One of the reasons why the Children of Israel under Joshua were able to get a hold on the land of Canaan is that the Philistines had already made their appearance there. The country of these Philistines was a narrow stretch along the south-eastern edge of the Mediterranean, running down to the border of Egypt. It seems surprising that the Israelites should owe any good thing to the Philistines, because we always find the two peoples at bitter war with each other; but it appears that just before the time of the Israelites' coming up from the southern deserts the Philistines had been making matters very difficult for the Egyptians in what the Egyptians called their province of Palestine, and that this province and the province of Syria also, a little to the north, were not really under any effective Egyptian rule at all at the moment. The tribes were not united together, and were weak in their disunion.
These Philistines were a warlike people. It is not known precisely of what race they were. Some have thought that they were settlers from Crete, which held, as we saw, rule over the sea. Other scholars suppose them to have been, like most of the peoples of that region, a branch of the great Semitic tree which we have seen spreading so widely. But wherever they came from, there they were established along this sea-coast, a people ready to fight by land or sea, ready to go trading, too, no doubt, in their ships, if they could make profit by it—a bold, enterprising people.
And there was another people, settled along another strip, farther north, of the same coast—the Phœnicians. Almost exactly the same account is to be given of them. They, too, were great sailors and navigators, great traders, great pirates. We do not hear so much about them just at this point of the great story which we have now reached: the Philistines play a bigger part in it for the moment. But the Phœnicians, you will see, are far more important really, for in a few hundred years the Philistines are little more heard of. The excellence of the Phœnicians as navigators made a big difference to the story.
When the Israelites succeeded in pushing their army thus into Palestine, westward of the Jordan river, their victory was by no means complete. It was a long while before they got the better of those Philistines near the coast, and at one time it looked very much as if the Philistines would conquer them. We may suppose that they did not come up out of the desert with much of the equipment necessary for the attack of walled cities, such as I have just described that necessary equipment to be.
Israel and Judah
The result of that was that even in the midst of the country which, for the most part, they conquered, there still remained certain strong cities in the hands of their enemies. Perhaps, as they had taken the pasture lands, and all that they most wanted, and as they saw that the capture of these strong places was almost beyond their power, they came to some kind of agreement with the citizens to leave those citizens in possession of the cities, provided they were left in peace elsewhere. However that may be, it is certain that some of those strong fortresses remained untaken by them, and it happened that they were so placed as to divide the country which the Israelites had overrun into two parts. The tribes of Judah and of Simeon settled themselves in the country southward of this line of fortresses, as we may almost call it. The rest of the tribes settled to the north.
I draw your attention to that, because it helps to explain what happened later when the division took place into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The tribes of Judah and Simeon, living in what came to be called Judæa, of which Jerusalem was the capital, were children of Israel, and of Abraham, just as much as those who belonged to the kingdom of Israel so called.
It is a little confusing; and to save further confusion it will I think be as well that I should now write of these Israelites (including the inhabitants of Judæa) as Hebrews. The exact original meaning of the name Hebrew is not very clear, but it was used at a very early date, and we may use it conveniently to designate the whole of the tribes that were led through their wanderings in the desert by Moses and Aaron, and that came up and crossed over Jordan, under Joshua, and settled in Canaan.