³⁰ Even though you had to go because you longed greatly for your father’s house, why did you steal my gods?”^(A)

²⁴ He replied, “You take my gods that I made and the priest and go away, and what have I left? How then can you ask me, ‘What is the matter?’ ”^(A)

¹⁹ Now Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father’s household gods.^(A)

¹¹ Thus shall you say to them: The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.^[a](A)

¹² “I shall kindle a fire in the temples of the gods of Egypt, and he shall burn them and carry them away captive, and he shall pick clean the land of Egypt as a shepherd picks his cloak clean of vermin, and he shall depart from there safely.^(A)

¹⁹ and have hurled their gods into the fire, though they were no gods but the work of human hands—wood and stone—and so they were destroyed.^(A)

²¹ The Philistines abandoned their idols there, and David and his men carried them away.^(A)

² then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and placed it beside Dagon.^{(A) 3} When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place.^{(B) 4} But when they rose early on the next morning, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off upon the threshold; only the trunk of^[a] Dagon was left to him.^{(C) 5} This is why the priests of Dagon and all who enter the house of Dagon do not step on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.

⁶ The hand of the Lord was heavy upon the people of Ashdod, and he terrified and struck them with tumors, both in Ashdod and in its territory.^(D)

³¹ But Joash said to all who were arrayed against him, “Will you contend for Baal? Or will you defend his cause? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been pulled down.”