They continued in subjection to the kings of Judah down to the reign of Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, about two hundred and forty-six years, when they revolted from Jehoram, 2 Chron. xxi, 16. Jehoram made war against them, and probably reduced them to his obedience again; because it is observed in Scripture, that they revolted again from Uzziah, who kept them to their duty during his whole reign, 2 Chron. xxvi, 6, 7. Uzziah began to reign A. M. 3194. During the unfortunate reign of Ahaz, the Philistines made great havoc in the territory of Judah; but his son and successor Hezekiah subdued them again, 2 Chron. xxviii, 18; 2 Kings xviii, 8. Lastly, they regained their full liberty under the later kings of Judah; and we may see, by the menaces made against them by the Prophets Isaiah, Amos, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, that they brought a thousand hardships and calamities on the children of Israel, for which God threatened to punish them with great misfortunes.
Esar-haddon, successor to Sennacherib, besieged Ashdod, or Azoth, and took it by the arms of his general, Thasthan, or Tartan. Psammetichus, king of Egypt, took the same city after a siege of twenty-nine years, according to Herodotus. During the siege of Tyre, which held out thirteen years, Nebuchadnezzar used part of his army to subdue the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and other nations bordering on the Jews. There is great probability that the Philistines could not withstand him, but were reduced to his obedience, as well as the other people of Syria, Phenicia, and Palestine. Afterward they fell under the dominion of the Persians; then under that of Alexander the Great, who destroyed the city of Gaza, the only city of the Phenicians that dared to oppose him. After the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Asmoneans took by degrees several cities from the country of the Philistines, which they subjected. Tryphon, regent of the kingdom of Syria, gave to Jonathan, the Asmonean, the government of the whole coast of the Mediterranean, from Tyre to Egypt; consequently, all the country of the Philistines.
The land of the Philistines bordered on the west and south-west of Judea, and lies on the south-east point of the Mediterranean Sea. The country to the north of Gaza is very fertile; and, long after the Christian era, it possessed a very numerous population, and strongly fortified cities. No human probability, says Keith, could have existed, in the time of the prophets, or at a much more recent date, of its eventual desolation. But it has belied, for many ages, every promise which the fertility of its soil, and the excellence both of its climate and situation, gave for many preceding centuries of its permanency as a rich and well cultivated region. And the voice of prophecy, which was not silent respecting it, proclaimed the fate that awaited it, in terms as contradictory, at the time, to every natural suggestion, as they are descriptive of what Philistia now actually is. I will stretch out my hand upon the Philistines, and destroy the remnant of the sea coasts,” Ezek. xxv, 16. Baldness is come upon Gaza; Ashkelon is cut off with the remnant of their valley,” Jer. xlvii, 5. Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions of Gaza, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza, which shall devour the palaces thereof. And I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that holdeth the sceptre from Ashkelon; and I will turn my hand against Ekron; and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish, saith the Lord God,” Amos i, 6, 7, 8. For Ashkelon shall be a desolation;” it shall be cut off with the remnant of the valley; and Ekron shall be rooted up.--O Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant; and the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks,” Zeph. ii, 4, 5, 6. The king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited,” Zech. ix, 5.
