The “House” Villain That Was Philistia:

When your enemy pops off, don’t jump for joy. His replacement may be worse. That’s the message for Philistia after Ahaz dies:

In the year that King Ahaz died, this pronouncement was made: “Do not rejoice, Philistia, any of you, Just because the staff of the one striking you has been broken.  For from the root of the serpent will come a poisonous snake, And its offspring will be a flying fiery snake.” (Isaiah 14:28-29)

You can call Philistia the house villain of the Israelites. Enemies come and enemies go, but Philistia is a constant. They are the ones who captured the Ark and so Jehovah struck them with piles (hemorrhoids!) to persuade them to give it back. Only they couldn’t just hand it over. Since they loved to make idols, they had to forge golden images of those piles. You have to admit, that’s a pretty deft touch if the goal is to humiliate those who think deliverance lies in idols.

They are also the ones on whom blinded Samson brought the house down, stationed between two major support pillars. David, at a time of lessened tensions, felt obliged to disguise his sanity among the Philistines, so that their king would later mutter to his advisors: “Here you see a man behaving crazy. Why should you bring him to me?  Am I in need of people driven crazy, so that you have brought this one to behave crazy by me?” An excellent point. Not too different from when two of us were out in the ministry and the weather very abruptly shifted and a woman answered the door and said, “Are you crazy?” “You know, she raises a pretty good point,” I said to my companion.

So, it’s just constant trouble between the Israelites and the Philistines. They’re the ones who sent huge Goliath to taunt Israel. I knew they were the perennial villains even before I took up Bible study with the Witnesses. They came in from the West, from Crete across the Mediterranean Sea, before the Israelites began settling in Canaan from the other direction. Jehovah had his people leaving Egypt steer clear of them initially: He “did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although it was near. For God said: ‘The people may change their minds when they are confronted by war and will return to Egypt.’ So God made the people go around by the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea.” (Exodus 13:17-18)

Now, back to: “For from the root of the serpent will come a poisonous snake, And its offspring will be a flying fiery snake.” (14:28-29) If they thought Ahaz was bad, he would be a creampuff next to his successor, Hezekiah. The first, divided in his loyalties between Assyria and Jehovah, would be an ineffectual force against them. The latter, standing in the face of Assyria and steadfast toward Jehovah, would not be. Then there would be the Assyrians themselves who would devastate Philistia. Maybe that works better with the “poisonous” and “flying fiery snake” comparison.

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