52. We can determine that people devoted to a faith divorced from caring were represented by the Philistines not only from their wars with the children of Israel but also from a number of other things we are told about them in the Word. For example, there is what it says about their idol, Dagon; about the hemorrhoids they were afflicted with and the rats they were invaded by because they had put the ark in their idol’s shrine; and about what happened after that (see chapters 1 Samuel 5, 6 of 1 Samuel). There is also Goliath, the Philistine killed by David (see 1 Samuel 17).

As for their idol Dagon, it looked human from the waist up but looked like a fish from the waist down. This was an image of their religion, which seemed to be spiritual because of its faith but was merely earthly because of its lack of caring. The hemorrhoids that afflicted them symbolized their unclean loves; the rats that invaded them symbolized the destruction of the church through its distortions of truth; and Goliath, [the Philistine] killed by David, represented their pride in their own intelligence.