When the Philistines attacked the Israelites, the Israelites ran away from the Philistines, and many fell dead on Mount Gilboa. 2 The Philistines overtook Saul and his sons, and they killed his sons Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malchishua. 3 The battle was fierce around Saul. When the archers located him, they wounded him badly.
4 Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and kill me with it! Otherwise, these uncircumcised men will come and kill me or torture me.” But his armor-bearer refused because he was terrified. So Saul took the sword and impaled himself on it. 5 When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also impaled himself on his sword and died with Saul. 6 So Saul, his three sons, his armor-bearer, and all his soldiers died together that day.
7 When the Israelites across the valley and across the Jordan learned that the Israelite army had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they abandoned their towns and fled. So the Philistines came and occupied the towns.
8 The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the dead, they found Saul and his three sons lying dead on Mount Gilboa. 9 They cut off Saul’s head and stripped off his armor, and then sent word throughout Philistine territory, carrying the good news to their gods’ temples and to their people. 10 They put Saul’s armor in the temple of Astarte, and hung his body on the wall of Beth-shan.
11 But when all the people of Jabesh-gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, 12 the bravest of their men set out, traveled all night long, and took the bodies of Saul and his sons off the wall of Beth-shan. Then they went back to Jabesh, where they burned them. 13 Then they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and they fasted seven days. (Common English Bible)
“The Philistines Are Upon Us: The Sea People’s Impact in God’s Word,” Week Seven
Another Olympics has come and gone. I enjoy watching all the sports, but I know little about them, and am truthfully terrified of most of them. I have a phobia of heights, so pretty much anything alpine ski-related is out, I am too uncoordinated to be a good ice skater, and I would likely cut myself on the skis and skates anyways.
But perhaps the most terrifying sports are the skeleton and luge, where athletes hurtle themselves at 80 mph down tracks on these teeny tiny sleds with just a helmet and a skintight suit. Just watching them makes me dizzy, but amid yet another Olympics full of scandal and set against the backdrop of human rights abuses, luge provided one of the best stories.
Jayson Terdiman was the only remaining US men’s luger from the 2018 Pyeongchang team, and he tried to make it to one final Olympics in doubles luge. He had an excellent luge partner in Chris Mazdzer, a former World Cup medalist, but they crashed in their final qualifying run, and the US doubles spot went to a pair of inexperienced whippersnappers by comparison—Zachary DiGregorio and Sean Hollander. It was a painful—physically and mentally—end to Terdiman’s long career.
Terdiman decided to end his career as selflessly as he could. His doubles luge sled was his personal property—he had sunk tens of thousands of dollars into it having it custom-made for him, and it was the fastest sled the United States team had available.
He handed it over to the team that had beat him, DiGregorio and Hollander. And the sled probably did make a difference—the young Americans finished eleventh in Beijing, which about par for the course for American lugers in a sport dominated by the likes of Germany and Austria. When you consider that they were inexperienced Olympic rookies, the sled may have helped them make par.
Retirement from something you have devoted your life to comes to us all, and when it does, when all that is left is the end, how things end matters a great deal. It can be collaborative, as it was for Jayson Terdiman, or as we just read in 1 Samuel, for someone like Saul, it can be profoundly tragic.
This is the final installment of our first sermon series for 2022. Unspooling it has represented a labor of love on a topic I had been hoping to preach on for a while, during an especially relevant moment to scratch that proverbial itch: the cataclysmic impact of the Philistines upon ancient Israel in the Tanakh, or Old Testament.
You are hopefully by now a bit more familiar with the Philistines, one of the Sea Peoples, as the martial opponents of famed Biblical heroes like Samson and David. What I always found interesting about the Philistines is how they seem to quite literally show up on Israel’s shores one day, wreak absolute havoc, and then we essentially never hear of them again.
So, much like in the song (forgive me) Cotton-Eyed Joe, we ought to ask of the Philistines, where did you come from and where did you go? These, I think, are important questions not simply for the sake of ancient history, but for the sake of the themes the stories of the Philistines evoke, of God’s providence and guidance in the face of overwhelming adversity that materializes seemingly overnight. I see in all this history echoes of our pandemic, as covid-19 materialized in just a few short months and has been a lethal threat to the world ever since. Questions around God’s grace and care in that circumstance are more than warranted, they are vital, and so I think the stories of the Israelites and the Philistines can act as a Biblical mirror of sorts for our own selves.
We have gone from Abraham to Moses and Joshua to Samson and then last week to the epic duel of David and Goliath, and we end here, at the burial of the first king of Israel, Saul, beneath a tamarisk tree after he and his three oldest sons fall in defeat on the battlefield against the Philistines.
