Who Were the Philistines? Not to be Confused with Palestinians

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

The Philistines were the enemy of Israel in the biblical days from the 12th and 11th centuries BCE.  "The Bible portrays them at one period of time as among the Kingdom of Israel's most dangerous enemies."  They were a Mediterranean people who first came from Asia Minor and Greek places.  They had sailed to the Middle East's Canaan in waves at different times.  One group came before Abraham had settled in Canaan and they settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they fought against Abraham and his son, Isaac.

Another group came from the island of Crete after being kicked out of Egypt by Rameses III in the year 1194 BCE.  They had taken over the coastal area of Canaan where they founded 5 places:  Gaza, Ascalon (Ashkalon), Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath.

"Their highly-developed weapons brought a great threat to the Israelites. During the Exodus from Egypt, the Israelites purposely took a southern route to circumvent them.
                                                                             

Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant.  In the Ark was the Tablelts of the Law,
the 10 Commandments, which stood for the covenant between G-d and his
people.  The Philistines  had captured it after defeating the Israelites in a battle at a location between Eben-ezer, where the Israelites encamped, and Aphek, (probably Antipatris) where the Philistines encamped.  The Philistines suffered so many plagues from taking the ark that they returned it.  "The ark stops at Beth Shemesh before finding a more permanent home at Kiriath-Jearim."

By nature they were a fighting people of a sea-faring nation  and dominated parts of Judah in the period of the Judges which was a time before Saul was king of Israel.  Before Saul, the Israelites had judges, like Deborah who had decided what was best for the people.  Saul was able to temporarily defeat the Philistines.
                                                                         

King Saul fought against the Philistines but was ultimately defeated.  After Saul, David was chosen as king and he ended the era of Philistines holding land and overran Philistia.  When the Israelite kingdom dissolved after King Solomon died in 920 BCE, and Judah was born out of the southern section of the kingdom, the Philistines re-established their independence but never became the serious enemy again.

Much later, in the Persian and Greek Periods, foreign settlers, mainly from the Mediterranean islands, overran the Philistine districts.  From the time of Herodotus, Greeks called Palestine after the Philistines.  The proper name was Syria Palaestina.
                                                                         

Under Hadrian, (Roman emperor from 117-138)  the Romans gave the name, Palestine,  officially to the former land of Judah, the southern section which today is officially Judea and Samaria.   Hadrian had fought against Judah's General Bar Kokhba and had an army of 35,000 to fight against the Jewish general.  The commander was Julius Severus.  They had come in from the Galilee and then fought actions for the Valley of Jezreel, Ephraim and the Judean Hills.  They eventually retook Jerusalem.

 They had chosen the name of  Palestine because the Philistines had been a long time enemy of the Israelites, and the Romans wanted to erase the memory of the Jews living there.

This was in 135 when the Romans had to fight against General Bar Kokhba of the Jewish people and it had been the hardest fight they had had from any people.  Bar Kokhba had taken Jerusalem back.  He was a descendant of King David.

 Incidentally, the word, Jews, comes from the tribe of Judah who had been living in what became the state of Judah since the other 10 tribes had been forcefully taken away by the major Assyrian attack in 722 and 721 BCE.
                                                                 

Our biblical hero, Samson, had to fight against the Philistines.  He was from the tribe of Dan and was an
Israelite judge.  From birth, he was sworn into being a Nazirite and had great strength and courage.  His feats against the Philistines showed the Israelites' desire for freedom from the Philistine suzerainty or domination.  At the end of his life he had fallen into the Philistine hands because of the woman he loved, Delilah, a Philistine woman.  She had told the Philistine soldiers the secret of Samson's strength and that was his long hair.  They had put his eyes out and Samson was forced to turn the prison mill.  All the Philistine population nearby made fun of him at a festival in Gaza.  He got his strength back and destroyed the building which helped to kill all the people, including himself.  (Judg. 13-16).
                                                                                 

King David (1000-960 BCE)  had to fight against the Philistines.  At age 25, David was the armor-bearer for Saul.  His best friend was Saul's son, Jonathan.  He was famous for being able to be successful in fighting against the Philistines.  Because of this he was able to marry Saul's daughter,  Michal.  David succeeded in breaking the Philistine military power and annexed the entire coastal land belt to be part of Israel.  When David died, he was buried in Jerusalem.
                                                                                 

David, when a young boy, had fought against the tallest Philistine in their army, the giant, Goliath.  He killed him with his slingshot, a hit to the right spot in the head.  Goliath was from Gath, one of the 5 Philistine cities in the southern coastal plain.  Gath was later taken by the Assyrian king Sargon in the 8th century BCE in their gigantic attack on Israel.  Gaza  City had also been taken by the Philistines.  It was only 2 miles from the sea.  Although it was allotted to the tribe of Judah by Moses-Joshua through G-d, it remained in Philistine hands and was the place of the imprisonment and death of Samson.  By 521 BCE it had gone from Sargon of Assyria to Cambyses of Persia.  Alexander the Great recolonized it as a hellenistic city by 332 BCE.  More people later were the rulers.
                                                                                   

