And the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon.
The Philistines had beaten Israel in battle and carried off the ark of God. Now they set it down in the temple of their own god at Ashdod. Their trophy raises the real question here: does God's honour depend on the faithfulness of His people?
The ark reached a pagan temple because of the way Israel had treated it.
Here we see the sad and humiliating result of Israel's unfaithfulness. They had kept the ark of God with a careless hand and a faithless heart, or it could never have ended up lodged in the temple of Dagon! How deeply Israel had failed! They had let go of everything. They had given up what was most sacred, and let the uncircumcised profane and blaspheme it.
More than an object was lost here. God had withdrawn His presence because His people had tied its symbol to their own sinful state.
The people of God had completely failed to uphold the honour of God. Worse, they had tried to tie the symbol of His presence to their own sinful condition. So God acted in judgment and withdrew His presence from among them. In these circumstances, while the godly may well be humbled because of the unfaithfulness of God's people, they need not fear for the honour of God. Quite apart from His people, God is able to vindicate His holiness and maintain His majesty.
Not long before, these same Philistines had felt very differently about the ark.
The Philistines had trembled when they heard that the ark had come into the camp of Israel. Now the ark has come into their hands, and they boldly place it in the house of their idol. It is as if they were celebrating its capture as a victory for their god Dagon over the God of Israel. Their former trembling was as needless as their present daring is misplaced.
They may even have felt they were doing Israel's God a favour.
They think the most fit place for it is in the house of Dagon, the fish-god (half fish, half man). No doubt they even considered they were patronising Israel's god by giving it this place!
The moment the ark entered that temple, the two sides in the dispute changed.
Now that the ark of God stands in the house of Dagon, the question is no longer between the Philistines and Israel. It is an issue between Dagon and the God of Israel. There can be but one end to this contest. Dagon is flung to the earth before the ark. To prove this is no accident, his worshippers set Dagon up in his place again — which only shows the majesty of God and the emptiness of an idol more clearly.
No Israelite was there to see what happened next in the temple at Ashdod.
If Israel would not act in defence of God's truth, He must act Himself — and so He did. The lords of the Philistines had defeated Israel. But the gods of the Philistines must fall down before that ark. Long ago it had driven back the waters of the Jordan. Here was divine triumph. In the dark, empty house of Dagon there was no eye to see and no ear to hear. There the God of Israel was defending those great truths His own people had so failed to uphold.
Setting the ark beside Dagon put the true God among the idols, as though He were one of them.
To us, with the light of the New Testament, "an idol has no real existence." But to these worshippers of Dagon, every idol stood for a real god, good or evil. The God of heaven and earth will allow no rival, and there is no one besides Him. He has decreed that every knee shall bow to Him, and every tongue confess that He is Lord. We see this truth here among the Philistines. They set the ark beside their Dagon, as a sign, they thought, of his triumph over "these mighty gods of the Hebrews."
What was settled in Ashdod still holds wherever people try to combine the two.
The whole affair proved beyond all question that the Lord and the uncircumcised could never go on together. So it was, so it is, and so it must always be. "What accord has Christ with Belial? … What agreement has the temple of God with idols?" None whatever.
- Failure — Israel handled the ark carelessly and tied God's presence to their own sin. So it ended up in a pagan temple.
- Presumption — The Philistines once trembled at the ark. Now they set it beside Dagon and credited their idol with the win.
- Contest — Inside that temple the fight was no longer Philistia against Israel. It was Dagon against God.
- Vindication — Unseen and alone, God defended the honour His own people had given up.
- Exclusivity — God allows no rival. He and idols can never share a house.
And when they of Ashdod arose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of Jehovah. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And when they arose early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of Jehovah; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the fish-stump was left to him.
The Philistines had captured the ark of God and set it beside their idol Dagon in his temple at Ashdod. On the first morning the idol lay face down. On the second it lay broken. Who did this, and why did God wait a second night to finish it?
Dagon was a composite figure, and the verse notes exactly which parts were destroyed and which were left. One writer draws the point from the shape of the idol itself:
Once men carried it into Dagon's house (this being an idol, part man and part fish), and when the ark went in, the man fell down, and the fish only was left in place. This had its meaning.
The pieces that fell were the human ones, and where they fell mattered too:
The next morning it lies face down again. But this time it cannot be set up so easily. The human parts — the head and hands — of the part-man, part-fish god are cut off and lying on the threshold. Only the fish part is left to him. So the confusion man has made is undone. The human joined to the animal is shown to be worthy only of contempt, fit to be trampled underfoot, and the creature lies face down in the presence of the Creator.
The two parts removed were the parts a worshipper would look to for help. The damage was therefore a message, aimed precisely:
It was a message to the Philistines that if they thought Dagon had intelligence, he had not even a head: if they thought he could do anything, he had no hands to do it.
The first fall could be explained away, and the Philistines did explain it away by standing the idol up again. The second night removed that option:
Night came, and morning succeeded that night, when the Ashdodites found that Dagon's previous fall was no accident. There lay the idol, not merely prostrate and helpless, but now broken to pieces, the head and the palms of its hands cut off on the threshold, and only the stump, or fishy part of the idol left. The Ashdodites evidently had been aware of nothing unusual during the night. No earthquake upset the idol's equilibrium. God, the true God, had thrown it down.
Israel had failed, and no one from Israel was there to act for God. That is what makes the scene so striking:
If Israel would not act to defend God's truth, He must act Himself — and so He did... In the darkness and stillness of the house of Dagon, where there was no eye to see and no ear to hear, the God of Israel was acting to defend those great truths His people had so failed to hold up. Dagon fell, and in his fall he proclaimed the honour of the God of Israel... The scene was so completely emptied of the creature that the Creator could show Himself in His own true character. Man's failure made room for God's faithfulness. The Philistines had proved stronger than Israel; but Jehovah was stronger than Dagon.
This shifts where our anxiety belongs:
We need never be afraid that God will fail to vindicate either His holiness or His power. Our only fear should be lest we be not in that state in which we can be vessels of testimony for Him.
The most sobering detail is what the Philistines did next. They kept the religion and merely built a new custom around the wreckage:
Indeed, set this humiliated glory beside Dagon, as the men of Ashdod did, and the world's idol will be overturned and broken. But this changes nothing about the worship that the world offers to its idol. It prefers its mutilated false gods, objects of disdain and derision, to the glory of God that makes it uncomfortable.
Several writers read the two mornings as a picture of something larger — a first fall, then a shattering:
Instead of learning the lesson of Dagon on his face on the earth before the ark, they put Dagon back in his place again, only to find him, not only fallen down again, but broken, his head and hands cut off, his fish stump being left. Are we not taught another lesson from this, even that the death of Christ not only brought down the power of the god of this world, but also broke his power, or, as the Scripture says, "that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil" (Heb. 2:14).
- Fallen — The first night put the idol on its face. The Philistines could still call that an accident.
- Broken — The second night removed the head and the hands: no intelligence to know, no power to act, only the fish stump left standing.
- Alone — No one from Israel defended the ark. In an empty temple at night God acted for His own honour. Man's failure made room for His faithfulness.
- Hardened — The men of Ashdod picked up the pieces and made a rule about the threshold. They preferred a broken god to the glory that unsettled them.
- Foreshadowed — The broken idol pictures the death of Christ, which destroyed the one who had the power of death.