I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, And him who holds the scepter from Ashkelon; And I will turn my hand against Ekron; And the remnant of the Philistines will perish," says the Lord Yahweh.
Ashdod - Uzziah about this time “brake down its walls and built cities about” 2 Chronicles 26:6 it, to protect his people from its inroads. It recovered, and was subsequently besieged and taken by Tartan, the Assyrian General under Sargon Isaiah 20:1 (about 716 b.c.). Somewhat later, it sustained the longest siege in man’s knowlege, for 29 years, from Psammetichus king of Egypt (about 635 b.c.). Whence, probably Jeremiah, while he speaks of Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, mentions “the remnant of Ashdod” Jeremiah 25:20 only. Yet, after the captivity, it seems to have been the first Philistine city, so that the Philistines were called Ashdodites Nehemiah 4:7, and their dialect Ashdodite Nehemiah 13:24. They were still hostile to the Jews Nehemiah 4:7. The war, in which Judas Maccabaeus spoiled Ashdod and other Philistine cities (1 Macc. 5:68), was a defensive war against a war of extermination. “The nations round about” (1 Macc. 5:1, 2), it is said at the beginning of the account of that year’s campaign, “thought to destroy the generation of Jacob that was among them, and thereupon they began to slay and destroy the people.” Jonathan, the brother of Judas, “set fire to Azotus and the cities round about it (1 Macc. 10:82, 84), after a battle under its walls, to which his enemies had challenged him. The temple of Dagon in it was a sort of citadel (1 Macc. 10:83).