Dagon was fallen upon his face. — This Dagon was one of the chief Philistine deities, and had temples not only in Ashdod and in Gaza, but in the cities of Philistia. (See St. Jerome on Isaiah 46:1.) The idol had a human head and hands, and the body of a fish. Philo derives the word Dagon from dagan, “corn,” and supposes the worship to have been connected with Nature worship. The true derivation, however, is from Dag, a fish, which represents the sea from which the Philistines drew their wealth and power. In one of the bas-reliefs discovered at Khorsabad, and which, Layard states, represents the war of an Assyrian king — probably Sargon — with the inhabitants of the coast of Syria, a figure is seen swimming in the sea, with the upper part of the body resembling a bearded man wearing the ordinary conical tiara of royalty, adorned with elephants’ tusks, and the lower part re sembling the body of a fish. It has the hand lifted up, as if in astonishment or fear, and is surrounded by fishes, crabs, and other marine animals.
“There can be hardly any doubt,” argues Keil, “that we have here a representation of the Philistine Dagon. This deity was a personification of the generative and vivifying principle of nature, for which the fish, with its innumerable multiplication, was specially adapted, and set forth the idea of the Giver of all earthly good.”
This strange image the men of Ashdod, on the morrow of their triumphal offering of the Ark of the Lord before the idol shrine, found prostrate on the temple floor, before the desecrated sacred coffer of the Israelites.
They at once assumed that this had taken place owing to some accident, and they raised again the image to its place.