Philistines

93:9.4But Abra­ham was not long to be de­terred in his mis­sion as the suc­ces­sor of Mel­chiz­e­dek. Soon he made con­verts among the Phil­is­tines and of Abim­elech’s peo­ple, made a treaty with them, and, in turn, be­came con­tam­i­nated with many of their su­per­sti­tions, par­tic­u­larly with their prac­tice of sac­ri­fic­ing first-born sons. Thus did Abra­ham again be­come a great leader in Pales­tine. He was held in rev­er­ence by all groups and hon­ored by all kings. He was the spir­i­tual leader of all the sur­round­ing tribes, and his in­flu­ence con­tin­ued for some time af­ter his death. Dur­ing the clos­ing years of his life he once more re­turned to He­bron, the scene of his ear­lier ac­tiv­i­ties and the place where he had worked in as­so­ci­a­tion with Mel­chiz­e­dek. Abra­ham’s last act was to send trusty ser­vants to the city of his brother, Na­hor, on the bor­der of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, to se­cure a woman of his own peo­ple as a wife for his son Isaac. It had long been the cus­tom of Abra­ham’s peo­ple to marry their cousins. And Abra­ham died con­fi­dent in that faith in God which he had learned from Mel­chiz­e­dek in the van­ished schools of Salem.

93:5.6Upon ar­riv­ing at Salem, Abra­ham and Lot chose a hilly fast­ness near the city where they could de­fend them­selves against the many sur­prise at­tacks of north­ern raiders. At this time the Hit­tites, As­syr­i­ans, Phil­is­tines, and other groups were con­stantly raid­ing the tribes of cen­tral and south­ern Pales­tine. From their stronghold in the hills Abra­ham and Lot made fre­quent pil­grim­ages to Salem.

97:9.6Saul’s tragic de­feat at Gil­boa by the Phil­is­tines brought Yah­weh to a low point among the gods in the eyes of the sur­round­ing Ca­naan­ites. Or­di­nar­ily, Saul’s de­feat would have been as­cribed to apos­tasy from Yah­weh, but this time the Ju­dahite ed­i­tors at­tributed it to rit­ual er­rors. They re­quired the tra­di­tion of Saul and Samuel as a back­ground for the king­ship of David.

130:1.1Dur­ing their stay in Joppa, Je­sus met Ga­diah, a Phil­is­tine in­ter­preter who worked for one Si­mon a tan­ner. Gonod’s agents in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had trans­acted much busi­ness with this Si­mon; so Gonod and his son de­sired to pay him a visit on their way to Cae­sarea. While they tar­ried at Joppa, Je­sus and Ga­diah be­came warm friends. This young Phil­is­tine was a truth seeker. Je­sus was a truth giver; he was the truth for that gen­er­a­tion on Uran­tia. When a great truth seeker and a great truth giver meet, the re­sult is a great and lib­er­at­ing en­light­en­ment born of the ex­pe­ri­ence of new truth.

130:1.5Je­sus’ last visit with Ga­diah had to do with a dis­cus­sion of good and evil. This young Phil­is­tine was much trou­bled by a feel­ing of in­jus­tice be­cause of the pres­ence of evil in the world along­side the good. He said: “How can God, if he is in­finitely good, per­mit us to suf­fer the sor­rows of evil; af­ter all, who cre­ates evil?” It was still be­lieved by many in those days that God cre­ates both good and evil, but Je­sus never taught such er­ror. In an­swer­ing this ques­tion, Je­sus said: “My brother, God is love; there­fore he must be good, and his good­ness is so great and real that it can­not con­tain the small and un­real things of evil. God is so pos­i­tively good that there is ab­so­lutely no place in him for neg­a­tive evil. Evil is the im­ma­ture choos­ing and the un­think­ing mis­step of those who are re­sis­tant to good­ness, re­ject­ful of beauty, and dis­loyal to truth. Evil is only the mis­adap­ta­tion of im­ma­tu­rity or the dis­rup­tive and dis­tort­ing in­flu­ence of ig­no­rance. Evil is the in­ev­i­ta­ble dark­ness which fol­lows upon the heels of the un­wise re­jec­tion of light. Evil is that which is dark and un­true, and which, when con­sciously em­braced and will­fully en­dorsed, be­comes sin.

