1 Samuel 5:1 Commentary and Bible Study

The Philistines took the ark of God from Ebenezer, where Israel had been encamped, and brought it to Ashdod, one of the five chief cities of the Philistines, a coastal city. There they set it up before Dagon, their god, in the house of Dagon. Why do they do this? Previously they had been very afraid when they understood the ark was come in the camp of Israel. They saw it as an idol representing the God who had defeated the Egyptians and would defeat them without their utmost effort. But now they had defeated Israel, and Israel’s God was not so much to be feared after all. In their minds the God of Israel is just one more foreign god, and, given the defeat of Israel, he is an inferior god who is unable to protect his people. Dagon is a superior god, and as a token of this, they will stand the ark of God, the representation of Israel’s God, in front of Dagon. The Philistines said to themselves, ‘How wonderful! How tremendous! We have got another god.’ Pagan gods never minded living alongside one another. The more you had the better off you were. If you conquered another national god, you could feel your god was superior in every way, and you would absorb that other god into your pantheon of gods. What a dominant powerful empire you would be! So they take the ark of the covenant, and they put it in the same building as their god Dagon. Bishop Hall says, ‘What a spectacle was this, to see uncircumcised Philistines laying their profane hands upon the testimony of God's presence! to see the glorious mercy-seat under the roof of an idol 1 to see the two cherubims spreading their wings under a false god.’ But then God has a message for them.Again he says, ‘God will let them sleep in this confidence: in the morning they shall find how vainly they have dreamed. ‘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.’ What's going on here? One modern commentator, using a rather irreverent phrase, describes the pagan god as being ‘out-godded’ by the true God, and assumes the people of Israel would see the funny side of this and roar with laughter. If that was the case, it was a tremendous tragedy, because it wasn't so much the battle of the gods. This is a tremendous warning.First of all, it is a warning to the Philistines. Do they dare to think of Dagon – the upper half man, and the lower half fish – as equivalent to, or even superior to the true God of Israel? In a sign that even this uninstructed and superstitious people can understand, the Lord will make Dagon to bow down to the God of Israel. They find their god on its face before the ark. It is a warning also for the Israelites who were practising idolaters. Syncretism is evil and unacceptable to God and condemned. They were worshipping the true God insincerely, but pagan gods at the same time. The warning is that the true God demands exclusive worship, and no other god can stand with him. It’s not a battle for superiority. The message is a demonstration: the worshippers of the true God must put all other gods out of his sight; they must have no idols. At first the Philistines either didn't understand it, or didn't want to understand it. The Israelites should have got the message also: that nothing can stand alongside the true God. They should have been chastened; they should have been warned. ‘What will become of us by this demonstration by our God that no other god will be allowed or tolerated to stand alongside?’ That is the message, not just a trivial competition, a minor thing. God, of course, also signals this: that he is he is going to deliver the ark of the covenant himself. The Lord is able to protect himself and his cause without the help of his people. He is not going to send a prophetic word to the Israelites: that if they rise up and go and capture it back he will be with them. They are not fit to capture it back. He is not going to use them. He is going to bypass them. God will find a way of bringing the ark of the covenant out of the land of the Philistines himself and this is the first step. The Philistines set Dagon up again in his place – perhaps this was just an accident with no meaning. Do they understand nothing? Do they not see that a god that cannot be stood up again when it is fallen except by the hands of men, is really no god at all? Bishop Hall comments, ’It is just with God, that those which want grace shall want wit too. It is the power of superstition to turn men into those stocks and stones which they worship: they that make them are like unto them.’But on the second day Dagon is again fallen down, and this time his hands and his head are broken off, no doubt representing the casting down of his wisdom and his power – for he has none. The attempt to remedy God’s judgment on Dagan has only brought a stronger judgment, and so it is with all who resist God. But nobody learns the lessons, not the Philistines, not the Israelites, and in 1 Samuel 5:5 we have the pathetic scene of the priests of Dagon worshipping the very threshold on which Dagon’s head broke off, and doing this for years afterwards until this First Book of Samuel was written. They had obviously repaired their god, and stood it up again, and continued to worship in its house. Human beings are very dull when it comes to learning spiritual lessons, and fail to see the obvious. Instead of accepting the truth at face value, they struggle to achieve a compromise between truth and error.