Eli, the high priest at the shrine of Shiloh and one of the last Judges in the 11th century BCE, was the mentor of Samuel.  He had a run-in with the Philistines.  He came to this high position at the age of 58 and died 40 years later as a result of falling from his chair when he heard that the Philistines had captured the Ark (I Sam. 4:13)

The land of Canaan was given to the Israelites by G-d's direction.  Abraham had put up his tent there originally.  Jacob and his family of 70 individuals  had had to go into Egypt from there in time of famine and was held against their will for 400 years as slaves of the Pharaoh.  They were to return.  The Canaanites themselves were a mixture of 11 different peoples. who lived in the area between the Nile and the Euphrates.  The people living in what was Syria used the name, Canaanites, for themselves.  These Canaanites were actually a mixture mainly of Horites, Hittites and Hebrews from the Hyksos period in the 17th century BCE.

The Canaanites were almost entirely obliterated or assimilated by the Israelites in the 13th century BCE, the Philistines along the coast in the 12th century BCE, and the Arameans in the North in the 11th century BCE.  The ones who survived these attacks became  subjects of Kings David and Solomon and were thus absorbed.  Later, the name of Canaanites was preserved only with the Sidonians and Phoenicians.  Like the Philistines, they are no more.  The land was not called  Palestine by the Israelites but Eretz Yisrael-the Land of Israel.  Syria was called " Aram."

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistine_captivity_of_the_Ark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Philistines.html

Anakim, The Giants of Canaan

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

According to biblical tradition, there were giants living in Canaan long before it was conquered by Joshua and the Israelites.  They were called the Anakim, which today just means in Hebrew: giants.  

They lived in Canaan's mountainous area of Judah.  Also, they were found in the southern coastal zone. These giants  lived in the south,  near Hebron (Gen. 23:2; Josh. 15:13). According to Gen. 14:5-6 they lived in the land of Edom (around Mt. Seir, south of the Dead Sea bordering on the Red Sea at Elath and Ezion Geber, descendants of Esau, and were hunters). 

They also lived in  Moab (country in southern Transjordan bounded by the river Heshbon in the north and the river Zered in the south, the Jordan and Dead Sea to the West and the Syrian Desert on the east.  They were kinfolk to the Israelites, descendants of Lot.  They had settled in their land which had been captured from the Rephaim in the days of Abraham.  Rephaim were an ancient people living in Transjordania in the time of Abraham.  Some of the settled near Jerusalem in the Valley of Rephaim.  
                                                                              

The Israelites seem to have identified them with the Nephilim, the giants (Gen 6:4),  they were a semi-legendary race in the antediluvian era  who sprung from the union of the "sons of G-d" and the "daughters of man." as myths may have taught before Judaism.   This took place before the FLOOD.  "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--Actually, it referred to  the rulers of the day--and also afterward when  the sons of the rulers (princes and judges) would consort with the daughters of man (of the general populace) , who would bear to them.  They were the mighty who, from old, were men of devastation."   

 ( Numbers 13:33) of the antediluvian age. The Land through which we have passed, to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants!  All the people that we saw in it were huge!  There we saw the Nephilim, the sons of the giant from among the Nephilim;  we were like grasshoppers in our eyes, and so we were in their eyes!" 
                                                                       

Joshua expelling them from the land

Joshua finally expelled them from the land, excepting a remnant that found a refuge in the cities of Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod (Josh 11:22.)  Young David fought a Philistine giant Goliath  with his slingshot and killed him, saving his people.  
                                                                             
 The Anakim  are said to have come from 3 clans;  Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai, which are Aramaic names of 3 sons.  They were thought to come from a branch of the Rephaim.   The city of Debir, previously called Kiriath-Sepher, was their city.  "Debir has not been discovered with certainty in modern times; but about three miles to the west of Hebron is a deep and secluded valley called the Wady Nunkur , enclosed on the north by hills, of which one bears a name certainly suggestive of Debir--Dewir-ban."  "Judging from the names, it appears to have been some sacred place among the Canaanites, and a repository of their records." 

