Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations Part 3

The Philistine invasion preceded that of the Israelites by a few years.

The Philistines were sea-robbers, probably from the island of Krete.

Zephaniah calls them "the nation of the Cherethites" or Kretans, and their features, as represented on the Egyptian monuments, are of a Greek or Aryan type. They have the straight nose, high forehead, and thin lips of the European. On their heads they wear a curious kind of pleated cap, fastened round the chin by a strap. They are clad in a pair of drawers and a cuira.s.s of leather, while their arms consist of a small round shield with two handles, a spear, and a short but broad sword of bronze.

Greaves of bronze, like those of the Homeric heroes, protected their legs in battle.

The Philistines formed part of the host which invaded Egypt in the reign of Ramses III. Along with their kinsfolk, the Zakkal, they had already made themselves formidable to the coast of the Delta and of southern Canaan. The sea had long been infested by their ships, bent on plunder and piracy; the Zakkal had attacked Egypt in the time of Meneptah, and the road from Egypt to Asia which skirted the sea had long been known as "the way of the Philistines." When Ramses III. overran southern Canaan, Gaza still belonged to Egypt, as it had done for the three preceding centuries; but it is probable that the Philistines were already settled in its neighbourhood. At all events, it was not long before they made themselves masters of Gaza, and thus closed for Egypt the way to Asia.

Henceforward Gaza and its four companion cities became the strongholds of the Philistines (B.C. 1200). The southern coast as far north as Mount Carmel fell into their hands: the Zakkal established themselves at Dor, and the port of Joppa was lost to the Phoenicians.

Hardly were the Israelites planted in the Promised Land before they were confronted by the Philistines. Shamgar, we are told, one of the earliest of the Judges, slew six hundred of them "with an ox-goad." But it was not until the close of the period of the Judges that they became really formidable to Israel. Judah had become a distinct and powerful tribe, formed out of Hebrew, Kenite, and Edomite elements, and its frontier adjoined Philistia. At first there was desultory warfare; the Philistines made raids into Judaean territory, and the Jews retaliated whenever the opportunity occurred. But the Philistines were a nation of warriors, and their forces were recruited from time to time by fresh arrivals from Krete or other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Year by year, therefore, the Philistine attack became more formidable; the raids of the enemy were no longer confined to Judah, but extended into Benjamin and Mount Ephraim. The Philistines began to dream of conquering the whole of Canaan, which was henceforth to bear the name of Palestine, "the land of the Philistines."

The Israelitish army was shattered in a decisive battle, the ark of the covenant between Israel and its national G.o.d was taken by the heathen, and the priests of Shiloh, the central sanctuary, were slain. The victors marched unresisted through the country, burning and spoiling, and securing the pa.s.ses by means of permanent garrisons. Shiloh and its temple were destroyed, and its priesthood scattered abroad.

The Philistine supremacy lasted for several years. A few outlaws maintained a guerilla warfare in the mountains of Benjamin, and the prophet Samuel, the representative of Shiloh, was allowed to declare the oracles of Yahveh to his countrymen. But the vanquished population was deprived of the means for revolt. The Israelites were forbidden the use of arms, and no itinerant smith was permitted to enter their territory.

The Hebrew who wished to sharpen his ploughshare or axe was forced to go to a Philistine city.

The condition of Israel became intolerable. There was but one remedy: the people needed a leader who should organise them into an army and a nation, and lead them forth against their foes. Saul was elected king, and the choice was soon justified by the results. The Philistines were driven out of the country, and Saul set up his court in the very spot where a Philistine garrison had stood.

But the Philistines were not yet subdued. Civil war broke out in Israel between Saul and his son-in-law David; the troops which should have been employed in resisting the common enemy were used in pursuing David, and David himself took service as a mercenary under Achish, King of Gath.

Saul and his sons fell in battle on Mount Gilboa; the relics of the Israelitish army fled across the Jordan, and the Philistine again ruled supreme on the western side of the Jordan. David was allowed to govern Judah as a tributary va.s.sal of the Philistine "lords."

The murder of the feeble scion of Saul's house who had the name of king on the eastern side of the Jordan put an end to all this. David threw off his allegiance to the Philistines, and was crowned King of Israel.

