2. Its Illustration of Certain Points of Biblical History.
The story illustrates well a number of points in Biblical history. This adventure was approximately contemporary with the career of Deborah or of Gideon. It shows that the city of Dor, which was situated on the coast just south of Mount Carmel, was in the possession of a tribe kindred to the Philistines, who soon afterward appear in Biblical history. We also learn from it that Egyptian authority in Palestine and Phœnicia, which was at the time of the El-Amarna letters so rapidly decaying, had entirely disappeared. Zakar-Baal stoutly asserts his independence, while the king of the Thekel is evidently quite independent of Egypt. The way in which these petty kingdoms deal with one another is quite after the manner of the international relations reflected in the book of Judges. The expedition of Wenamon to the Lebanon for cedar wood illustrates the way Solomon obtained cedar for the temple.
Lastly, the way one of the noble youths became frenzied and prophesied, is quite parallel to the way in which Saul “stripped off his clothes and prophesied ...... and lay down naked all that day and all that night” (1 Sam. 19:24). The heed which Zakar-Baal gave to this youth shows that at Gebal, as in Israel, such ecstatic or frenzied utterances were thought to be of divine origin. Later in Israel this sort of prophecy became a kind of profession, or trade. The members of these prophetic guilds were called “sons of the prophets.” The great literary prophets of Israel had nothing to do with them. Amos is careful to say that he is not a “son of a prophet” (Amos 7:14).
3. Reference to the Philistines.
Ramses III in his inscriptions makes the following statements:[493]
“The northern countries are unquiet in their limbs, even the Peleset [Philistines], the Thekel, who devastate their land ................... O my august father [i. e., the god Amon] come to take them, being: the Peleset, the Denyen [Dardanians], and the Shekelesh [Sicilians] ............
Utterance of the vanquished Peleset: “Give to us the breath for our nostrils, O king, son of Amon.”
The Peleset are undoubtedly the same people who appear in the Bible as the Philistines. Ramses III, of the twentieth dynasty, from whose inscriptions the above quotations are taken, reigned from 1198-1167 B. C. In his reign the Philistines were coming over the sea and invading northern Egypt along with other wanderers from different parts of the Mediterranean, the Thekel, the Danaoi, and the Sicilians. Upon being repelled from Egypt by Ramses, they passed on and invaded Palestine. As the report of Wenamon shows, the Thekel were in possession of Dor by the year 1100, and no doubt the Philistines had gained a foothold also in the cities farther to the south, where we find them in the Biblical records (Judges 13-16; 1 Sam. 4-7; 13, 14; 17, 18, etc.).
Amos says the Philistines came from Caphtor (Amos 9:7). This has long been supposed to be Crete. Eduard Meyer thinks that confirmation of this has now been found. A disc inscribed in a peculiar writing, which has not yet been deciphered, was found in July, 1908, at Phæstos in Crete in strata of the third middle Minoan period, i. e., about 1600 B. C.[494] This writing is pictographic, and although not yet translated, appears to be a contract.[495] One of the frequently recurring signs represents a human head surmounted by a shock of hair (see [Fig. 38]), almost exactly like the hair of the Philistines as they are pictured by the artists of Ramses III on the walls of his palace at Medinet Habu (see [Fig. 36]). This sign was probably the determinative for man. This likeness would make the proof of the Cretan origin of the Philistines complete, were it not that some scholars think that the disc exhumed at Phæstos had been brought thither from across the sea. This is possible, but does not seem very probable. The doubt will, perhaps, be resolved when we learn to read the inscription.