1 Samuel 5:2

When the Philistines, &c. Better, And the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it. The repetition is characteristic of the Hebrew historical style.

Dagon Dagon (a diminutive of endearment from dâg= fish) was the national god of the Philistines, worshipped also at Gaza (Judges 16:21-30), and elsewhere, as the name Beth-dagon (Joshua 15:41; Joshua 19:27) indicates. The statue of Dagon had the head and hands of a man, and the body of a fish. The fish was an emblem of fruitfulness. See Smith's Dict. of the Bible, I. 381, or Layard's Nineveh, II. p. 466, for a representation of a fish-god, which is probably the Philistine Dagon, as the bas-reliefs at Khorsabad from which it is taken record the wars of Sargon with Syria. A corresponding goddess Derc ěto or Atargatis was worshipped at Askelon.

The ark was placed in Dagon's temple as a votive-offering (cp. 1 Chronicles 10:10), and to mark the supposed victory of Dagon over Jehovah.