This act of open defiance was speedily followed by the invasion of Judah. At first the war went against the Israelitish king; he was forced to fly from his capital, Hebron, and take refuge in an inaccessible cavern. Here he organised his forces, and at last ventured into the field. The Philistine forces were defeated in battle after battle; the war was carried into their own territory, and their cities were compelled to surrender. Philistia thus became a part of the Israelitish kingdom, and never again made any serious attempt to recover its independence. At the division of the Israelitish kingdom it fell to Judah, and its va.s.sal princes duly paid their tribute to the Jewish kings. It would seem from the a.s.syrian inscriptions that they were played off one against the other, and that signs of disaffection in any one of them were speedily followed by his imprisonment in Jerusalem. At all events, the Philistine cities remained in the possession of Judah down to the time of the overthrow of the monarchy, and the most devoted of David's body-guard were the Philistines of Gath.

It has been said above that Judah was a mixture of Hebrew, Kenite, and Edomite elements. Kenite means "smith," and the tribe furnished those itinerant smiths who provided Canaan with its tools and arms. Reference is made to one of them in the _Travels of a Mohar_, a sarcastic description of a tourist's misadventures in Palestine which was written by an Egyptian author in the reign of Ramses II., and of which a copy on papyrus has been preserved to us. The horses of the hero of the story, we are told, ran away and broke his carriage to pieces; he had accordingly to betake himself to "the iron-workers" and have it repaired. Similar itinerant ironsmiths wandered through Europe in the Middle Ages, handing down from father to son the secrets of their craft.

The Kenites came from the desert, and were apparently of Midianitish descent. Balaam had looked down upon their rocky strongholds from the heights of Moab; and they had accompanied their Hebrew comrades of Judah from their first camping-ground near Jericho to the wilderness south of Arad. Here they lived among the Amalekite Bedawin down to the days of Saul. To the last they maintained their nomadic habits, and the Kenite family of Rechab still dwelt in tents and avoided wine in that later age when the kingdom of Judah was about to fall.[3]

The Edomite element in Judah was stronger than the Kenite. It consisted of the two clans of Jerahmeel and Kenaz, or the house of Caleb as it was called in the time of David.[4] Kenaz was a grandson of Esau, and the fact that the Kenizzites shared with the Israelitish tribes in the conquest of Canaan throws light on the law of Deuteronomy[5] which gave the Edomite of "the third generation" all the rights and privileges of a Jew. Caleb, the conqueror of Hebron, was a Kenizzite; so also was Othniel, the first of the Judges of Israel. Edomites, rather than Hebrews, were the founders of the future Judah.

This accounts for the comparatively late appearance of Judah as a separate tribe in the history of Israel, as well as for the antagonism which existed between it and the more pure-blooded tribes of the north.

In the Song of Deborah and Barak, Judah is not mentioned; Ephraim and Benjamin, and not Judah, are still regarded as forming the bulwark of Israel against the Amalekite marauders of the southern wilderness. It was the Philistine wars which first created the Judah of later days.

They forced Hebrews, Edomites, and Kenites to unite against the common enemy, and welded them into a single whole. Though the three peoples still continued to be spoken of separately, this was but a survival of ancient modes of speech, and after the accession of David all distinction between them disappears. From this time forward the kingdom of Judah is one undivided community.

But the Amalekites were ever on its borders. The Amalekite of the Old Testament is the Bedawi of to-day. Now, as ever, he is the scourge of his more settled neighbours, whose fields he harries and whose families he murders. He lives by robbery and theft; too idle to work himself, he plunders those who do. A strong government forces him to hide himself in the depth of the wilderness; when the countries that skirt the desert fall into decay he emerges from his retreat like a swarm of flies. The ancient Oriental world saw in Amalek "the firstborn of nations;" he was for them the representative of the primitive savage who had survived in the wilds of the desert. Untamed and untamable, his hand was against every man, and every man's hand against him.

Before Babylonian culture had been brought to the West, Amalek already existed. He was older than the oldest of the civilised kingdoms of the earth. But civilisation had raised a barrier against him which he was ever on the watch to break through. He never lost the opportunity of raiding the inhabitants of the cultivated lands, and escaping again into the desert with his booty before he could be overtaken and punished. The desert between Palestine and Egypt was his chief camping-ground. He had occupied the wadis of Mount Seir before the Edomites had entered them, and a part of the later population of the country traced its descent from a mixture of the Bedawi with the Edomite. The Egyptians had many names for the Bedawin hordes. Sometimes they were the Herusha or "Lords of the Sands," sometimes the Shasu or "Plunderers," sometimes again the Sute or "Archers." The third name was borrowed from the Babylonians; in return, as we learn from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, the Babylonians adopted the second.

