In short, if you believe the place is holy because the law and the books of prophets are there, then it is time for you to believe that idols and the temples of idols are holy. Once, when the Jews were at war, the people of Ashdod conquered them, took their ark and brought it into their own temple. Did the fact that it contained the ark make their temple a holy place? By no means! It continued to be profane and unclean, as the events immediately proved. For God wanted to teach the enemies of the Jews that the defeat was not due to God’s weakness but to the transgressions of those who worshiped him. And so the ark, which had been taken as booty in war, gave proof of its own power in an alien land by twice throwing the idol to the ground so that the idol was broken. The ark was so far from making that temple a holy place that it even openly attacked it. DISCOURSES AGAINST JUDAIZING CHRISTIANS 6.7.1.^[1]

In their folly, they raised him up again only to see him fallen a second time and brought to his knees, so to speak. Behaving thus with singular stupidity and reluctant to recognize the difference, they were taught by experience not to run to excess. Having learned their lesson, they returned to their senses, shook off their drunken ignorance and returned the ark, as was fitting, to its proper admirers, having honored it with votive offerings. They confessed their chastisements and instructed those who received it about the manner of its return.

And now is not the first time, but he has performed these amazing marvels from time immemorial. It is not pertinent to enumerate them all; I shall mention what seems to resemble these events most closely. Once when the Jews waged war in Palestine with certain foreigners and the enemy was victorious and took the ark of God, they dedicated it as the choice part of the spoils to one of their local idols named Dagon; and, as soon as the ark was brought in, the statue fell down and lay on its face. Since they did not comprehend God’s mighty power from this fall but set it up and again placed it on its pedestal, when they appeared the next day at dawn they observed that it was no longer simply fallen but also quite broken. The arms, detached from the shoulders, were flung onto the threshold of the temple, with the feet; and the rest of the statue was scattered in another place in pieces. . . . Therefore the place, which is able to exist for a long time, receives the blow and reminds each succeeding generation that those who do such things are ordained by law to suffer such things even if they do not pay the penalty at once; which is exactly what happened in the case of this temple.

And this explains how they died. It is said that each one died when he went out to purge his bowels and was bitten in the inner part of his buttocks by mice.^[1] Now this wound is shown here in a literal fashion, but it is united with an allegorical exposition. For in its literal meaning, it refers to the illness caused by the hand of the Lord and the bites of the mice, which led to the outcome of death. It is said that the hand of the Lord weighed heavily upon the inhabitants of Ashdod because they were being killed by the mouse bites. In giving this passage its spiritual meaning, however, we recognize two kinds of deaths: the first kind of death is that by which sinners die to righteousness when they sin; the second kind of death is that by which the righteous deliver themselves from the sins in which they had lived and repent of them. The first kind of death enters into human hearts whenever the devil persuades someone to sin. The second kind of death is effected by the virtue of almighty God. Therefore, we must give attention to both kinds of death in this place as they are alluded to spiritually. The one type of death, by which sinners arise when they repent of their sins is alluded to by the words The hand of the Lord was heavy upon the inhabitants of Ashdod. But that type of death by which the Gentiles offered themselves as slaves to impurity and sin is alluded to when the people of Ashdod were bitten by the mice and died. A mouse, after all, is an unclean animal and could not be eaten according to the law. Therefore, what else could the mice refer to except to demons? And what else is being bitten by mice except being wounded by the penalty for sin? But they were bitten by the mice when they went out to purge their bowels. Now what does it mean to purge one’s bowels other than to reveal the stench of a wretched reputation by one’s obedience to sin? Thus, whoever went out to purge his bowels died by the bites of the mice, for by his sinning in plain sight of others he showed them an example of depravity, and he himself was also detained for eternal death by his dire obligations to the demons.

When those who delight in idolatry see the power of Christ against their own gods, they do not wish to embrace faith in him, lest on account of their faith alone they be compelled to reject the whole pantheon of their gods. When false Christians see that because of their faith in Christ the sins which they love are now forbidden to them, they ward off with all their might the very piety called forth by their faith, so that they might not end up being ordered at the behest of their faith to quench the desires they serve instead of God. The citizens of Ashdod are worthy of the name of excessiveness, dissoluteness and passions, since they do not want to know the precepts of sacred Scripture so that they do not have to carry them out, once they have learned them. Just as our Lord said that those who fail to carry out his will out of ignorance shall receive fewer blows of the scourge than those who knew it, so they do not wish to know what things they ought to do. They do not understand that there is a great difference between simply being ignorant and refusing to learn what you have studied and ought to know.