1 So the Philistia mob stole God’s special box. They took it from Ebenezer to a town called Ashdod, in Philistia country. 2 They carried it into the house of their god. They called him Dagon. In that house was a big statue of Dagon, made of stone. The Philistia mob used to show respect to that statue, just like it was real. And they put God’s special box next to it in that house.

3 The next morning, the Ashdod mob got up, and they saw their statue. It lay on the ground on its belly in front of God’s special box. So they stood it up again.

4 The next morning, they saw it on the ground like that again. It was lying there on its belly, in front of God’s special box. Its body was still good, but its head and arms were broken off. They lay in the doorway. 5 So Dagon’s workers, and everybody else, they did not want to walk through that door any more. They jumped through the doorway every time they went inside that house, so they would not step on the place where bits of Dagon used to be. And they still do that.

6 Then God made trouble for the people of Ashdod and the country around that town. He made everybody really sick, with lots of boils. 7 After they saw that bad sickness, they said to each other, “We’re in big trouble with the God of the Israel mob. And now he hits Dagon as well. We’ve got to throw away that special box.” 8 So they sent messengers to the bosses from other places of the Philistia nation to come and meet together at Ashdod. They asked them, “What will we do with this box of the God of the Israel mob?”

They answered, “Send it to another place now, to the town called Gath.” So then they took the special box to Gath.

9 But after they took it there, God made trouble for the Gath mob, in the same way. Everybody got really sick, with lots of boils. All the kids and the adults got sick. That made them really frightened. 10 So the Philistia mob took the special box to another place, this time to the town called Ekron.

After they arrived at Ekron with the special box, lots of people from that place shouted out as they saw it, “Oh no. They have brought that special box here now. We will all die.” 11 So they sent messengers to the bosses from other places to come and meet together at Ekron. This time they said, “Send it away. Send it back to its own country. It might finish us up and everybody else in Philistia.”

Lots of people in that place died from the same sickness. That’s how God made them frightened. He made big trouble for all the Philistia mob. 12 The other people that were still alive, they were really sick, with lots of boils. They cried out to their gods, to ask them to help.