22 At that time Abimelech, and Phicol commander of his forces, said to Abraham, “God is with you in everything that you do. 23 So give me your word under God that you won’t cheat me, my children, or my descendants. Just as I have treated you fairly, so you must treat me and the land in which you are an immigrant.”
24 Abraham said, “I give you my word.” 25 Then Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well that Abimelech’s servants had seized.
26 Abimelech said, “I don’t know who has done this, and you didn’t tell me. I didn’t even hear about it until today.” 27 Abraham took flocks and cattle, gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them drew up a treaty. 28 Abraham set aside, by themselves, seven female lambs from the flock. 29 So Abimelech said to Abraham, “What are these seven lambs you’ve set apart?”
30 Abraham said, “These seven lambs that you take from me will attest that I dug this well.” 31 Therefore, the name of that place is Beer-sheba because there they gave each other their word. 32 After they drew up a treaty at Beer-sheba, Abimelech, and Phicol commander of his forces, returned to the land of the Philistines. 33 Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and he worshipped there in the name of the Lord, El Olam. 34 Abraham lived as an immigrant in the Philistines’ land for a long time. (Common English Bible)
“The Philistines Are Upon Us: The Sea People’s Impact in God’s Word,” Week One
The Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations slopes along the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem as part of the Yad Vashem complex devoted to preserving the history of the Holocaust. In the garden, trees are planted in honor of the Righteous Among the Nations, the Gentiles who placed themselves at risk for no financial reward to save the lives of Jewish Europeans during the Second World War.
Yad Vashem, in Hebrew, means “memorial and name,” which is as distilled a mission statement as you will find for something made for the sake of remembering. It comprises many parts, only one of which is the Garden of the Righteous, and I highlight the Garden for the practice of planting trees as a way of remembering or memorializing, for the roots (no arboreal pun intended) of that spiritual practice go far back to the heart of the book of Genesis, which is where we begin this series today.
This is a new sermon series for a new year, and it represents a labor of love on a topic I had been hoping to preach on for a while, and I think now is 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 likely already familiar with the Philistines, one of the Sea Peoples, as the martial opponents of famed Biblical heroes like Samson and David, and we will explore some of those stories. 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 of that echoes of the circumstances 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 begin this first series of 2022 with a passage that may, like many Bible passages, leave us with just as many questions as answers: the story of Abraham and the Philistine king Abimelech (or, more accurately, one of the Philistine kings named Abimelech—there are a few in the Bible). The context here is pretty dramatic: Abraham has just inhumanely dismissed and exiled Hagar and their son Ishmael, and prior to that, he had misled Abimelech into thinking that Sarah is Abraham’s sister, not wife, leading Abimelech to hit on Sarah, which I know sounds like the plot to the first-ever terrible rom com, but it was a big deal, and Abimelech made a huge show of saving face. These are the first encounters of an Israelite and a Philistine in the Bible.
Abraham encounters Abimelech again, and it is similarly tense. Abimelech begins with what seems to be flattery—“God is with you.” But Abimelech brings with him his army commander, Phicol, which is basically Abimelech leaving a decapitated horse’s head on Abraham’s pillow. Abraham knows exactly how to respond to Abimelech’s not-so-subtle gesture, and he offers Abimelech seven firstborn lambs as a way of defusing things, which if you recall from my Advent 1 sermon on Cain and Abel, is seven times the gift that Abel offered God. My favorite part in all this is how Abimelech plays dumb, asking Abraham, “Why are you giving me these lambs?” as though it all wasn’t perfectly clear by Abimelech bringing Phicol along that this is a shakedown.
The first encounters of Israelite and Philistine in the entire Bible are of tension and distrust, and in this case, that tension and distrust amounts to a leveling of the score, of Abimelech reclaiming in kind the amends he had offered to Abraham earlier for the embarrassment of hitting on his wife Sarah. That tension-and-distrust combination boiling over into a thinly-veiled mugging really sets the tone for everything that follows, all the way through the books of Samuel.
But it would not be the last word here in Genesis, and I think that is just as important. Oaths are made to one another, and Abraham is not only able to leave in peace, but to continue living there, as an immigrant, in peace. And to lend permanence to their oaths, a tamarisk tree is planted on the spot, and the place is called Beersheba, which means, roughly, “the well of the oath.”
And it is on the basis of that oath that Abraham, Sarah, and their newborn Isaac are able to live safely in Abimelech’s territory.
It does not, however, offer clarity as to the genesis, if you will, of the Philistines themselves. Or, rather, it more muddies the well waters than crystalizes them.
Almost all Bible scholars these days accept that dating the lifetimes of most Biblical figures past David and Saul is an uncertain enterprise at best. The truth is possibly that Abraham may have existed earlier than we may think, a bit closer to when the Philistines were battling Israel the most fiercely, during the 1100s and 1000s BCE.
The Philistines, though, were one of the Sea Peoples—so-named because they invaded ancient Israel (as well as Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere) from the Mediterranean Sea. But here, in Genesis, one of their kings is depicted as already having had a foothold in ancient Israel, hundreds of years before they became the fierce opponents we read about in Judges and 1 Samuel.
And I don’t have a great answer for that incongruency. It’s possible that Abimelech’s people withdrew to the sea once more, only to return hundreds of years later, but the truth is, we just don’t know what ultimately became of him.
For me, that is at the heart of so much of what I wish I knew about the Bible—the stuff it leaves out, the stuff it leaves on the cutting room floor. There is still so much to know, but what we are left with are monuments—a well and a tamarisk tree. But we are left with wanting to know what happened to the people whom the monuments memorialize.
I think that is a common human condition, for whatever it is we strive to remember and memorialize—the very worst that we must never forget, like how Yad Vashem memorializes the Holocaust, or the Peace and Justice Memorial down in Montgomery remembers the era of lynchings, or 9/11 memorials in New York City and Pennsylvania, but also the dates of celebration: July 4, Juneteenth, V-E Day, and more. We build memorials to the horrors and the celebrations alike, and it’s because we as humans have an innate need to remember our history, to not simply not forget it, but to hand it down as an heirloom of sorts, our stories from one generation to the next.
That, to me, is what the tamarisk tree incarnates: the need to remember. It is what the Bible can be as well. Because Disciples tradition is built on individual interpretation of Scripture I try not to tell you what the Bible must be, but today, I would invite you to understand the Bible as a memorial, as a monument as alive as a tree that blooms beautifully in the spring, bursts into color in the fall, and does it all over again year after year.
For the Bible is both alive with the word and presence of God, but it also contains our human memories of God. It is both alive and a monument to God’s deeds of the past. We honor both the life and the memory of the Bible: the stories it tells and the divine capacity for those stories to continue to shape our story today.
At the risk of a slight degree of spoilers, I will say that we will return to the image of the tamarisk tree to conclude this sermon series seven weeks from now, as Israel’s first king, Saul, is buried beneath it after being decisively defeated in battle by the Philistines. Not too long after that, the Philistines disappear from the Biblical narrative almost entirely.
So our exploration of the Philistines' story begins and ends with the tamarisk tree. That tree will be our anchor, our axis, our true north these next seven weeks, and as we touch on soul-sized topics like God’s providence and care in the face of violence and adversity, I hope that the image of the tamarisk stays with you, mirroring the Bible, mirroring life, and, by extension, mirroring the author of life, God our creator.
For the God who has planted the tamarisk has planted you here as well, to grow in faith, be rooted in community, and lend divine beauty to this world.
Better news, even amid great hardship, has scarcely ever been heard.
By God’s grace, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
January 9, 2021