The Lord’s chest was in Philistine territory for seven months. 2 The Philistines called for the priests and the diviners. “What should we do with the Lord’s chest?” they asked. “Tell us how we should send it back to its own home.”
3 They replied, “If you are returning the chest of Israel’s God, don’t send it back empty, but be sure to return a guilt offering to him. Then you will be healed, and it will become clear to you why God’s hand hasn’t left you alone.”
4 “What compensation offering should we return to him?” they asked.
The priests and diviners replied: “Five gold tumors and five gold mice, matching the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague came on all of you and your rulers. 5 You must make images of your tumors and the mice that have devastated the land. Honor Israel’s God. Perhaps he will lighten the weight of his hand on you, your gods, and your land. 6 Why be stubborn like the Egyptians and Pharaoh? After God had dealt harshly with them, didn’t they send the Israelites on their way? 7 So get a new cart ready along with two nursing cows that have never been yoked before. Harness the cows to the cart, but take any of their calves that are following back home. 8 Next, take the Lord’s chest and put it in the cart. Set the gold items that you are giving God as a compensation offering in a box next to the chest. Then send it on its way. 9 Then watch what happens: If the cart goes up the road to its own territory toward Beth-shemesh, then Israel’s God has brought this great disaster on us. If the cart goes another way, then we’ll know that it wasn’t God’s hand that struck us. It happened to us randomly.”
10 The rulers did just that. They took two nursing cows and harnessed them to the cart, penning their calves up at home. 11 They put the Lord’s chest on the cart along with the box containing the gold mice and the images of their tumors. 12 The cows went straight ahead, following the road to Beth-shemesh. They kept to one route, mooing as they went, without turning right or left. The Philistine rulers followed them as far as the territory of Beth-shemesh. (Common English Bible)
“The Philistines Are Upon Us: The Sea Peoples’ Impact in God’s Word,” Week Five
Growing up with attorneys for parents—and one of them eventually becoming a judge—I saw a lot that many kids don’t see. But one of the most memorable, from my mom’s civil rights work, was just how quickly and easily an innocent person’s life can be taken away after a wrongful conviction.
This happened to a wrongfully convicted man in Virginia named Walter Snyder, who was the victim of both terrible police work and myopic prosecuting, and lawyer after lawyer and appeal after appeal seemed to have no effect on the uncaring behemoth of the American court systems.
But when DNA evidence which proved Mr. Snyder’s innocence became available, his latest set of lawyers reached out to the new prosecutor assigned to his case—a fellow named Randolph Sengel. Mr. Sengel asked that the DNA tests be repeated—the technology was still in its infancy—and when a second set of results came back proving Mr. Snyder’s innocence, Mr. Sengel essentially joined Mr. Snyder’s legal team and was determined to do far more for him than most of his previous attorneys.
But in Virginia, there is a fleeting window of time to offer new evidence of innocence—literally only a few weeks—and that window had passed for Mr. Snyder years ago. So Mr. Sengel wrote directly to the then-governor of Virginia, Douglas Wilder, to ask for clemency on behalf of Mr. Snyder. And it worked. Governor Wilder signed the clemency papers, and Mr. Snyder was once more a free man.
But he almost wasn’t. If the prosecutor had fought his freedom, it would have taken many more years of Mr. Snyder’s life to regain his freedom. And the detective who arrested him, to the very end, wouldn’t offer even a crumb of remorse for arresting and imprisoning the wrong man. Yet the prosecutor, Mr. Sengel, gave us an example of what to do in the face of unfeelingness and pride in a wrongful and unjust outcome: you actively work against it, because people come before pride.
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. 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 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 will stay with it through February, and we just spent two weeks on the passages that bookended Samson’s epic four-chapter saga in Judges. Today, we move along to 1 Samuel, but before we arrive at the beginning of David’s story, there is a fascinating passage here in chapter six, where we get a glimpse past the fog of war and into the deliberations of the Philistines themselves. And they come out looking relatively good.
A bit of context: the Philistines had again beaten the Israelites on the field of battle, so badly in fact that the judge and priest of Israel at the time, Eli, died after hearing the news. In foreshadowing Saul’s own tragic end, Eli also lost his two sons in the battle. But what dominates the chapters to follow is that the Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant and brought it back with them as spoils to demonstrate the superiority of their own deity, Dagon.
