Even after the humiliation of Dagon, the ark was not returned; not yet. The Philistines still thought they could get some advantage from keeping it.
They had failed to draw the right lesson from the humiliation of Dagon, and now God afflicted them personally. Bishop Hall says, ‘Pain shall humble them whom shame cannot. Those which had entertained the secret thoughts of abominable idolatry within them, are now plagued, in the inwardest and most secret part of their bodies, with a loathsome disease; and now grow weary of themselves, instead of their idolatry. I do not hear them acknowledge it was God's hand which had stricken Dagon their god, till now they find themselves stricken.’