BETH-DAGON orrrq, House of Dagon, the god of the Philistines, mentioned in Judg. xvi. 23, and other places. See this etymology defended against the older one (which Fiirst retains Heb. it. Chalet. H IVB., p. 286) in Gesenius, lifetztment. Phan., p. 387, and Thes., p. 294). This collo cation of the Hebrew nouns, BETH and DAGON, occurs in six passages—(r.) Josh. xv. 41 ; (2.) xix. (3.) I Sam. v. (4) V- 5; (5.) t Chron. x. Do; (6.) i Maccab. x. 83.
In the third and fourth of these passages it is certain that nothing else than the house (or temple) of the god Dagen: is meant [DAGON]. The others claim our attention here—r. BETHDAGON, (LXX. Cod. Al. in Josh. xv. 41, was one of the second group of sixteen cities with their villages,' which the sacred writer places in the lowlands (r6et;) of the tribe of Judah, appa rently on the actual plain which stretches west ward towards the Philistine coast from `the hill country,' so often mentioned. A doubt has been expressed (see Reland, PaLcstina, 636, and Smith's Dictionary, s. v.), whether, in the absence* of the conjunction 1, this name Bethdagon should not be joined, as an epithet of distinction, to the preced ing word Gederoth, so as to form the compound appellation, Cederoth-bethdatron. But then this group of sixteen cities would be defective by one; moreover, the name Gederoth occurs alone in 2 Chron. xxviii. 18, with the same description as it has in this place, as one of the cities of the low lands of Judah. Gesenius and Fiirst± identify this Bethdagon with the Caphar-dagon, which in the time of Eusebius was a very large village:: (icth,tin uc-ylcrrn, inter Jamniam et Diospolin ; Onomast. s. v.) in the neighbourhood of Joppa; but modern research has shewn that this latter place, of which still remain some traces in Belt Delan, a village be tween Yafa and Ludd, is considerably above the northern boundary of Judah. Our Beth-dagon, indeed, no longer exists (Robinson, iii. [1st ed.]; p. 30, note 2; Van de Velde's Mai) of Palestine and Memoir, p. 294). The same must be said of our (2.) BETH-DAGON, mentioned in Josh. xix. 27 (LXX. Batb-e.yeval; Cod. Al. Bob-Saydo) as one of the border cities of the tribe of Asher. Though, how ever, no modern landmark points out the site of this north Beth-dagon, it is not difficult to discover, from the precise topographical statement of the sacred writer, that this city was situated at the point where the boundary line of the tribe, after crossing the ridge south of the promontory of Carmel towards the east, intersects the stream of the Kishon, on the confines of Zebulon. It is remarkable that, as there is a modern Belt Dejan in the south which yet cannot be identified with, but is far to the north-west of, the southern Beth dagon ; so there is still, in the central district of the Holy Land, a second Belt Dejan, which is equally far distant from our northern Beth-dagon, only in the opposite direction of south-east. In the fertile and beautiful plain of Salim, a little to the east of Nabulus (Shechem), Dr. Robinson de
scried at the east end of it, on some low hills, a village called Belt Dejan. (Bibl. Researches, vol. iii., p. to2; Later Researches, p. 2981. This Belt Dejan, Robinson thinks, has no counterpart in the Beth-dagons of the Bible. The French traveller, De Saulcy, is not of this opinion, but identifies this village near Nfibulus with our Nth Beth dagon. ' I am very much inclined to believe,' he says, ' that the Beth-dagon of the passage just quoted (I Chron. x. io) is no other than our Belt Dejan, because this village is only one day's march from Djilboun, the locality in the mountain to the north-east of Djenin, which was unquestion ably the scene of Saul's disaster' (Dead Sea and Bible Lands, i. tot). If his conjecture be right, we must indicate this as the (3.) BETHDAGON (LXX. oiKos Da-y/iv) in the western half tribe of Manasseh (some distance from Mount Gilboa), where the Philistines after their victory placed Saul's head in the temple of their god—his body and those of his sons having been carried (the same distance north-east) to Bethshan, whence the Jabesh-Gileadites afterwards rescued them. It no doubt aids this view, that we are not otherwise informed where the temple was in which they de posited their ghastly trophy ; moreover, the phrase (in ver. 9) zlzt) denoting a circuit of the adjacent country, which had been evacuated by Israel, and was then occupied by the enemy (ver. 7), very well suits with the relative positions of this Belt Dejan and Bethshan, equally distant from the fatal field, and in different directions. We have now only left the place mentioned in our sixth and last passage, i Maccab. x. 83. Both Gesenius (nes. 194) and Winer (Realzooll. 168) express themselves doubtfully whether this passage means only Dagon's temple at Azotus, or a Bethdagon, a town so-called in the neighbourhood. We share in the doubt; but after consideration of the words of the 84th verse, as compared with those of the 85th verse, we are inclined to regard this as a (4.) BETHDAGON, a city in the vicinity of Azotus (or Ashdod), answering probably to Dr. Robinson's western Belt Dejan, and Eusebius' Caphar-dagon, already mentioned. It will be observed that in the 84th verse Bethdagon occurs as a proper name, as it also does in the original, 137A6a-yElw, whereas in the next verse, the temple of the Philis tine god is described by the appellative rd iepbv Aa-rcbv. But be this as it may, Ashdod, with its neighbourhood, seems to have been the chief seat (cf. this passage with I Sam. v. 1, 2) of a worship which was widely spread, not only among the Phoenician cities of the coast, but in inland towns, as is attested both by the names of these ancient and modern places, and still more remarkably (and perhaps unexpectedly) by the remains of Kouyun jik. [See DAGON in this work ; also Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 344, with the ac companying illustration.]—P. H.