| Judges 16:23
| And the princes of the Philistines assembled together, to offer great sacrifices to Dagon, their god, and to make merry, saying: Our god hath delivered our enemy Samson into our hands.
| Dagon. Probably the derceto, whom Diodorus (3,) represents with the head of a woman, and the rest of the body like a fish, the chief object of adoration at Ascalon. (Calmet) --- Dagon may signify "wheat;" and hence Eusebius (praep. 1,) styles him "the ploughing Jupiter," or "a fish." --- Hands. For this purpose they were offering sacrifices of thanksgiving, (Menochius) which they did not only when they first took Samson, but probably on all their great festivals, till the hero's death. They could not but excite the indignation and zeal of this great judge, and God resented the indignity offered to himself. They cursed Samson, (Haydock) as the Sichemites had done Abimelec on a similar occasion, Judges 9:27. (Menochius) God "will not connive or linger, thus provoked, but will arise and his great name assert." --- Milton, 5:466.
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