There are 2 biblical traditions about the Anakim.
  1.  Debir was captured by Joshua, found in Josh. 10:38-39).  He killed almost everyone.  (Josh 15: 13)  

  2. Debir was taken by Othniel, son of Kenaz. (Josh. 15:17). 

 Caleb drove out the 3 sons of Anak from there, Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai, the offspring of the Anak.  He went from there to the people of Debir.  The former name of Debir was Kiriath-sefer.  Caleb said, "Whoever conquers Kiriath-sefer, I shall give him my daughter, Achsah as a wife."  Othniel, son of Kenaz, brother of Caleb, conquered it and won himself a wife.  Caleb and Othniel were half brothers through their mother.  Kenaz was the father of Othniel and the stepfather of Caleb.  .  
                                                                   

Khirbet Rabud today

Debir is included in the list of priestly Levitical cities, and this is found in Josh. 21:15. Today it is commonly identified with Khirbet Rabud, southwest of Hebron.   "Debir has been identified with the modern Edh-Dhaheriyeh, i.e., "the well on the ridge", to the south of Hebron.  "There seems to be several places identified as the site of Debir.  
                                                                              

Og, king of Bashan, was described as being extremely tall.  He was supposed to be the last of the Rephaim (Deut. 3:11). He was an Amorite king of the land of Rephaim in Bashan and Gilead.  He had attempted to interrupt the march of the Israelites but was defeated.  The land of Og was a strongly fortified territory throughout the Middle and late Bronze Ages.   Later giants were Goliath who was 6 cubits and a span tall (I Sam. 17) and  Ishbi-benob was another one 

(II Sam : 21:16). The Philistines again made war with Israel.  David and his servants went down and fought with the Philistines, and David became faint.  Ishbi-benob-who was one of the children of the giant, and whose spear weighed 300 copper weights and who was girded with a new sword-declared that he would strike down David.  Abishai, son of Zeruiah, came to his aid and he struck the Philistine, killing him."  It was customary for a warrior to kill someone on his first day in battle, in order to become fully initiated into the army.  Ishbi-benob chose the exhausted David as his victim.  The giants   (2 Samuel 21:15-22 ) were descendants of the Anakim.

II Sam: 21:19) There was another war with the Philistines in Gob, and Elhanan, son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, struck down the brother of Goliath of Gath, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's beam. This giant's name was Lahmi.  

 There was another war in Gath.  There was a man of huge dimensions,  whose fingers and toes were 6 each, 24 in number.  He, too, was born to the giant.  He ridiculed Israel, and Jonathan, the son of David's brother, Shimea, struck him down.  

These 4 were born to the giant in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.  

A cubit was the length from the fingertips to the elbow, about 45.72 centimeters or 1 1/2 feet.  A span is 22.86 cm.  Goliath was  9 feet 9 inches tall.  
                                                                         

How tall is tall for a giant?  The tallest known was in  the USA.   There lived a man that was 8'11".  He was Robert Wadlow and was born in 1918 and died 22 years later in 1940.  That's the tallest recorded so far.
                                                                           

Actor Sacha Baron Cohen 6'3" and Isla Fisher 5'3"

A man who is 6'3" tall is a nice tall man these days.  If people are deprived of the right nutrients, they tend to not achieve their full potential height.  The 12 spies that Joshua sent to look into Canaan must have been pretty short, for they reported back that it was populated by giants, for they must have seen the people of the 3 clans.  (Judges 1:10) (Numbers 13:22) and (Numbers 13:33) (Gen. 6:4).

Today Israel's  average height of males at age 20 is 5'8.9" or 175.0cm.
The shortest people today are the Asians, and Indonesia holds the shortest of them at 5'3.6" or 161.5cm.
China's average is 5'6.3" or 168.3cm
                                                                       

Yao Ming, China's 7'6" center for China's basketball team is a giant compared to Nate Robinson 's 5'9" behind him.  Yao is an exception.  Yao Ming (born September 12, 1980 in Shanghai, China) is a retired Chinese professional basketball player who played for the Houston Rocketsof the National Basketball Association (NBA).  Yao is the only child of 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m) Yao Zhiyuan and 6 ft 3 in (1.90 m) Fang Fengdi, both of whom were former professional basketball players. At 11 pounds (5.0 kg), Yao weighed more than twice as much as the average Chinese newborn.  He weighed 310 lbs or 141 kg. when he played basketball.  

The tallest people today are the Scandinavians.
Netherlands is the tallest country at 5'11" or 181.0cm.
Iceland is 5'10.8" or 179.8cm
Norway is 5;10.7 or 179.7cm
Sweden is 5'10.6" or 179.3cm
Denmark is 5'10.4" or 178.8cm

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anakim
http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1453-anakim
http://www.bible-history.com/geography/ancient-israel/ot/debir.html  large map of ancient Israel
http://www.interbasket.net/news/4385/2009/09/average-height-by-country-males-20-years/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yao_Ming
http://biblehub.com/topical/d/debir.htm
Tanach, the Stone Edition of ArtScroll series of Mesorah Heritage Foundation
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2015/02/nephilim-and-other-giants-like-og-and.html