The Oxford History of the Biblical World (30 page)

By the mid-eleventh century
BCE
(the beginning of stage 3), the Philistines had expanded into the Shephelah well beyond their earlier boundaries. From there they launched a military effort to conquer the highland home of the Israelites. One need only compare the large, cosmopolitan cities of the plain and their rich, fertile countryside to the impoverished villages of the hills and their tiny tracts of arable land to appreciate the advantages in wealth and power that the Philistines had over the Israelites.

A supposed Philistine monopoly on iron and steel is a modern myth, based on a misreading of 1 Samuel 13.19-22. But there is no mistaking their superiority in military organization and hardware. The Philistines were known as “chariot-warriors” in Egyptian inscriptions at Medinet Habu. They fielded expert bowmen (1 Sam. 31.3) and crack infantrymen. Bronze linchpins for war chariots have been found at Ashkelon and Ekron, but nowhere else. The top half of the Ashkelon linchpin is in the form of a Philistine goddess in the Aegean tradition. She leads and protects the elite corps of charioteers as they enter battle. These finds give substance to the biblical historiographer’s lament that “Judah could not [following the ancient Greek rather than the Hebrew tradition] take Gaza with its territory, Ashkelon with its territory, and Ekron with its territory. Yahweh was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain, because they had chariots of iron” (Judg. 1.18-19). Of course the war chariot was not completely made of iron, but a most essential part of it was—the axle, which stood for the whole vehicle. Homer describes the splendid chariot of the gods as having bronze wheels on either side of an iron axle
(Iliad
5.723).

The disparity in infantry is highlighted in the duel between David and Goliath. The latter is armed like the Mycenaean warriors depicted on the famous “Warrior Vase” (Myc IIIC, twelfth century
BCE
) found at Mycenae. These soldiers wear tunics with long sleeves, over which fit corselets; they hold semicircular shields in their left hand and in their right carry throwing spears with leaf-shaped heads. They wear greaves that reach just above the knee, and protective helmets: on one file of warriors, with two horns and a crest; on another, with a row of spikes reminiscent of the Philistine “feathers.”

The champion Goliath “had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. He had greaves of bronze on his legs and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders” (1 Sam. 17.5-6). He also carried a sword. His Israelite opponent, so the story goes, was armed with only a sling and a stone.

Had the Philistines accomplished their military goal, it would have been the first time in recorded history that a lowland polity had succeeded in bringing the highlands under its control. The once mighty Egyptian army of the New Kingdom had brought only nominal hegemony over this hilly, wooded frontier, where chariotry was of little or no use in battle. More often it was the highland kingdoms, such as that of Shechem under Labayu during the Amarna age, that consolidated their power over the lowlanders.
Ignorant of historical precedents, the Philistines made valiant attempts to turn these natural, long-term odds in their favor.

In the battle of Ebenezer (ca. 1050
BCE
), a site within a day’s journey of Shiloh, the Philistines took a major step toward realizing their goal. Not only did they capture the ark of the covenant—the most sacred Israelite symbol, over which Yahweh, the divine warrior, was enthroned (the equivalent of capturing the statue of the warrior god in iconic cultures) (1 Sam. 4.1-11)—but they also advanced even farther upland, destroying the sanctuary of Yahweh at Shiloh and wiping out the Elide dynasty of priests serving there (see Jer. 7.12).

Recent excavations at Shiloh by Israel Finkelstein have confirmed the results of the earlier Danish expedition, as interpreted by W. F. Albright. Shiloh (Stratum V) flourished as a major Ephraimite center in the first half of the eleventh century
BCE
. Its temple served as a major annual pilgrimage site for the Israelite tribes in the autumn, during the wine (and New Year’s?) festival. The destruction of this sanctuary by the Philistines around 1050
BCE
reverberated in the memory of the Israelites for centuries (Ps. 78.60-64; Jer. 7.12).

