the temple of the same deity at Gaza, not many years before, by the blind Hebrew champion Samson.The princes and Philistine people well remembered how the blind hero on that awful day, when 3,000 perished in the house of Dagon when he with his superhuman strength forced the great temple pillars down, called on the name of the God of Israel, whom they in their idol-trained hearts associated with the golden Ark."This only hope relieves me, that the strifeWith me hath end, all the contest now'Twixt God and Dagon; Dagon hath presumed,Me overthrown, to enter lists with God,His deity comparing and preferringBefore the God of Abraham. He, be sure,Will not connive or linger thus provoked, . . .