Hardly had the Israelites escaped from Egypt when they were called upon to dispute with the Amalekites the possession of the desert. At Rephidim the Bedawin robbers fell upon the Israelitish camp. But they were beaten off with slaughter, and never again ventured to molest the people of Yahveh during their wanderings in the wilderness. The attack, however, was never forgotten, and vengeance was exacted for it in the reign of Saul. Then the Amalekites were pursued into their desert domain and mercilessly slaughtered. They had their home, it is said, in the desert which extended from Shur to Havilah. Shur was the line of fortification which defended the eastern frontier of Egypt, and ran pretty much where the Suez Ca.n.a.l has been dug to-day; Havilah was the "sandy" desert of northern Arabia. Here was the "city" of tents of which Agag was shekh, and which the troops of the Israelitish king burnt and spoiled.

But the remembrance of the expedition did not last long. When civil war had weakened the power of Saul, and the march of the Philistine army to the north had left the south of Canaan without defenders, an Amalekite tribe again poured into Judah and sacked the Philistine town of Ziklag.

The wives and property of David and his followers were carried off into the wilderness. But the marauders were overtaken by the Israelites they had robbed, and summary vengeance taken upon them. Men, women, and children were alike put to the sword; four hundred only escaped through the fleetness of their camels.

In the Tel el-Amarna tablets we find the Bedawin and their shekhs playing a part in the politics of Canaan. Their services were hired by the rival princes of Palestine, and from time to time we hear of their seizing or plundering its cities on their own account. They have never ceased indeed to infest the land. Amalekite bands joined with the Midianites in devastating the villages of central Israel in the days of Gideon, and the Amalekite who brought to David the news of Saul's death was one of those who had hovered on the skirts of the contending armies, eager when the fight was over to murder the wounded and strip the slain.

In a later age the "Arabs" who, according to the inscriptions of Sennacherib, formed the body-guard of Hezekiah were probably Bedawin, and Geshem the Arabian in the time of Nehemiah seems to have represented the Amalekite chieftain of an earlier epoch. The Bedawin still haunt the plains and unfrequented paths of Palestine, waylaying the traveller and robbing the peasant of his flocks.

The peasantry or fellahin are the Perizzites of the Hebrew Scriptures.

"Perizzite," in fact, means "villager," and the word is a descriptive t.i.tle rather than the name of a people or a race. It denotes the agricultural population, whatever their origin may have been. Another word of similar signification is Hivite. If any distinction is to be drawn between them, it is that the term Perizzite was specially applied to the fellahin of southern Canaan, while the term Hivite was restricted to the inhabitants of the north. In two pa.s.sages, it is true, "Hivite"

seems to be used with an ethnic meaning. Esau is said in one of them to have married the granddaughter of "Zibeon the Hivite," while in the other we read of "the Hivite" who dwelt under Mount Hermon. But a comparison of the first pa.s.sage with the later verses of the same chapter shows that "Hivite" must be corrected into "Horite," and in the second pa.s.sage it is probable that "Hitt.i.te" instead of "Hivite" should be read.

Amorite and Hitt.i.te, Canaanite and Philistine, were all alike emigrants from other lands. The Hitt.i.tes had come from the mountains of Asia Minor, the Amorites had probably wandered from the northern coast of Africa, the Canaanites traced their ancestry to the Persian Gulf, the Philistines had sailed from the harbours of the Greek seas. Canaan had been inhabited, however, before any of them had found their way to it, and this prehistoric population of the country was known to the Hebrews by the name of Rephaim. In the English translation of the Bible the word is usually rendered "giants;" it seems, however, to have been a proper name, which survived in the name of one of the cities of Bashan.

Doubtless it often included other elements besides that to which it was properly applied. At times it was extended to the Amorites, whose occupation of Palestine went back to a remote past, just as in the Babylonian inscriptions the name of Amorite itself was extended to the aboriginal population. Among the Philistines this older population was called Avvim, the people of "the ruins."

Such then were the races who lived in Canaan, and with whom the invading Israelites had to contend. There was firstly the primitive population of the country, whose rude rock-sculptures may still be seen in the Wadi el-Qana near Tyre. Then there were the intrusive Amorites and Canaanites, the Amorites with their fair skins and blue eyes who made themselves a home in the mountains, and the Semitic Canaanites who settled on the coast and in the plains. The Amorite migration went back to an epoch long before that of the first Babylonian conquests in the West; the Canaanitish migration may have been coeval with the latter event. Next came the Hitt.i.tes, to whom the Jebusites of Jerusalem may have belonged; then the Philistines, who seized the southern coast but a few years previously to the Israelitish invasion. Canaan was a land of many races and many peoples, who had taken shelter in its highlands, or had found their further progress barred by the sea. Small as it was, it was the link between Asia and Africa, the battle-ground of the great kingdoms which arose on the Euphrates and the Nile. It formed, in fact, the centre of the ancient civilised world, and the mixture of races within it was due in great measure to its central position. The culture of Babylonia and Egypt met there and coalesced.