After their decisive victory at Ebenezer, the Philistines continued to press their offensive against the Israelites. During the second half of the eleventh century, the Philistines reached the height of their power. This is the era of Samuel, too, and it is paradoxical that he is portrayed so positively by the biblical historiographers when actually he did so little to thwart the Philistine onslaught. In fact, military encroachment by the Philistines precipitated a crisis of leadership during Samuel’s judgeship of such proportions that the people demanded a ruler capable of dealing with it. Popular pressure led to the anointing of Israel’s first legitimate king, Saul of the tribe of Benjamin. By that time the Philistines had established garrisons in the hill country at Bethlehem, Geba, and Gibeath-elohim, and they were fighting the Israelites on their home turf at Michmash and near Jerusalem (1 Sam. 10.5; 13.3, 11; 2 Sam. 23.13-14).

It took the military genius of the outlaw and later king David to reverse the fortunes of war with the Philistines. The destruction of such predominately Canaanite cities as Megiddo, Beth-shan, and Tell Abu Hawam can be synchronized with that of predominately Philistine cities, such as Ekron, Tell Qasile, Timnah, and Dor—all in the first quarter of the tenth century
BCE
. The likely agent of this devastation is the Israelites under the leadership of King David. By the time Solomon set up his administrative provinces (1 Kings 4.7-19), Israel was in control of Megiddo, Taanach, and Beth-shan, formerly Canaanite city-states, and Dor, formerly a Sea Peoples’ city-state.

The Philistines were driven back to the initial territory of stage 1, that of the pentapolis. Even there the coastal cities show signs of expansion at the expense of those in the inner plain. Ekron is reduced to one-fifth its former size, from a city of 20 hectares (50 acres) during stages 1 and 2 to one of 5 hectares (12 acres) at the end of stage 3. At the same time (after ca. 980/975
BCE
), Ashkelon becomes a well-fortified seaport, covering more than 60 hectares (150 acres). Ashdod expands five times its former size to a large metropolis of about 40 hectares (100 acres). Thus as Israel expands from its highland heartland, Philistia retreats to well within its earliest boundaries.

By consolidating his base of support in the highlands and by uniting a loose-knit tribal confederation, King David was able to conquer and hold vast amounts of lowland territory, formerly under the control of the Canaanites and Sea Peoples. From his conquered capital of Jerusalem he was able to overcome the political fragmentation endemic to tribal confederations (as well as to the more cosmopolitan city-states of the enemy), creating a large territorial state under one patrimonial ruler. From the modern historian’s perspective it is only after the reign of King David that the “conquest” of Canaan was complete.

The biblical historiographers attributed the rise of kingship in ancient Israel to external stimuli. Foremost of those military threats were the Philistines from the coast, who were occupying key settlements leading up to the highlands and planting garrisons in the heartland of Israel. Recent biblical scholarship, following anthropological models, has emphasized internal dynamics within the social system which led to kingship in Israel, minimizing the external threats. There was nothing in the social structure of premonarchic Israel that prevented the rise of a more permanent warlord, or ruler, later known as a king; in fact, just such permanence of leadership had been attempted in the cases of Gideon (Judg. 8.22-23) and Abimelech (Judg. 9). Structurally there was always a place under the deity and above the tribal leaders for a patrimonial ruler, known as
melek,
or “king.” Monarchy was not a foreign or urban institution grafted onto a patrimonial order; it could have occurred in nascent or fully developed form at any time during the period of the tribal confederation. When kingship finally was established and acknowledged by the tribal polity, it was the external military threats that served as the catalyst for kingship.