The land of the Philistines was to be destroyed. It partakes of the general desolation common to it with Judea and other neighbouring states. While ruins are to be found in all Syria, they are particularly abundant along the sea coast, which formed, on the south, the realm of the Philistines. But its aspect presents some existing peculiarities, which travellers fail not to particularize, and which, in reference both to the state of the country and the fate of its different cities, the prophets failed not to discriminate as justly as if their description had been drawn both with all the accuracy which ocular observation, and all the certainty which authenticated history, could give. Volney, (though, like one who in ancient times was instrumental to the fulfilment of a special prediction, he meant not so, neither did his heart think so,”) from the manner in which he generalizes his observations, and marks the peculiar features of the different districts of Syria, with greater acuteness and perspicuity than any other traveller whatever, is the ever ready purveyor of evidence in all the cases which came within the range of his topographical description of the wide field of prophecy: while, at the same time, from his known, open, and zealous hostility to the Christian cause, his testimony is alike decisive and unquestionable: and the vindication of the truth of the following predictions may safely be committed to this redoubted champion of infidelity. In the plain between Ramla and Gaza,” the very plain of the Philistines along the sea coast, we met with a number of villages badly built, of dried mud, and which, like the inhabitants, exhibit every mark of poverty and wretchedness. The houses, on a nearer view, are only so many huts, (cottages,) sometimes detached, at others ranged in the form of cells, around a court yard, enclosed by a mud wall. In winter, they and their cattle may be said to live together; the part of the dwelling allotted to themselves being only raised two feet above that in which they lodge their beasts:”--“dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks.”--“Except the environs of these villages, all the rest of the country is a desert, and abandoned to the Bedouin Arabs, who feed their flocks on it.”--Thus accomplishing the words of prophecy, The remnant shall perish; the land of the Philistines shall be destroyed, that there shall be no inhabitant; and the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks.” “The ruins of white marble, sometimes found at Gaza, prove that it was formerly the abode of luxury and opulence. It has shared in the general destruction; and, notwithstanding its proud title of the capital of Palestine, it is now no more than a defenceless village,” (baldness has come upon it,) peopled by, at most, only two thousand inhabitants.”--“It is forsaken,” says the prophet, and bereaved of its king.” “The sea coast, by which it was formerly washed, is every day removing farther from the deserted ruins of Ashkelon.” Amidst the various successive ruins, those of Edzoud,” Ashdod, so powerful under the Philistines, are now remarkable for their scorpions.”--Here again we are reminded of the words of inspiration: The inhabitants shall be cut off from Ashdod.”
Thus Volney becomes an unconscious commentator upon prophecy. But let us hear a Christian traveller. Ashkelon,” says Richardson, “was one of the proudest satrapies of the lords of the Philistines: now there is not an inhabitant within its walls; and the prophecy of Zechariah is fulfilled: ‘The king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.’ When the prophecy was uttered, both cities were in an equally flourishing condition; and nothing but the prescience of Heaven could pronounce on which of the two, and in what manner, the vial of its wrath should be poured out. Gaza is truly without a king. The lofty towers of Ashkelon lie scattered on the ground, and the ruins within its walls do not shelter a human being. How is the wrath of man made to praise his Creator! Hath he not said, and shall he not do it? The oracle was delivered by the mouth of the prophet more than five hundred years before the Christian era, and we beheld its accomplishment eighteen hundred years after that event.” There is yet another city which was noted by the prophets, the very want of any information respecting which, and the absence of its name from several modern maps of Palestine, while the sites of other ruined cities are marked, are really the best confirmation of the truth of the prophecy that could possibly be given. Ekron shall be rooted up.” It is rooted up. It was one of the chief cities of the Philistines; but, though Gaza still subsists, and while Ashkelon and Ashdod retain their names in their ruins, the very name of Ekron is missing.
PHILOSOPHY, in general, is defined, the knowledge and study of nature and morality, founded on reason and experience.” Philosophy owes its name to the modesty of Pythagoras, who refused the high title of σοφός, wise, given to his predecessors, Thales, Pherecydes, &c, as too assuming; and contented himself with the simple appellation of φιλόσοφος, quasi φίλος τῆς σοφίας, a friend or lover of wisdom: but Chauvin rather chooses to derive the name from φιλία, desire to study, and σοφία, studium sapientiæ; and says that Pythagoras, conceiving that the application of the human mind ought rather to be called study than science, set aside the appellation of wise, and, in lieu thereof, took that of philosopher.
