One of the five Philistine cities, on the coastal plain between Ashkelon and Joppa. It is where the captured ark was taken into the temple of Dagon, and where the statue was found face-down on the threshold two mornings running with its head and hands broken off (1 Samuel 5:1-5). Sargon II of Assyria besieged and took it in 711 BC — an event Isaiah 20:1 dates by name, and which Sargon's own annals record. Amos names it among the Philistine cities whose rulers will be cut off (1:8).