Like others in the Israelite community, kings were to be subject to customary law and tradition (Deut. 17.14-20), and there were condemnations of royal excess (1 Sam. 8.11-18), but kingship could easily fit into the structure between the divine authority and the nested tribal authorities already established in premonarchic Israel. This seems clear from the language of house and household
(bayit)
used by the biblical writers to refer to the deity
(bet Yahweh),
to the king, his household, and his dwelling
(bet ham-melek),
and to the notables or heads of household
(bêt ’āb).
Each patriarch was sovereign over overarching domains, from joint families and their lineages, to clans, to tribes, to the king whose family and household included the whole kingdom. Because the landed patrimony was handed down from father to son(s), great importance was attached to orderly succession—the usufructuary right, whether to ancestral estate or to royal estate (the kingdom). And the patriarchal deity held ultimate sovereignty and proprietorship over the human estate and state(s), as well as over all creation. Thus the king and the state were the household and family estate writ large, and the national deity was the paterfamilias writ larger still. Domains of authority and dominance were not structurally incompatible, and kingship in Israel, “like other nations” (1 Sam. 8.5), was patrimonial. The real problems with kingship were not of principle or structure but of function. How could power and dominance be pragmatically exercised without infringement on the various overarching domains? Answers to that question led to various assessments of each king as he held office.
The tensions and balance of power among divine, royal, and familial forces provide much of the stuff of Israelite history.

Sources for
table 3.2
and the settlement maps:
Judah
: Ofer, Avi.
The Highland of judah during the Biblical Period.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Tel Aviv University, n.d.
Benjamin
: Finkelstein, Israel.
The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement.
Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988. Finkelstein, Israel, and Magen, Yizhak, eds.
Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin.
Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1993.
Ephraim
: Finkelstein, Israel.
The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement.
Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988.
Manasseh
: Zertal, Adam.
The Israelite Settlement in the Hill Country of Manasseh.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Tel Aviv University, 1986. Gilead: Mittman, Siegfried.
Beitrage zur Siedlungsund Territorialgesichte des nordlichen Ostjordanlandes.
Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1970.
Jordan Valley
. Ibrahim, M., Sauer, J. A., and Yassine, K. “The East Jordan Survey, 1975.”
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
222 (1976): 41-66. Yassine, Khair. “The East Jordan Valley Survey, 1976 (Part 2).” In Khair Yassine, ed.,
Archaeology of Jordan: Essays and Reports.
Amman: University of Jordan, 1988.
Hesban
: Ibach, Robert D.
Archaeological Survey of the Hesban Region: Catalogue of Sites and Characterization of Periods.
Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 1987.
Moab
: Miller, J. Maxwell, ed.
Archaeological Survey of the Kerak Plateau Conducted during 1978-1982 under the Direction of J. Maxwell Miller and Jack M. Pinkerton.
Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1991.
Wadi el-Hasa
: MacDonald, Burton.
The Wadi el Hasa Archaeological Survey 1979-1983: West-Central Jordan.
Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1988.

Albright, William F. “The Israelite Conquest in the Light of Archaeology.”
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
74 (1939): 11-22. Dated but useful survey of archaeological evidence in support of the “conquest” hypothesis of Israelite origins.

Alt, Albrecht. “The Settlement of the Israelites in Palestine.” In
Essays on Old Testament History and Religion,
172-221. Trans. R. W. Wilson. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968. Originally published in German in 1925, a pioneering study of “territorial history” in support of the “pastoral nomad” hypothesis of Israelite origins.

Bietak, Manfred. “The Sea Peoples and the End of the Egyptian Administration in Canaan.” In
Biblical Archaeology Today,
eds. Avraham Biran and Joseph Aviram, 292-306. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1990. Superb study of the Sea Peoples, emphasizing their large-scale seaborne migrations to and early bridgeheads in Canaan, and delineating material cultural boundaries between Philistine and Egypto-Canaanite territories.

Biran, Avraham, and Joseph Naveh. “An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Dan.”
Israel Exploration Journal
43 (1993): 81-98. The stele has the earliest nonbiblical reference to the “house of David.”

Cross, Frank Moore.
Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973. A masterpiece. For a more recent perspective, see the popularized account in
Frank Moore Cross: Conversations with a Bible Scholar,
ed. Hershel Shanks (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1994).