Judges 16:27 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Now the house was full, &c.— It is not certain, whether this was the temple of Dagon, or a kind of theatre built for public sports. Dr. Shaw gives us the best commentary on this passage. "This method of building," says he, whereof he had just spoken, "may further assist us in accounting for the particular structure of the temple or house of Dagon, (Judges 16.) and the great number of people who were buried in the ruins of it, by the pulling down of the two principal pillars which supported it. We read, Joshua 16:27 that about three thousand persons were upon the roof to behold while Samson made sport, viz. to the scoffing and deriding Philistines. Samson, therefore, must have been in a court or area below; and consequently the temple will be of the same kind with the ancient τεμενη, or sacred inclosures, which were only surrounded either in part or on all sides with some plain or cloistered buildings. Several palaces and douwanas, as the courts of justice are called in these countries, are built in this fashion; where, upon their public festivals and rejoicings, a great quantity of sand is strewed upon the area for the pellowans or wrestlers to fall upon; whilst the roofs of these cloisters are crouded with spectators to admire their strength and activity. I have often seen numbers of people diverted in this manner upon the roof of the Dey's palace at Algiers, which, like many more of the same quality and denomination, has an advanced cloister over against the gate of the palace, (Esther 5:1.] made in the fashion of a large pent-house, supported only by one or two contiguous pillars in the front, or else in the centre. In such open structures as these, the bashaws, kadees, and other great officers, distribute justice, and transact the public affairs of their provinces. Here likewise they have their public entertainments, as the lords and others of the Philistines had in the house of Dagon. Upon a supposition, therefore, that in the house of Dagon there was a cloistered building of that kind, the pulling down the front or centre pillars, which supported it, would alone be attended with the like catastrophe that happened to the Philistines." See Travels, p. 216. Our great English architect, Sir Christopher Wren, is of opinion, that this building was an oval amphitheatre, the scene in the middle; where a vast roof of cedar beams resting round upon the walls, centered all upon one short architrave, which united two cedar-pillars in the middle. One pillar would not be sufficient to unite the ends of at least one hundred beams which tended to the centre; therefore there must be a short architrave, or concentric circle resting upon two pillars, upon which all the beams tending to the centre of the amphitheatre might be supported. Now, if Samson, by his miraculous strength, moved one of those pillars from the basis, the whole roof must necessarily fall. The supposing that the ends of the beams were united in a circle in the middle, will remove the difficulty which may arise from considering that no less than three thousand persons were spectators of Samson's ill treatment from the roof; for this manner of construction would have afforded them conveniency enough for this purpose. See Wren's Parentalia, p. 359. Pliny mentions two theatres built at Rome by Caius Curio, which were large enough to contain the whole Roman people, and yet of so singular a structure as to depend each upon one hinge or pivot. See Nat. Hist. lib. 36: cap. 15. And in Tacitus, we read of a destruction by the fall of an amphitheatre similar to this occasioned by Samson. Annals, lib. 6: cap. 62.