14 PHILISTINES

Meanwhile, during Mernetpah's reign Egypt was threatened by "Sea People," believed today to have been Indo-Europeans from the Aegean Sea region. Under Merneptah they were driven off. Then around 1177 BCE, in the eighth year of the reign of Merneptah's successor, Ramses III, more raids came by the sea. Ramses III repelled the invaders, and he boasted of re-establishing Egyptian rule through Canaan as far north as the Plain of Jezreel.

The Philistines had a language that had been spoken in Crete, Cyprus and the southwestern portion of Asia Minor calledCaria. And the script of this language echoed the script of the Mycenaean Greeks, whose civilization was among those disrupted by the aforementioned great migrations from before 1200 BCE. Some have speculated that the Philistines were Greeks fleeing from the invasions that ended Mycenaean civilization. At any rate, it appears that in Canaan they mixed and probably intermarried with the Canaanites. They adopted the Canaanite language. They melded their religion with Canaanite religion and gave to their gods the names of Canaanite gods.

In their coastal cities, the Philistines maintained some cohesion as a people. The Israelites were resisting occasional attacks by camel riding nomads from the east. Then the Philistines attempted to expand against them. The Philistines forced the Hebrew tribe of Dan to leave their home in the foothills and to migrate to the north.

The Samson Story

 legendary leader from the tribe of Dan who fought the Philistines is described in the Old Testament as Samson. Samson is thought to have lived between 1118 to 1078 BCE. In the Book of Judges 16:17 he is described as a Nazirite. . Chapter Six of the Book of Numbers describes the Nazirites as engaged in ecstatic frenzies and abstaining from wine, strong drink and in refraining from cutting their hair. The Nazirites were zealous, and if they were strong enough they were inclined to take the lead in combating people they detested – and they are said to have detested the Philistines.

The Old Testament story describes Samson as a leader in the fight against the Philistines and as having a weakness for Philistine women. The Book of Judges describes Samson as burning Philistine crops and killing a thousand Philistines in a place called Ramathlehi, which means "the hill of the jawbone." Judges 15:17 describes this as the place Samson killed Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. According to the Samson legend, Samson told a Philistine woman, Delilah, that if his hair was cut he would lose his strength. As Samson slept, Delilah cut his hair – a lesson for Israelites about the dangers of foreign women.

Having lost his strength, the story goes, the Philistines overpowered Samson and gouged out his eyes. They took Samson to Gaza, bound him in chains and put him to work "as a grinder." There his hair grew back. And when "the lords of the Philistines" assembled they had Samson brought to them so they could look upon him with amusement. Watching from the roof of the building were about 3,000 Philistine men and women. The Philistines put Samson between two pillars. Samson, using his legendary strength, pushed on the pillars and brought the roof crashing down, killing himself and all the Philistines in and on the building – an act perhaps not unlike some suicide-retribution acts in the Middle East in the 21st century.

There is a peculiarity in the designation of the Philistines in Hebrew which has often been noticed, and which must have a certain significance. In referring to a tribe or nation the Hebrew writers as a rule either (a) personified an imaginary founder, making his name stand for the tribe supposed to derive from him—e. g. 'Israel' for the Israelites; or (b) used the tribal name in the singular, with the definite article—a usage sometimes transferred to the Authorized Version, as in such familiar phrases as 'the Canaanite was then in the land' (Gen. xii. 6); but more commonly assimilated to the English idiom which requires a plural, as in 'the iniquity of the Amorite[s] is not yet full' (Gen. xv. 16). But in referring to the Philistines, the plural of the ethnic name is always used, and as a rule the definite article is omitted. A good example is afforded by the name of the Philistine territory above mentioned, ’ereṣ P^elištīm, literally 'the land of Philistines': contrast such an expression as ’ereṣ hak-K^ena‘anī, literally 'the land of the Canaanite'. A few other names, such as that of the Rephaim, are similarly constructed: and so far as the scanty monuments of Classical Hebrew permit us to judge, it may be said generally that the same usage seems to be followed when there is question of a people not conforming to the model of Semitic (or perhaps we should rather say Aramaean) tribal organization. The Canaanites, Amorites, Jebusites, and the rest, are so closely bound together by the theory of blood-kinship which even yet prevails in the Arabian deserts, that each may logically be spoken of as anindividual human unit. No such polity was recognized among the pre-Semitic Rephaim, or the intruding Philistines, so that they had to be referred to as an aggregate of human units. This rule, it must be admitted, does not seem to be rigidly maintained; for instance, the name of the pre-Semitic Horites might have been expected to follow the exceptional construction. But a hard-and-fast adhesion to so subtle a distinction, by all the writers who have contributed to the canon of the Hebrew scriptures and by