There are a lot of disorienting, up-is-down factors happening that contribute to Saul’s tragic end, perhaps most shocking among them that David and Saul are so on the outs by this point that for a year now David has been fighting in the Philistine army—and not just any army, but the army of the Philistine king of Gath, the same city from whence Goliath hailed. The other Philistine kings eventually intervene and question David’s loyalties enough to force David’s dismissal, but the king of Gath makes it clear that he is dismissing David under protest. Bet you didn’t see that one coming!
I make mention of that because the way in which Saul dies is often interpreted as him taking the coward’s way out, when he surely knew of the fate that befell Samson—which we ourselves studied just a few weeks ago—and Saul surely wanted to also avoid the torture and mutilation that surely awaiting him in a Philistine dungeon, as evinced to his words to his armor-bearer.
But more to the point, when the Philistines again threaten Israel and battle is forced, it is Saul and his sons, not David, who discharge their responsibilities to defend Israel with their lives. When Saul does turn his sword on himself, he is already seriously wounded—translations vary, but an arrow to the gut seems the most likely scenario—and is likely incapable of further resistance anyways. He did all he could until he could no longer, and he died in the harness alongside his sons, all but ensuring that his family died with him. This is not just the death of a man, but the blotting out of a family tree.
At least as much as Samson, I see Saul as a tragic figure. Samson was preordained for greatness, though, while I think Saul was close to being set up to fail. Going from one system of government to another usually entails violence—just look at the American Revolution—and Saul as the first king after centuries of judges, and with that final judge, Samuel, looking over his shoulder, was always going to be up against it. Saul’s personal sins of envy against David, his sins as king upon the people, and his own declining effectiveness all conspired against him, but he was never set up to succeed.
Saul wasn’t always an ineffective king, truth be told, and his burial hearkens back to that. After the battle, his body is stolen by the Philistines, beheaded, and mutilated. His remains are saved from further humiliation by the people of Jabesh-Gilead, who commander his remains, burn them, and bury the bones and ashes beneath the tamarisk tree at Jabesh. Why do that, at such great risk?
Because one of Saul’s first acts as king was to lead a relief army to Jabesh-Gilead to prevent their capture by the Ammonites, who similarly promised to torture, mutilate, and enslave all the inhabitants. Saul was successful, and the people at Jabesh-Gilead never forgot who saved them. When the time came for Saul’s reign to end, they were the ones waiting to treat him with the dignity and respect that he had preserved for them.
When all that is left for your reign is its end, how it ends matters a great deal. Saul did not want to lose any more dignity than he already had, and even that was taken away from him until the people he had once saved intervened, buried him with dignity, and mourned him publicly. The tamarisk tree burial of Saul is a vivid bookend to the Philistines’ presence in the Scriptures—they will be mentioned here and again from here on out, but this seems to have been their high-water mark.
We began this series with the tamarisk tree planted by Abraham and the Philistine king to mark the alliance that sealed the safety of Abraham and his family. It was the planting of a life to celebrate the care and protection we give life. Here, the tamarisk tree stands as a sentinel over the tragic and violent loss of life that comes when all hope has been extinguished, all routes of escape blockaded.
But it is also not the final word. Just as rising up after Jayson Terdiman are a pair of talented and hopeful American lugers, so too rising up after Saul is the singularly transformative David. It will take time—Saul’s lone surviving son Ishbaal will stake a claim to the throne and seven years of civil war will ensue—but eventually, the kingdom is united under David and will remain so for over seventy years. David was a profound moral failure as a father, husband, and man, but in the singular capacity of king, he does succeed where Saul had perhaps always been destined to fail. He unifies Israel and abates the Philistines.
I went back and forth on whether to end this sermon series on such a somber note, but I felt it appropriate as we prepare to begin the church season of Lent. From earth and ashes, dust and dirt, we arose, and like Saul, to the earth and ashes, dust and dirt, we return. By those ashes, God indeed sees the sins we have done, and the sins of the things we have left undone. But we are also more than the ashes, more than the outward reality of our own sins and mistakes. God was not satisfied with us being made of earth and instead breathed life into us, life that even after it has passed God wanted to be honored and respected with the dignity and love that comes from right relationship.
God’s desire for our dignity, in both life and death, is bigger than any of us—whether here, or in Ukraine, or in ancient Israel. It is that deep of a desire, expressed by that good of a God.
A tamarisk tree standing guard over Jabesh was living proof of that divine desire.
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
February 27, 2022