As you can imagine, that does not sit particularly well with God, and plagues among the Philistines are attributed to God, not unlike the plagues upon Egypt that were meant to liberate the Israelites. And that is a parallel we are meant to draw from this text, for as the Philistine leaders are talking amongst themselves about what to do in response to the plague passing through their people, they summon their own priests. Their priests tell them that to address the plague, they must make amends to the Israelites for having insulted God, and one of those priests goes so far as to say, “Remember how hard-hearted the pharaoh of the Exodus was? Why be as stubborn as he was?”
I cannot say for sure that the conversation went exactly that way—the language suggests the heavy brush of a pro-Israelite redactor—but it is remarkable nevertheless, and it represents a tremendous difference between the Philistine rulers and Egypt’s pharaoh of the Exodus. Both may have been Israel’s enemies, but the Philistine rulers ultimately choose their people over their pride. And while restitution had to be taken from the Egyptians by the Israelites, here the Philistines proactively make amends in not just returning the chest, but restitution along with it.
It feels a trifle odd to say I wish we were more like the Philistines given how they are portrayed in Scripture, but in this case, yes I wish we were more like the Philistines. In this moment, they were in a position of power over the Israelites—they occupied a significant portion of the land and routinely beat the Israelites in battle. Eventually, just as in Egypt, God felt the need to intervene. And this is important: if you are already winning, God tends not to intervene to make sure you win by even more. When God intervenes in the Bible, it is on behalf of the person or people with less power, or with no power.
In that one capacity—in how we intervene or use our power, are we godly? Do we use our power to choose people, or pride? And when we need to not just apologize and promise not to do it again but to make sacrificial amends, are we more like the Philistine rulers, or are we more like the pharaoh of the Exodus?
Cycle back over these past two years. Initially in the pandemic, we chose people’s lives. We stayed at home, wore masks, worked remotely, and worshiped online. Each of those mostly fell by the wayside over the past year, even as people continued dying from covid, sometimes by the thousands per day.
I get wanting a return to normalcy. What I would give to be living in less exciting times. But I just listened to a clip of a politician parsing whether our nation’s children were dying with covid or from covid, and all I could see, all I could witness, was the hardened heart of the pharaoh, a heart so hardened that even after the plague which killed all the firstborn children, he still pursued the Israelites all the way to the Red Sea.
Pharaoh wanted a return to normalcy—a normalcy of chattel slavery—so badly that he was willing to sacrifice his people to the plagues and his army to the seas to get it.
The Philistine leaders, on the other hand, were not so willing. Their normalcy may have been military dominance over the Israelites, but the leaders were willing to swallow their pride and humble themselves before those whom they had just soundly defeated for the sake of their people.
That is not an easy thing the Philistine leaders did, humbling themselves, righting a wrong, and making restitution, especially to a people who were their opponents, and before a God they were probably raised from birth to hate and despise. It flies so very much in the face of the ethos we tend to be taught now, that we see on display from our leaders and frankly in our nation’s history, to never apologize, to never admit you were wrong, to never make amends. Because I think we have come to equate that with weakness, when it is in fact a profound demonstration of your inner strength, that it is not dependent upon your perception of yourself, your church, or your nation as inerrant or infallible.
The paradoxical beauty in this is that freedom can come from confession, because inerrancy or infallibility is an intellectual straightjacket, forcing you into ever more spiritual and mental contortions to justify things that you need not justify. And that’s neither righteous or humble, it’s honestly exhausting. And I think we are seeing that exhaustion on display in society today.
Have we shown humility before what this virus has proved itself capable of doing?
Have we shown humility to others, to people vulnerable, people bereaved, people who have lost?
And even before the virus, were we ever so humble? Or were we—do we continue to be—prideful?
I grew up seeing, hearing, and learning the stories of what can happen to a person’s life when steadfastly, against all evidence, refuse to see mistakes that were made and harms that were inflicted. And that does something to you, it pierces your innocence in a way that cannot be patched up.
Maybe that is a good thing. Maybe our innocence needs more piercing moments. Maybe, just maybe, we were never so innocent to begin with.
After all, the Philistine leaders were not—they were violent, they worshiped false deities, they broke right relationship. They, I am sure, practiced all manner of sins, corruptions, and iniquities.
And if they can find it within themselves to choose for their people and throw themselves upon the infinite mercy of God, why on earth can’t we?
Why be like Pharaoh? Why cast yourself into the sea, when you can instead faithfully and lovingly follow the God who parted the sea?
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
February 13, 2022