74:8.9The He­brews had no writ­ten lan­guage in gen­eral us­age for a long time af­ter they reached Pales­tine. They learned the use of an al­pha­bet from the neigh­bor­ing Phil­is­tines, who were po­lit­i­cal refugees from the higher civ­i­liza­tion of Crete. The He­brews did lit­tle writ­ing un­til about 900 B.C., and hav­ing no writ­ten lan­guage un­til such a late date, they had sev­eral dif­fer­ent sto­ries of cre­ation in cir­cu­la­tion, but af­ter the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity they in­clined more to­ward ac­cept­ing a mod­i­fied Mes­o­po­ta­mian ver­sion.

97:9.11And it was by such meth­ods and out of such peo­ple that David built up the fic­tion of a di­vine king­dom of Ju­dah as the suc­ces­sor of the her­itage and tra­di­tions of the van­ish­ing north­ern king­dom of Ephraimite Is­rael. David’s cos­mopoli­tan tribe of Ju­dah was more gen­tile than Jew­ish; nev­er­the­less the op­pressed el­ders of Ephraim came down and “anointed him king of Is­rael.” Af­ter a mil­i­tary threat, David then made a com­pact with the Je­busites and es­tab­lished his cap­i­tal of the united king­dom at Je­bus (Je­ru­sa­lem), which was a strong-walled city mid­way be­tween Ju­dah and Is­rael. The Phil­is­tines were aroused and soon at­tacked David. Af­ter a fierce bat­tle they were de­feated, and once more Yah­weh was es­tab­lished as “The Lord God of Hosts.”

97:9.12But Yah­weh must, per­force, share some of this glory with the Ca­naan­ite gods, for the bulk of David’s army was non-He­brew. And so there ap­pears in your rec­ord (over­looked by the Ju­dahite ed­i­tors) this tell­tale state­ment: “Yah­weh has bro­ken my en­e­mies be­fore me. There­fore he called the name of the place Baal-Per­azim.” And they did this be­cause eighty per cent of David’s sol­diers were Ba­al­ites.

97:9.13David ex­plained Saul’s de­feat at Gil­boa by point­ing out that Saul had at­tacked a Ca­naan­ite city, Gib­eon, whose peo­ple had a peace treaty with the Ephraimites. Be­cause of this, Yah­weh for­sook him. Even in Saul’s time David had de­fended the Ca­naan­ite city of Keilah against the Phil­is­tines, and then he lo­cated his cap­i­tal in a Ca­naan­ite city. In keep­ing with the pol­icy of com­pro­mise with the Ca­naan­ites, David turned seven of Saul’s de­scen­dants over to the Gibeonites to be hanged.

97:9.14Af­ter the de­feat of the Phil­is­tines, David gained pos­ses­sion of the “ark of Yah­weh,” brought it to Je­ru­sa­lem, and made the wor­ship of Yah­weh of­fi­cial for his king­dom. He next laid heavy trib­ute on the neigh­bor­ing tribes—the Edom­ites, Moabites, Am­monites, and Syr­i­ans.

97:9.15David’s cor­rupt po­lit­i­cal ma­chine be­gan to get per­sonal pos­ses­sion of land in the north in vi­o­la­tion of the He­brew mores and pres­ently gained con­trol of the car­a­van tar­iffs for­merly col­lected by the Phil­is­tines. And then came a se­ries of atroc­i­ties cli­maxed by the mur­der of Uriah. All ju­di­cial ap­peals were ad­ju­di­cated at Je­ru­sa­lem; no longer could “the el­ders” mete out jus­tice. No won­der re­bel­lion broke out. To­day, Ab­sa­lom might be called a dem­a­gogue; his mother was a Ca­naan­ite. There were a half dozen con­tenders for the throne be­sides the son of Bathsheba—Sol­o­mon.