Thoughts on 1 Samuel 5-6

Today’s reading: 1 Samuel 5-6; Romans 9

1 Samuel 5-6 gives us a really helpful insight into how ancient people thought about and interacted with deities, and this insight helps us understand why God gets so frustrated with Israel continuously turning from Him to other gods.

How ancient man processed the spiritual world

When the Philistines defeated Israel, even after the ark of the covenant was brought into their camp, this was a clear sign that their gods had defeated Yahweh. As a mark of Dagon’s victory they put the ark of the covenant in Dagon’s temple. They were not doing this to start worshipping Yahweh alongside Dagon, but as a sign of Dagon’s power and majesty.

Then Yahweh starts moving. I mentioned this briefly in yesterday’s post, but the Philistines did not defeat Israel simply because they were stronger, God gave Israel into the Philistines’ hands to discipline them, and He makes that clear by moving against the Philistines without Israel’s help.

The first big thing that happens is that Dagon falls down worshipping Yahweh. While this would be a statue of Dagon (obviously), they believed that after creating the statue and performing certain “opening”ceremonies, the deity would descend and reside in the statue, making it a true marker of the deity’s presence on earth. So when Dagon is lying prostrate on the ground before the ark of the covenant, that would have been shocking. But then when they set Dagon back up, they again find him lying prostrate before the ark, but this time with head and hands broken off. Then we get this interesting note that because of this the priests of Dagon do not tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day, which we will come back to in just a minute.

Alongside Dagon falling down to worship Yahweh, the people of Ashdod are also afflicted with tumors, causing them to send the ark away to Gath. When tumors also broke out on all the men of Gath they sent the ark on to Ekron where the same thing happened once again. And here we find out that the Philistines were not as spiritually dense as the Israelites and recognized that all these afflictions were coming from the hand of God and they sought to return the ark to Israel. So they have their priests and diviners figure out what to send Yahweh as an offering to appease Him and send the ark of the covenant back to Israel.

But here’s the big thing I want us to realize: Yahweh clearly defeated the gods of the Philistines, and did it on their home turf where they should be the strongest, and the Philistines recognized that and continued to worship their gods. That note about the priests of Dagon stepping over the threshold is important in this regard. While we don’t know exactly when 1 Samuel was written, it was clearly long enough after these events for the author to say that they step over the threshold “to this day.” So even after Yahweh has exerted His power and dominance over the Philistines so thoroughly that they send the ark back to Israel, and even after Dagon has prostrated himself in worship of this greater and more powerful God of Israel, the Philistines continue to worship Dagon.

To the ancient mind it was not that your gods were real and everyone else’s gods were fake; all the gods were real, they just weren’t all your gods. So even when Yahweh actively shows Himself to be greater than Dagon, they don’t leave off worshipping Dagon, or even start worshipping Yahweh, because He isn’t their god. They recognize Yahweh’s dominance, and they respect and fear that dominance, even sending an offering to appease Him, but in all of it they stay faithful to their gods because that is what you did!

What this tells us about Israel

And this brings us back to God’s constant indictment against Israel, that they are continuously turning from Him to worship the gods of the nations Yahweh dispossessed from the land before them.

Unlike Dagon, Molech, Baal, Asherah, Chemosh, or any other god of the Canaanites, Yahweh has visibly and undeniably moved on behalf of Israel time and time again in massive and miraculous ways. The Philistines themselves even recognize this when talking about sending the ark back and they remind one another what God did to Egypt. But despite the fact that God has acted on behalf of Israel, while these other gods have done nothing for them, and despite the fact that Yahweh has asserted His dominance over these other gods by defeating them and their people and kicking them out of the land, Israel still turns from Yahweh to worship them…

Think about that! Even when Dagon falls down in worship of Yahweh and the Philistines have to send the ark of the covenant away, they respect and fear Yahweh, but they continue to faithfully worship Dagon. So how shameful is it that Israel, over and over again, actively turns away to whore after other gods? The heathen nations around them, worshiping lesser divine beings, don’t even act this way, and yet Israel, the nation that Yahweh, the God of all gods and Lord of all lords, miraculously carved out for Himself, will not stay faithful to Him for five minutes. He called them, protected them, delivered them time and again by great and miraculous signs and wonders, and still they turn away.

When you read a section of Scripture like 1 Samuel 5-6 it just makes it that much clearer to our modern minds why God gets so frustrated with His people in the Old Testament. What Israel did in abandoning Yahweh for the gods of the nations was not normal even for the other nations. They remained faithful to their lesser gods, even while the recognized the supremacy of Yahweh, because Yahweh was not their god. But Israel, the one people who Yahweh had called to be His own, continuously did what no other nation would do and abandoned their god for others.