Priorities, Part 3: Dagon’s Debacle

The Philistines were nothing but trouble in the days of Samuel the prophet. On one occasion, the Philistine army bivouacked at Aphek while Israel camped to the east in Ebenezer. When the Philistine army drew up in a menacing line, Israel deployed to bring down the hammer. The clash of two armies rippled outward drawing more soldiers into the fray. When the dust had settled on round one, Israel was defeated and lost 4,000 soldiers.

God’s people were incredulous. The one true God was supposed to be on their side! So how could they be defeated? Israel’s leadership assumed that the symbol of God’s presence, the ark, was too far away. They reasoned that if the ark were relocated and prominently positioned in the middle of the battle, this would better leverage God into acting on their behalf. In essence, Israel felt she needed to improve her technique for manipulating God.

God is not to be manipulated. Round two of the battle betrayed the flaw in their logic: Israel was thoroughly routed – 30,000 Israelite infantrymen were slain, the scattered remnant of the army went AWOL to hide in their homes, and the ark was captured by the Philistines. To be clear, the Philistines did not defeat God, they defeated a nation that thought God can be manipulated. God was teaching His people a lesson and using the Philistines as an instrument of His instruction. But once the Philistines carted the ark to the city of Ashdod, it was their turn to attend the School of Yahweh.

Dagon was a grain and storm god worshiped by the Philistines. (I’m not sure the artist’s rendering above really captures him.) The Philistines brought the ark to Dagon’s temple and put it on display. Early the next morning, Dagon was discovered face down before the ark of God. The Philistines promptly propped up their god. With the following sunrise, Dagon was back on the floor, prostrate before the ark. Only this time, his head and hands had been removed and unceremoniously plopped on the threshold to Dagon’s front door. The one true God was making a bold and inescapable declaration of Dagon’s inferiority and utter powerlessness: "Dagon can’t keep his head on straight. He can’t even lend you a hand because his are missing!" The Philistines may have bettered Israel in battle, but their god was no match for the God of Israel.

The Philistines had assumed they could add Yahweh to their collection of gods. After what they heard God did to Egypt in the ten plagues, they assumed it was a smart move to get Him on their team with Dagon. They assumed wrong! God didn’t knock Dagon down out of spite or a bruised ego – but to make a point: Dagon is nothing. He cannot even right himself when tumped over. Even a mere child learning to walk can do more than this. Giving ANY allegiance to such a pitiful god is worse than pointless. God was doing the Philistines a great service, showing them that their trust was placed in a dead lump of stone.

The facts were clear –  devotion to Dagon is dumb! (Like Dagon!) Alas, the Philistines had trouble accepting the facts, so God had to sign them up for some remedial education: “Now the hand of the Lord was heavy on the Ashdodites, and He ravaged them and smote them with tumors, both Ashdod and its territories. When the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, ‘The ark of the God of Israel must not remain with us, for His hand is severe on us and on Dagon our god’” (1 Samuel 5:6–7). Amazing! The Philistines recognize that Yahweh is having His way with Dagon, yet they persist in revering him as their god. Sometimes men don’t get it when the facts are staring them in the face. Devotion to Dagon wasn’t just stupid, it was working their harm. An outbreak of some sort of genital tumors was laying waste to the citizenry because they refused to acknowledge the one true God.

The people of Ashdod passed the ark of God to Gath like a hot potato. Same result. So Gath forwarded it to Ekron. Ditto! There was mercy in all this – God did not utterly extinguish the people. But the plague was severe enough to get everyone’s attention and raise the question, “Is worshiping Dagon doing us any good?” Not!     

This was not an isolated incident. It simply illustrates the rightful place of God in our lives. In different words, Jesus once said the same thing of Himself: “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26–27). Jesus is not advocating familial hatred. He is declaring that not even devotion to parents, or spouses, or children, or siblings, or self can be allowed to compete with one’s allegiance to the Lord alone. When devotion to one’s children, or devotion to one’s spouse, or devotion to onself opposes devotion to Jesus, the consequences are severe and eternal.

In the previous post, I declared: “We have only one priority! It is our joy and privilege to serve God alone in all that we do, to love him with reckless abandon. Precisely here is the beauty of loving the God who is one.” To that I now add, “Whenever we elevate something, be it a person or a pursuit or possession, to compete for the worship that belongs to God alone, we invite God to demonstrate the vanity of that devotion.”

God does not do this out of spite or a bruised ego, but to help us. He wants us to learn that giving priority to anything or anyone other than Himself is vain and harmful. The Dagon Debacle is a case in point. Our true good is found in loving the one true God alone.