The Gospel According to Dagon: Text: 1 Chronicles 10:8-10
Introduction: The Wages of Unbelief
History is not a random collection of unfortunate events. It is a story, and God is the author. Every rise and every fall, every victory and every defeat, is a sentence in the grand narrative He is writing. The end of Saul’s reign is a particularly grim chapter, but it is a necessary one. It serves as a stark and brutal lesson on the consequences of disobedience and the folly of a man-centered kingdom. Saul was the king the people wanted, a king like the other nations. He was tall, he looked the part, but his heart was not right with God. And when a nation, or a man, rejects God as their true king, the end is always ruin, disgrace, and, as we see here, public humiliation.
This passage is more than just a historical record of a battlefield cleanup. It is a theological statement. It is a clash of gospels. The Philistines, in their pagan blindness, are conducting a worship service. They are evangelists for a false god. They take the evidence of their victory, the head and armor of God’s anointed king, and they proclaim the good news, their gospel, to their idols and to their people. This is the nature of all idolatry. It must celebrate, it must evangelize, it must put its triumphs on display. Every worldview does this. The secularists today parade their victories in the public square just as brazenly, fastening the severed heads of Christian principle to the walls of their temples, whether those temples are universities, courthouses, or Hollywood studios.
But the Chronicler records this grisly scene for a purpose. He is writing to a post-exilic community, a people who have known their own national death and are in the process of being reconstituted. He is reminding them of the foundational reason for their past failures: unfaithfulness to Yahweh. The disgrace of Saul is a national disgrace. The triumph of Dagon is a temporary illusion, but it is a real consequence of Israel’s sin. This passage forces us to confront the reality of spiritual warfare and the public consequences of private disobedience. It shows us that when God’s people compromise, the enemy takes notice, and he does not hesitate to publish the good news of his apparent victory.
The Text
Now it happened on the next day, that the Philistines came to strip the slain, and they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa.
So they stripped him and took his head and his weapons and sent them all around the land of the Philistines, to proclaim the good news to their idols and to the people.
And they placed his weapons in the house of their gods and fastened his head in the house of Dagon.
(1 Chronicles 10:8-10 LSB)
The Morning After (v. 8)
We begin with the grim discovery on the day after the battle.
"Now it happened on the next day, that the Philistines came to strip the slain, and they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa." (1 Chronicles 10:8)
The battle is over. The noise has faded. The sun rises on a field of carnage. This is the mundane, brutal work of ancient warfare: looting the dead. The Philistines are not here for a memorial service; they are here for plunder. And in the course of this grim task, they stumble upon the ultimate prize. They find the bodies of Saul and his sons. The king of Israel, the Lord’s anointed, is found stripped, defeated, and dead, just another body on a bloody hillside.
This is the final, pathetic end of a reign that began with such promise. Saul was the people's choice, a man who stood head and shoulders above everyone else (1 Sam. 9:2). But his story is a long, slow tragedy of compromise, jealousy, and flagrant disobedience. He refused to obey God’s clear command regarding the Amalekites. He usurped the priestly office. He consulted a witch at Endor. He hunted David, the true king, like an animal. And it all ends here, on Mount Gilboa, a suicide, discovered by his enemies. This is where disobedience leads. It leads to a desolate mountain, to public shame, and to being found by the enemy in the morning.
The finding of the bodies is not an accident. It is a divine judgment made public. God had told Saul through Samuel that the kingdom would be torn from him. Now, his very body is torn and desecrated. This is a picture of the wages of sin. Sin promises you a kingdom, but it pays out in death and disgrace on a forgotten mountain.
The Pagan Evangelists (v. 9)
What the Philistines do next is not simple military gloating. It is a profoundly religious act.
"So they stripped him and took his head and his weapons and sent them all around the land of the Philistines, to proclaim the good news to their idols and to the people." (1 Chronicles 10:9)
They take the ultimate symbols of Saul’s kingship, his head, the seat of his authority, and his weapons, the instruments of his power, and they turn them into missionary props. They embark on a traveling roadshow of victory. And notice the language used: "to proclaim the good news." This is the language of gospel proclamation. The Philistines have a gospel, a message of salvation. Their message is this: "Our gods are stronger than Yahweh. Dagon has defeated the God of Israel. Here is the proof: the head of His anointed king."