[Footnote 2: Numb. xiii. 29.]

[Footnote 3: 1 Chr. ii. 55; Jer. x.x.xv. 3-10.]

[Footnote 4: 1 Sam. x.x.x. 14.]

[Footnote 5: Deut. xxiii 8.]

CHAPTER III

THE NATIONS OF THE SOUTH-EAST

Israel was cut in two by the Jordan. The districts east of the Jordan were those that had first been conquered; it was from thence that the followers of Joshua had gone forth to possess themselves of Canaan. But this division of the territory was a source of weakness. The interests of the tribes on the two sides of the river were never quite the same; at times indeed they were violently antagonistic. When the disruption of the monarchy came after the death of Solomon, Judah was the stronger for the fact that the eastern tribes followed those of the north. The eastern tribes were the first to lose their independence; they were carried into a.s.syrian captivity twelve years before the fall of Samaria itself.

The eastern side of Jordan, in fact, belonged of right to the kinsfolk of the Israelites, the children of Lot. Ammon and Moab derived their origin from the nephew of Abraham, not from the patriarch himself, the ancestor of Ammon being Ben-Ammi, "the Son of Ammi," the national G.o.d of the race. It was said that the two peoples were the offspring of incest, and the cave was pointed out where they had been born. Ammon occupied the country to the north which in earlier days had been the home of the aboriginal Zuzini or Zamzummim. But they had been treated as the Canaanites were treated by the Israelites in later days; their cities were captured by the invading Ammonites, and they themselves ma.s.sacred or absorbed into the conquerors.

To the north the territory of Ammon was bounded by the plateau of Bashan and the Aramaic kingdoms of Gilead. Southward it extended towards the frontier of Moab, if indeed the borders of the two nations did not at one time coincide. When the Israelitish invasion, however, took place, the Amorites under Sihon had thrust themselves between, and had carved for themselves a kingdom out of the northern half of Moab. The land north of the Arnon became Amorite; but the Ammonite frontier was too well defended to be broken through.

The kingdom of Ammon maintained itself down to the time of David. At one time, in the days of the Judges, the Ammonites had made the Israelitish tribes on the eastern side of the Jordan tributary to them, and had even crossed the river and raided the highlands of Ephraim. Under Saul, Ammon and Israel were at constant feud. Saul had begun his reign by rescuing Jabesh in Gilead from the Ammonite king Nahash, who had threatened to treat its inhabitants with innate Semitic barbarity. When civil war broke out in Israel, Nahash naturally befriended David, and the alliance continued after David's accession to the throne. Common interests brought them together. Esh-Baal, the successor of Saul in Gilead, was the enemy of both: his frontier adjoined that of Ammon, while between him and the King of Judah there was perpetual war. David had strengthened himself by marrying the daughter of the king of the Aramaic district of Geshur, which bounded Gilead on the north, and Ammonites and Aramaeans were in close alliance with each other.

As long as Nahash lived, there was peace between him and David. But with the accession of his son Hanun came a change. The King of Judah had become King of Israel, and his general, Joab, had subdued the neighbouring kingdom of Moab, and was looking out for a fresh field of fame. Hanun determined to forestall the war which he believed to be inevitable, and, in alliance with the Aramaeans, to crush the rising power of David. Family quarrels also probably conspired to bring about this resolution. In the after days of Absalom's rebellion we find David entertained in Gilead by Shobi the brother of Hanun;[6] it may be, therefore, that Hanun had had a rival in his brother, who had received shelter and protection at David's court. At all events the Israelitish amba.s.sadors were grossly insulted, and a long war with Ammon began.

Campaign followed upon campaign; the City of Waters, Rabbah, the "capital" of Ammon, was closely invested, and the Aramaic allies of Hanun were put to flight. Rabbah fell at last; its defenders were tortured and slain, and the kingdom of Ammon annexed to the Israelitish empire.

When it recovered its independence we do not know. In the days of a.s.syrian conquest in the West it was already again governed by its own kings. One of them, Baasha, the son of Rehob, was, like Ahab of Samaria, an ally of Damascus against the a.s.syrian invader, and we hear of two others, one of whom bears the same name as "Shinab, King of Admah." The storm of Babylonian conquest which overwhelmed Judah spared Ammon; after the destruction of Jerusalem Baalis was still king of the Ammonites, and ready to extend his power over the desolated fields of Judah.[7]

The language of Ammon, if we may argue from the proper names, was, like that of Moab, a mere dialectal variety of that of Israel. The "language of Canaan" must have been adopted by the Ammonites and Moabites just as it was by the Israelitish tribes. The Moabite Stone has proved this conclusively. Moabite and Ammonite, Phoenician and Hebrew, were all alike dialects of one language, which differed from one another merely as one English dialect differs from another. Hebrew had retained a few "Arabisms," a few traces of its ancient contact with Arabic-speaking tribes; that was all. In other respects it was the same as "the language of Canaan" on either side of the Jordan.

