‘ And the lords of the Philistines gathered themselves together in order to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to celebrate, for they said, “Our god has delivered Samson our enemy into our hand.”
The taking of Samson was seen as a cause for great celebration. So at their next great festival at which great sacrifices would normally be offered to Dagon, the god that they had adopted from the Canaanites, they declared a celebration. He it was, they believed, who had handed Samson over to them.
Dagon was possibly a corn god from which came the Hebrew dagan (‘grain, corn'). He was worshipped in Mesopotamia from at least 2500 BC and had a temple at Mari (18th century BC) adorned with bronze lions. In 14th century BC there was a temple to him at Ugarit and their texts depicted him as the father of Baal. The mention of more than one Beth-dagon (‘house of Dagon' - found in two areas - Joshua 15:41; Joshua 19:27) demonstrates that there were also at some time temples to him in Canaan. Raamses II mentions a Bth-Dgn in his Palestinian lists (around 1270 BC). (There are no genuine grounds for seeing him as a fish god. That was an invention of a later post-Christian age). Saul's head would later be displayed in the house of Dagon (1 Chronicles 10:10).
Dagon was not their only god (1 Chronicles 10:9-10), they also worshipped Ashtaroth (at Beth-shan - 1 Samuel 31:10 - but these would strictly be a confederate Sea People called the Tjekker) and Baalzebub (at Ekron - 2 Kings 1:1-6; 2 Kings 1:16) among others, but at this time he appears to have been the prime favourite with a temple at Ashdod (1 Samuel 5:1-2) and this one in Gaza (Judges 16:27). It was at Ashdod that Dagon would shortly fall before the Ark of Yahweh (1 Samuel 5:3).