AP

1 Samuel 5:4   But the following morning when [the Philistines] rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the LORD!   His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained.

The Philistines had captured the ‘ark of the LORD’ and placed it in their temple subordinate to their own god, Dagon, as a sign of their conquest of Israel.

The ark was a physical sign and symbol of the LORD’s presence among his Covenant People.  This ‘presence’ was not just a figment of their imagination, a kind of ‘religious’ idea that existed only in their heads, with the ‘ark’ being a ‘lucky charm’; it represented the genuine presence of the one true God creation dwelling among, and active on behalf of, those through whom he had chosen to reveal himself to the world.  Dagon, on the other hand, was a man-made idol fashioned by them as half man half fish (‘dagon’ can be related to Hebrew words for ‘fish’ and ‘corn’/‘prosperity’).  It was perhaps in the shape of a merman, before which they bowed in worship and hoped to placate as the source of fertile crops and prosperity.

Like Pharaoh of Egypt (and us?), the Philistines were slow learners – this was the second time Dagon had been humiliated, having been restored from the same disaster the day before (see verse 3)!   The psalmist makes an interesting comparison: “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.  But their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men.  They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but they cannot smell; they have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but they cannot walk; nor can they utter a sound with their throats” (Psalm 115:3-7).  How strange it is!  The true God has made us in his image and likeness; idols are things we make in our likeness, or the likeness of other created things, or the likeness of both.

The true God is invisible Spirit, but nevertheless he is real and active.  He has no physical mouth but he has spoken clearly through his prophets, his written Word, and his incarnate Son; he has no physical eyes, but he sees all we do, even the things we do ‘in secret’ (Luke 12:2; Hebrews 4:13; 1 Corinthians 4:5; etc); he has no physical ears, but he hears and answers our  prayers; and so on.  The Philistines had to discover these realities the hard way, as did Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and many others.

How genuine is our trust in the God we cannot see?  Are we allowing things we can see and touch in our increasingly material-centred world to be the real things on which we are depending for our security and prosperity, rather than the promises of the true and living God in his Word?  Since the coming of Jesus, the temple and ark have been for ever destroyed and replaced, so believers are now the ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 6:19)!  Is his Holy Spirit dwelling in you as a present reality as your comforter, encourager, teacher, corrector and guide?

– Bruce Christian