This is a direct assault on the honor of God. Every idolater is an evangelist for his idol. The god of money proclaims its good news from the stock exchange. The god of sex proclaims its good news from every screen. The god of power proclaims its good news from the halls of government. They all demand worship, and they all parade their trophies. When the church is weak, when its leaders fall into public sin and disgrace, the enemies of God do not keep it quiet. They send the news "all around the land." They publish it in their temples, which today we call the mainstream media, and they announce it to their people.
They proclaim this good news first to their idols. This seems foolish to us, proclaiming news to inanimate blocks of wood and stone. But it reveals the heart of idolatry. The idolater must constantly reassure himself that his god is real, that his god is powerful. He needs evidence. The head of Saul is evidence for their faith. And then they proclaim it to the people, to bolster national morale and to solidify their religious and political commitments. This is pagan discipleship. This is how false religions are sustained: by celebrating the apparent defeats of the one true God.
Desecration as Worship (v. 10)
The verse that follows details the final destination of these trophies.
"And they placed his weapons in the house of their gods and fastened his head in the house of Dagon." (1 Chronicles 10:10)
This is the culmination of their worship service. The armor of Saul is offered as a votive offering in the temple of their gods, likely Ashtaroth (as 1 Samuel 31:10 tells us). This is an act of thanksgiving. "Thank you, Ashtaroth, for this victory. We dedicate the spoils to you." His head, however, is given the place of highest dishonor, fastened in the house of Dagon. Dagon was the chief deity of the Philistines, a god of grain and fertility. You may remember him from an earlier encounter with the God of Israel. When the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant, they placed it in the temple of Dagon, and in the morning, they found Dagon fallen on his face before the Ark. The next morning, he was not only fallen, but his head and hands were broken off (1 Sam. 5).
Now, in what they see as the ultimate reversal, the ultimate comeback, they fasten the head of Yahweh’s king in the house of their reassembled god. This is their attempt to undo their previous humiliation. "See? Dagon gets the last laugh. He has taken the head of his enemy's king." This is the essence of the cosmic battle. It is a battle of gods, a battle of kings. And for a moment, it appears that Dagon has won.
But we who read this know the rest of the story. We know that Dagon is nothing. We know that this victory is hollow. God is using the wickedness of the Philistines to chasten His people and to clear the way for His true king, David. The Philistines think they are celebrating their strength, but they are merely instruments of God's judgment against an unfaithful king. Their worship is an exercise in futility. Their temple is a museum of temporary, meaningless victories.
The Head of the True King
This entire scene is a dark parody, a satanic inversion of the true gospel. The enemies of God take the head of a fallen king and proclaim it as good news. But God has a very different gospel. The true and final good news is not about the severed head of a defeated king, but about the resurrected head of a victorious one.
Saul is a type, a shadow, of what happens when men try to establish a kingdom on their own terms. He is the first Adam in miniature, grasping for power and glory, and ending in death and nakedness. But his failure cries out for a second Adam, a true King who would not fail.
Jesus Christ, the Son of David, also had His head displayed in public shame. He wore a crown of thorns, and His head was lifted up on a cross for all the world to mock. The rulers of this world, the modern-day Philistines, saw it as their greatest victory. They had taken the head of the one who claimed to be King of the Jews. They proclaimed the good news of His defeat. They sealed His tomb and thought the story was over.
But on the third day, the true good news was proclaimed. Not by men, but by an angel. "He is not here, for He has risen." God did not just reassemble His fallen champion; He raised Him from the dead, victorious over sin, death, and every false god. The head that was bowed in death was raised in glory. And God has now fastened that Head, not in the house of Dagon, but at His own right hand, as the head of the Church and the ruler of all things (Ephesians 1:20-22).
The gospel of Dagon is a gospel of death, decay, and temporary victory. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of resurrection, life, and eternal dominion. The Philistines could only fasten a dead head to a wall. But God has made Jesus the living Head of a body that is filling the whole earth. The weapons of Saul were hung in a pagan temple, but the spiritual armor of our King is given to us, and with it, we are pulling down the strongholds of Dagon and every other idol. The defeat of Saul was a necessary prelude to the kingdom of David, and the crucifixion of Christ was the necessary prelude to the kingdom of God. The enemy will always celebrate too soon. He will always mistake the cross for a defeat, but it was in fact the place where his own head was crushed, once and for all.