Philistines

“ Yet, ignorance prevails, for is not “Retired Clergyman” living proof? And so I will say: There lived in the Far East about three thousand years ago a tribe of people known as Philistines. It is a hotly mooted question among the theologians whether they were so-called because they lived in Philistia or whether Philistia took its name on account of being peopled by Philistines. I will not take sides in this issue, but hedge closely and simply stand firm on the fact that a tribe called the Philistines existed. ”

“ Over Philistia will I cast my shoe.
This only made the Philistines laugh, and although the Israelites outnumbered them, they went at it and scattered them. Finally after long years of warfare, the fight was called a draw, and the Jews settled down and following the good example of the Philistines made themselves homes.
Of course, as sane men and women, we of today do not suppose that the great Universal Intelligence that holds the worlds in the hollow of His hand had [80] much interest in the fight. ”

“ The realism of the Philistines is manifested in the recognition of healthy life that we find in some of the new literature—in the heroic romance of Anthony Hope, in the charming tenderness and sweetness of Maartens’s Hollandais and in the fresh-witted islanders, full of arterial blood, of Hall Caine and the wizard who lies buried on the mountain top of his own beloved island—that second one to the left after you leave San Francisco. ”

“ I am Goliath the Philistine of Gath, who killed the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas the priests; and led into captivity the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and placed it in the temple of Dagon my god; and it remained in the cities of the Philistines seven months. Also, in all our battles I have gone at the head of the army, and we conquered and cut down men, and laid them as low as the dust of the earth; and to this day the Philistines have not granted me the honor of being chief of a thousand men. ”

“ It is very beautiful to note that the point at which the irrepressible welling up of sweet waters breaks the current of his prophecy is the prediction against Israel's bitterest, because nearest, foe, 'these uncircumcised Philistines.' He beholds the sea of wrath drowning the great Philistine plain, its rich harvests trampled under foot by 'stamping of hoofs of his strong ones,' and that desolation wrings from his heart the words of our text. I take them to be spoken by the prophet. ”

“ One who knew of Abraham's dealings with the Hittite Ephron and his rebuke in Egypt could not imagine that the Hebrew lay under no debt of human equity and honour to the Philistine. Are there men among ourselves who think no faithfulness is due by the civilised to the savage? Are there professed servants of Christ who dare to suggest that no faith need be kept with heretics? They reveal their own dishonour as men, their own falseness and meanness. The primal duty of intelligent and moral beings cannot be so dismissed. And even Samson should have been openly the Philistines' enemy or not at all. ”

“ Call, if you like, the great mass of your fellow men Philistines, and despise their low culture, but you will find nothing that acts powerfully upon these Philistines to give them culture, to raise, refine, and purify them, except religion. ”

“ It was a Philistine, a despised player and holder of horses, who gave the modern world its literature. It was a heretic monk who threw ink-stands, not only at Satan, but at embodied and enthroned religion, who gave the modern world its impetus to freedom. The imaginative authors who most strongly sway mankind today are Philistines. Thackeray [4] smilingly lifted the mask from aristocracy and exposed its sordid servility. Dickens threw down the idols of pretentious respectability. Hugo taught the democracy of virtue. Tolstoi dethroned convention in religion. ”

“ The people fall again into idolatry and are afflicted by the Philistines. An angel foretelleth the birth of Samson.
13:1. And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord: and he delivered them into the hands of the Philistines forty years.
13:2. Now there was a certain man of Saraa, and of the race of Dan, whose name was Manue, and his wife was barren.
13:3. And an angel of the Lord appeared to her, and said: Thou art barren and without children: but thou shalt conceive and bear a son. ”

“ The Philistines came up in a great army, and overran the fields in the tribe-land of Judah.
"Why do you come against us?" asked the men of Judah, "what do you want from us?"
"We have come," they said, "to bind Samson, and to deal with him as he has dealt with us."
The men of Judah said to Samson:
"Do you not know that the Philistines are ruling over us? Why do you make them angry by killing their people? You see that we suffer through your pranks. Now we must bind you and give you to the Philistines, or they will ruin us all." ”

“ In this sentence we have a very clear indication that Jesus of Nazareth believed the religion He taught would be eternal, that the substance of it would last forever. Yet there are some who are affrighted by the faintest rustle which a heretic makes among the dry leaves of theology; they tremble lest Christianity itself should perish without hope. Ever and anon the cry is raised, "The Philistines be upon us, and Christianity is in danger." ”

“ If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistines. Culture says: 'Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice ”

“ And so, too, when a Philistine wants to be sent to Parliament by his brother Philistines, and extols the earnest good sense which characterises Manchester and supplies the mind, the will, and the power, as the Daily News eloquently says, requisite for all the great and good things that have to be done, he intoxicates and deludes himself as well as his brother Philistines who hear him. ”

“ The Philistines were formidable enemies, too fierce to be encountered by raw recruits; it was more suitable that they should begin with the Amalekites, and be prepared for the wars of Canaan by experiencing the difficulties of the wilderness. Note, God proportions his people's trials to their strength, and will not suffer them to be tempted above what they are able, 1 Cor. ”

“ But thus the cunning Philistines are enabled to triumph over the strong and gifted man, because in the hour of confidence, and in the abandonment of the mind, he had laid his head in the lap of wantonness, and taught them how he might be shorn of his strength. ”