The Ammonites believed themselves to be the children of the national G.o.d Ammi. But Ammi was usually worshipped under the t.i.tle of Malcham or Milcom, "the King." It was to Milcom that Solomon erected an altar at Jerusalem, in honour of that Ammonite wife whose son Rehoboam succeeded him on the throne, and it was from the head of his image at Kabbah that his crown of gold and precious stones, 131 pounds in weight, was removed to grace the triumph of David.[8]

Moab was more exposed to the inroads of its nomadic neighbours from the wilderness than its sister-kingdom of Ammon. It lay along the eastern sh.o.r.es of the Dead Sea, and was a land of lofty mountains and fertile river-plains. Its wadis were coveted by the tribes of the desert; the well-watered valley of the Arnon attracted more powerful foes. When the Israelites encamped in "the plain of Moab," Balak, the Moabite king, sent in terror to Balaam, the seer of Pethor. He had indeed cause for alarm. The Amorites had already robbed him of the fairest portion of his dominions; Moab north of the Arnon had fallen into their hands. The Amorite song of triumph has been preserved in the Book of Numbers. "Come unto Heshbon," it said; "let the city of Sihon be built and fortified.

For a fire has gone forth from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon; it hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the Baalim of the high-places of Arnon.

Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: [Chemosh] hath given his sons that escaped [the battle], and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon, King of the Amorites."[9]

Moab was avenged by Israel. The Amorites were crushed by the Israelitish forces, though the lands they had taken from Moab were not restored to their original owners. The conquerors settled in them, and a mixed Israelitish and Moabite population was the result. The Moabites, in fact, were powerless to resist. The southern portion of the kingdom had been overrun by Midianite hordes; the enemy with whom the Israelites had to contend on Moabite soil was Midianite and not Moabite. Those who corrupted Israel on the high-place of Peor were Midianites in race.

The Midianites seem to have continued in occupation of Moabite territory for several generations. Reuben was enabled to pasture his flocks in peace in its valleys, and it is probable that it was not till Hadad, the King of Edom, "smote Midian in the plain of Moab" that Midianitish supremacy came finally to an end. It may be that Gideon's success against the Midianite oppressors of Gilead was one of the results of their overthrow by the Edomite prince.

At the same time, Midianitish supremacy did not mean the destruction of the Moabite kingdom. Moab was still governed by its own kings, tributary va.s.sals though they were to the foreigner. One of them, Eglon, made himself master of southern Palestine shortly after the Israelitish conquest of the country, and was murdered by the Benjamite Ehud. Between Moab and Judah there was, as might be expected from their geographical position, constant intercourse. A Moabitess was the ancestress of David, and it was to the court of the King of Moab that David entrusted his parents when hard pressed by Saul. Possibly the Moabite prince was not ill pleased to befriend the enemy of his own enemy, the King of Israel.

It had been better for the Moabites, however, had David never lived to succeed Saul. The conquest of the Philistines by his troops was followed by the conquest of Moab. The vanquished people were decimated, every second man being mercilessly slain. So thoroughly was the country subdued that it was more than a century before it ventured to break away from its Israelitish master. After the disruption of Solomon's heritage it fell to the share of the northern kingdom, though native kings once more sat upon its throne. Now and again they revolted, to be brought back to obedience, however, when Israel recovered its strength. Such was the case when Omri founded his dynasty at Samaria; Moab again became a dependency of the Israelitish monarch, and its ruler was forced to pay tribute and homage to his over-lord. The tribute consisted in sheep, or rather in their skins, which were tanned by the Israelites into leather, while the fleeces upon them were woven into cloth. In the time of Ahab, Mesha, the son of Chemosh-melech, sent each year 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams.

Mesha subsequently succeeded in shaking off the foreign yoke. He has left us a record of his victories, the so-called Moabite Stone, which was discovered among the ruins of his capital, Dibon. The country north of the Arnon was wrested from Israelitish hands, and the King of Israel, in spite of help from Judah and Edom, failed to recover it. Moab was permanently lost to the kingdom of Samaria. The a.s.syrian texts mention some of its later rulers. One of them was Shalman, who may be the spoiler of Beth-Arbel referred to by Hosea;[10] another was Chemosh-nadab, the contemporary of Hezekiah.