A knowledge of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, or the science of natural history, was always an object of interest. We are informed that Solomon himself had given a description of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 1 Kings iv, 33. Traces of philosophy, strictly so called, that is, the system of prevailing moral opinions, may be found in the book of Job, in the thirty-seventh, thirty-ninth, and seventy-third Psalms; also in the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, but chiefly in the apocryphal book of Wisdom, and the writings of the son of Sirach. During the captivity, the Jews acquired many new notions, particularly from the Mahestani, and appropriated them, as occasion offered, to their own purposes. They at length became acquainted with the philosophy of the Greeks, which makes its appearance abundantly in the book of Wisdom. After the captivity, the language in which the sacred books were written was no longer vernacular. Hence arose the need of an interpreter on the sabbatic year, a time when the whole law was read, and also on the Sabbath in the synagogues, which some think had been recently erected, in order to make the people understand what was read. These interpreters learned the Hebrew language at the schools. The teachers of these schools, who, for the two generations preceding the time of Christ, had maintained some acquaintance with the Greek philosophy, were not satisfied with a simple interpretation of the Hebrew idiom, as it stood, but shaped the interpretation so as to render it conformable to their philosophy. Thus arose contentions, which gave occasion for the various sects of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. In the time of our Saviour, divisions had arisen among the Pharisees themselves. No less than eighteen nice questions, if we may believe the Jewish rabbins, were contested at that period between the schools of Hillel and Shammai; one of which questions was an inquiry, what cause was sufficient for a bill of divorce. If the Shammai and Hillel of the Talmud are the same with the learned men mentioned in Josephus, namely, Sameas and Pollio, who flourished thirty-four years before Christ, then Shammai or Sameas is undoubtedly the same with the Simeon who is mentioned, Luke ii, 25–35; and his son Gamaliel, so celebrated in the Talmud, is the same with the Gamaliel mentioned, Acts v, 34; xxii, 3.
Anciently, learned men were denominated among the Hebrews חכמים, as among the Greeks they were called σοφοὶ, wise men. In the time of Christ, the common appellative for men of that description was γραμματεὺς, in the Hebrew סופר, a scribe. They were addressed by the honorary title of rabbi, רבי, great,” or master.” The Jews, in imitation of the Greeks, had their seven wise men, who were called rabboni. Gamaliel was one of the number. They called themselves the children of wisdom; expressions which correspond very nearly to the Greek φιλόσοφος, Matthew xi, 19; Luke vii, 35. The heads of sects were called fathers;” the disciples were denominated sons,” or children,” Matt. xii, 27; xxiii, 1–9. The Jewish teachers, at least some of them, had private lecture rooms; but they also taught and disputed in synagogues, in temples, and, in fact, wherever they could find an audience. The method of these teachers was the same with that which prevailed among the Greeks. Any disciple who chose might propose questions, upon which it was the duty of the teachers to remark and give their opinions, Luke ii, 46. The teachers were not invested with their functions by any formal act of the church, or of the civil authority: they were self-constituted. They received no other salary than some voluntary present from the disciples, which was called an honorary,” τιμὴ, honorarium, 1 Tim. v, 17. They acquired a subsistence, in the main, by the exercise of some art or handicraft. That they took a higher seat than their auditors, although it was probably the case, does not follow, as is sometimes supposed, from Luke ii, 46. According to the Talmudists, they were bound to hold no conversation with women, and to refuse to sit at table with the lower class of people, Matt. ix, 11; John iv, 27. The subjects on which they taught were numerous, commonly intricate, and of no great consequence; of which there are abundant examples in the Talmud.
St. Paul bids the Colossians beware lest any man should spoil them through philosophy and vain deceit;” that is, a vain and deceitful philosophy, such as was popular in that day, and had been compounded out of all preceding systems, Grecian and oriental. An explanation of this philosophy is given under [Gnostics], and [Cabbala].
On these ancient systems of pretended wisdom, Dr. Burton justly remarks: “Philosophy is indeed the noblest stretch of intellect which God has vouchsafed to man; and it is only when man forgets that he received his reasoning powers from God, that he is in danger of losing himself in darkness when he sought for light. To measure that which is infinite, is as impossible in metaphysics as in physics. If it had not been for revelation, we should have known no more of the Deity than the Heathen philosophers knew before: and to what did their knowledge amount? They felt the necessity of a First Cause, and they saw that that Cause must be intrinsically good; but when they came to systems, they never went farther than the point from which they first set out, that evil is not good, and good is not evil. The Gnostics thought to secure the triumph of their scheme by veiling its weaker points in mystery, and by borrowing a part from almost every system. But popular, and even successful, as this attempt may have been, we may say with truth, that the scheme which flattered the vanity of human wisdom, and which strove to conciliate all opinions, has died away, and is forgotten; while the Gospel, the unpresuming, the uncompromising doctrine of the Gospel, aided by no human wisdom, and addressing itself not merely to the head, but to the heart, has triumphed over all systems and all philosophers; and still leads its followers to that true knowledge which some have endeavoured to teach ‘after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.’”