Oct 122010
 

Jonathan and his armour bearer climbing to attack the Philistines

In Samuel 1, 13 & 14, there is a fascinating little story about Saul’s son Jonathan. The Philistines are attacking and it is suddenly the case that there are no blacksmiths amongst the Israelites. The Israelites have to go to the Philistines even to get their axes, mattocks and ploughshares sharpened (didn’t anyone think about this ahead of time?). So Saul gathers his more or less weaponless army and hangs around wondering what to do. Jonathan, his son (who does have weapons), goes berserk (or a reasonable facsimile) and attacks the Philistine all by himself except for his faithful armour bearer who tags along. They climb a cliff to get to the Philistine host and fall upon it, killing twenty men right away.

014:011 And both of them discovered themselves unto the garrison of
the Philistines: and the Philistines said, Behold, the Hebrews
come forth out of the holes where they had hid themselves.

014:012 And the men of the garrison answered Jonathan and his
armourbearer, and said, Come up to us, and we will shew you a
thing. And Jonathan said unto his armourbearer, Come up after
me: for the LORD hath delivered them into the hand of Israel.

014:013 And Jonathan climbed up upon his hands and upon his feet, and
his armourbearer after him: and they fell before Jonathan; and
his armourbearer slew after him.

014:014 And that first slaughter, which Jonathan and his armourbearer
made, was about twenty men, within as it were an half acre of
land, which a yoke of oxen might plow.

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May 192010
 

Sorry to obsess. But look at 1 Samuel 5 & 6, a passage that has the feel of parody. The Israelites have just gone into battle against the Philistines taking their Ark of the Covenant with them as backup. But the people have been backsliding again and the battle is lost and the Ark goes over to the other side. The Philistines of Ashdod put the Ark in the temple of Dagon, one of their gods, a statue of some sort. The next morning that statue has fallen over onto its face. They put the statue back up, but the next morning they find it with its head and hands cut off and placed on the temple threshold. This is an uh-oh moment for the Philistines of Ashdod who quickly make arrangements for the Ark to be handed off to another Philistine town. Thus begins a kind of musical chairs situation and God rains down destruction and slaughter: plagues of emerods (hemorrhoids) “in their secret parts” and mice. After seven months, the Philistines decide to put the Ark on a driverless ox-cart and send it down the road toward the Israelites. They include a parcel of trespass offerings, golden emerods and five golden mice! I love the emerods and the mice and the head of the god stuck in the doorway. I can’t escape the feeling that the author here was being a bit lighthearted at the Philistines’ expense. No doubt, I shall be reproved by biblical scholars around the world.

The Ark cart eventually trundles into an Israelite farming community called Bathshemesh where the people open of the cart and check out the offerings and make celebratory offerings of their own and notify the Levites to come and take the Ark back. This is all cool except that the poor Bathshemeshites unwittingly have made a fatal error: God whacks 50,070 of them for looking inside the Ark (more collateral damage).

dg