1 and 2 Samuel (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary) by V. Philips Long

Author:V. Philips Long [Long, V. Philips]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL006060 Religion / Biblical Commentary / Old Testament
ISBN: 9780310527602
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2016-01-12T08:00:00+00:00

Conquest of Ashkelon at Karnak

Todd Bolen/www.BiblePlaces.com

Ashkelon was a thriving commercial seaport in the Philistine period, a role aptly reflected not only in its name, which appears to derive from a Canaanite word meaning “to weigh” (from which the word shekel also derives),14 but also in David’s reference to the “streets” of Ashkelon, which should probably be read as “bazaars” or “marketplace.”15 Like its sister cities Ashdod and Ekron (see comments at 1 Sam. 5:1, 10), Ashkelon was a major city with heavy fortifications. It is frequently mentioned in extrabiblical texts, beginning with the nineteenth-and eighteenth-century B.C. Execration Texts from Egypt.

In the fourteenth-century el-Amarna correspondence, at least nine letters involve Ashkelon (ašqaluna) or its ruler Yidya/Idiya: some assuring the pharaoh of Yidya’s care in guarding “the place of the king, my lord, and the city of the king, my lord, [w]here I am”; others promising to supply “food, strong drink, oil, grain, oxen, sheep and goats” to the king’s troops; one from ʿAbdi-Ḫeba of Jerusalem accusing the ruler of Ashkelon of supplying provisions for the feared ʿApiru; and one from the pharaoh to Yidya (spelled Idiya), directing him to “guard the place of the king where you are.”16

Ashkelon finds further mention—along with Gezer, Yanoam, and the Israelites—in the famous Merneptah Stele (ca. 1207). An Egyptian siege of Ashkelon is depicted visually on a relief at Karnak. As David begins his elegy for Saul and Jonathan, he cannot bear the thought that their defeat should be celebrated among Israel’s archenemies, the Philistines.

Uncircumcised (1:20). On “uncircumcised” as a derogatory term for the Philistines, see comments on 1 Samuel 4:1; 14:6.

Gilboa, may you have neither dew nor rain (1:21). David curses the mountains of Gilboa, the place where Saul and Jonathan’s blood was spilled, almost as if “the mountain range itself had been responsible for the disaster.”17 Drought, crop failure, and other natural disasters were often connected with (illicit) spilling of blood upon the ground. After Cain’s murder of Abel, for instance, the latter’s blood cries out to Yahweh from the ground (Gen. 4:10), and Yahweh announces to Cain, “When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you” (4:12).

Outside the Bible, a similar pattern of nature responding to the (illicit) shedding of blood is attested. In the Legend of ʾAqhat, for example, the murder of the youth ʾAqhat causes the “[fr]uits of summer” to wither, “the ear [in] its husk.” There is “No dew, No rain; No welling-up of the deep, No sweetness of Baal’s voice.”18 In the Bible, natural events, whether favorable or unfavorable, are understood to be a part of Yahweh’s ongoing conversation with his people.19

Shield of Saul—no longer rubbed with oil (1:21). Ancient Near Eastern shields came in a variety of shapes and sizes. One of the most prevalent constructions involved a wooden shield covered with leather.20 Fifteenth-century wall paintings from the tomb of the Egyptian Rekhmire illustrate the various steps in the construction of such shields. To preserve and condition leather shields, oil was periodically rubbed into them (cf.

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