“ This Horvendile says foolishly, not knowing it is an axiom among the Philistines that literary expression is best controlled by somebody with no misleading tenderness toward it; and that it is this custom, as they proudly aver, which makes the literature of Philistia what it is. ”

“ Chapter 10
1 Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled from before the Philistines, and fell down slain in mount Gilboa.
2 And the Philistines followed hard after Saul, and after his sons; and the Philistines slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Malchi-shua, the sons of Saul. ”

“ When the tablet was first published Eduard Meyer pointed out [118] that a frequently recurring sign, which is apparently the determinative for “man” or “person,” has the same sort of upstanding hair as the Philistines pictured by Ramses III on the walls of Medinet Habu. This tablet, accordingly, was written by Philistines or their near kindred. In this view there is general agreement among scholars. Amos declared that the Lord brought the Philistines [Pg 116] from Caphtor (Amos 9:7) . If this disc was written in Crete, it would follow that Caphtor was Crete. ”

“ As the Philistines being afraid of Israel, and yet hating to serve the Hebrews, mutually encouraged one another, ‘Be strong, and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines.’ A fear of hatred begets boldness.
(2.) Secondly, Courage admits of a preventing fear and a provident avoidance. Occasions of sin are to be fled. We are not with greater earnestness called upon to stand, than we are warned in this case ‘to fly.’ So the apostle often, ‘fly fornication,’ ‘fly idolatry,’ ‘fly youthful lusts.’ Occasions are best opposed by flying, where calling and duty doth not engage: Prov. ”

“ Philistin, m. (artists’) , a man who belongs to a different set, an outsider, a bourgeois, a “Philistine.” The Slang Dictionary says: “Society is supposed to regard all outside its bounds as belonging to the Philistine world. Bohemians regard all cleanly, orderly people who conform to conventionality as Philistines;” (medical) medical man who, not being on the staff of an hospital, visits the establishment, generally prolonging his stay more than is pleasant or convenient for the members of the staff; (tailors’) journeyman tailor. In the English slang a Philistine is a policeman. ”

“ I would respectfully call the attention of the editors of the Post to the fate which befell the Assyrians. It is written in Isaiah XXXVII—36: Then the angel of the Lord went forth and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and four score and five thousand; and when they arose in the morning: behold, they were all dead corpses.
The Philistine’s plea is for the widest liberty to individual genius. Perhaps no living man has presented this plea so strongly in his life and work as William Morris. The poem herein printed is a taste of this strong man’s quality. ”

“ For the Philistine is prone to believe that every man who breaks the rectangular habits of Philistia is an artist—every drawing-teacher, every dauber with disheveled hair, every third-rate journalist. ”

“ It is difficult for the poor Philistine to grasp the notion that all this devotional sympathy with the Psalmists, Prophets, and Evangelists, this beautiful enthusiasm for 'the secret of Jesus' and the 'profound originality' of Paul, was possible to a man whose intellect rejected the belief that there was even any probable evidence for the personality of God, or for the celestial immortality of the soul, who flatly denied the existence of miracle, and treated the entire fabric of dogmatic theology as a figment. ”

“ But follow whichever path he may, let fortune smile on him or not--let him crown himself with laurels, or strive for the wreath of glory in vain--never will he who has been a genuine Bursch, become a Philistine; that is, in that sense in which the student understands it. The words of the celebrated Arndt express most lucidly this meaning of the word Philistine. "A Philistine is a lazy, much-speaking, more-asking, nothing-daring man; such a one who makes the small great, and the great small, because in the great he feels his littleness and his insignificance. ”

“ Jesus Christ finds us, and by his grace works a change in us, and then intercedes for us with the Father, that we may be received into his favour and family again, and past offences may be forgiven; and we are sure that the Father heareth him always. There is no reason to doubt but Paul prevailed with Philemon to forgive and receive Onesimus: and more reason have we to be confident that the intercession of Christ with the Father is prevalent for the acceptance of all whose case he takes in hand and recommends to him. From these general observations we come to the epistle itself. ”

“ If The Philistine disturbs placid self-complacency anywhere, as one or two of its critics intimate, it is sorry, for there is no such happiness attainable anywhere this side of Nirvana as its serene contemplation of the charms of self which Narcissus and some more modern fakirs exemplify; and the magazine of to-day is its gospel. But so good a Philistine as Horace Greeley is my authority for believing that the still pool in which self-love sees the reflection it feeds upon is a breeder of death, not life, and effervescence is the sworn foe of the morbid. ”

“ And thou wert not persuaded to delay such procedure or restrain thy purpose readily even by the word of the Apostle Paul, the most blessed seer, [10] and the man who put on Christ, who is the Christ of all of us no less; for he, in writing to his dearly-beloved son Timothy, says: “Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins.” [11] And thus he at once shows his own anxious consideration for him, [12] and gives him his example and exhibits the law according to which, with all carefulness and caution, parties are to be chosen for the honour of ordination. ”

“ Philo replied, “All men have in them a certain spiritual nature, in virtue whereof they are allied with the Word of God. Whosoever recogniseth the sins wherewith he is defiled, hath the power (if he will use it) of rising above his passions, and conquering his lusts, so that in the end, by repentance and by constant struggling after righteousness, he can follow after the virtues of the Father in heaven who begat him.” Then said I, “All this have I done; for I have now these many years observed not only the words of the Law, but also the Traditions of the Elders ”