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Updated: July 27, 2025
But I am not prepared to believe that God has left it to Satan to devise so fearful a scheme for prosecuting his evil designs as that of making the demons of Ashdod and Assyria take the names of mortal men, while teeming to follow mortal occupations. It would be fearful tidings for our poor race were this so. But if so, is it not seen that there is a difference in the shapes of these persons.
When the Israelites under Joshua arrived, they were in full possession of the southern part of Palestine, and had formed a confederacy of five powerful cities, Gaza, Ashdod, Askelon, Gath, and Ekron. In the time of the Judges they had become so prosperous and powerful that they held the Israelites in partial subjection, broken at intervals by heroes like Shamgar and Samson.
And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him. Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon's house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day.
For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up. Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the Cherethites! the word of the LORD is against you; O Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant.
Already possessed of Ashdod and perhaps also of Gaza and Askelon, he held the keys of Syria, and could have no difficulty in penetrating along the coast route, through the rich plain of Sharon, to the first of the mountain barriers which are interposed between the Nile and the Mesopotamian region.
Upon which Jonathan pursued them as far as Ashdod, and slew a great many of them, and compelled the rest, in despair of escaping, to fly to the temple of Dagon, which was at Ashdod; but Jonathan took the city on the first onset, and burnt it, and the villages about it; nor did he abstain from the temple of Dagon itself, but burnt it also, and destroyed those that had fled to it.
Ashdod, the centre of the revolt in the west, was invested and taken by the Turtannu or commander-in-chief; its ruler, a certain "Greek," who had been raised to power by the anti-Assyrian party, fled to the Arabian desert in the vain hope of saving his life, and Judah, Moab, and Edom were forced to renew their tribute.
He invaded Babylon and drove away its kings; he defeated the Philistines, took Ashdod and Tyre, received tribute from the Greeks at Cyprus, invaded even Egypt, whose king paid him tribute, and conquered Media. He added to the palace of Nineveh, and built one which exceeded all that had existed before him. No monarch surpassed this one in the magnificence of his buildings.
At length God sent a very destructive disease upon the city and country of Ashdod, for they died of the dysentery or flux, a sore distemper, that brought death upon them very suddenly; for before the soul could, as usual in easy deaths, be well loosed from the body, they brought up their entrails, and vomited up what they had eaten, and what was entirely corrupted by the disease.
When these things were over he made excursions against adversaries on every side, he and his brothers Simon and Jonathan subduing in turn Idumæa, Gilead, Jazer, Tyre, and Ashdod. Antiochus died of a distemper which overtook him as he was fleeing from Elymais, from which he was driven during an attack upon its gates.
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