Tag Archives: hittites

So Rabbi, how are you? I think I might have just coined the word “Philistinians”.

Adam Mintz (01:03.926)
It’s a perfect word. It’s a combination of so many different languages. It’s a perfect word.

Geoffrey Stern (01:09.148)
You know, think part of our problem is when Israel, the modern state of Israel was formed and they were given a choice of what they would be called and they ended up saying Israel of course, but then they decided to be Israelis. If they had said Israelites, you know, I think just walking into the UN and hear the Israelite delegation is coming, I think maybe we would have, they’d give us more respect, who knows.

Adam Mintz (01:30.595)
You think we would be biblical?

Adam Mintz (01:36.001)
Okay.

Geoffrey Stern (01:37.416)
But anyway, we are moving right along. You know, it occurred to me in last week’s Parsha, at the very beginning, we were introduced to the Hittites. And we didn’t make note of it because Abraham was buying a kevir, a burial plot for his wife. But the Hittites were not Cannanites They didn’t come originally from Canaan. I mean, this place was teeming. It was a melting pot, if you will.

It was the New York of the ancient Near East and strange that if you think back to it that Abraham said he was a foreigner to the Hittites who were also foreigners. So as I said in the intro this week we are being introduced to the Philistines and actually reintroduced. We’ll get to that in a second. In Genesis 26, 1 it says,

Adam Mintz (02:18.756)
Right, how far it is. Right.

Geoffrey Stern (02:33.874)
There was a famine in the land aside from the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelach, king of the Philistines, in Gerar. Now when I always thought about as had occurred to Abraham, it’s twofold. It’s not only was there another famine,

But this was another time that a patriarch went to stay, if you will, with the Philistines. That was lost on me in the past. And God appeared to Isaac and said, do not go down to Egypt. Stay in the land which I point out to you. So first of all, we already get a sense of

When you go to the Philistines, it’s not only are you going to them and be with them, you’re not going to the Egyptians. There’s almost a positive characterization if you assume that Egypt is bad, given the history that we’re about to embark on. And it continues, reside in this land and I will be with you and bless you. I will assign all these lands to you and to your heirs, fulfilling the oath that I swore to your father Abraham.

Adam Mintz (03:26.34)
Right, that’s it.

Geoffrey Stern (03:48.214)
And he goes on and talks about all the things that he promised to Abraham. And as you know, the traditional commentaries say that Isaac was like a sacrifice or he was holy and he was too holy to go outside of the land of Israel, which is why he didn’t go looking for a wife, but Abraham last week sent his servant. And that continues on with this. You’ve got to stay within the land.

Adam Mintz (04:09.574)
Mm-hmm.

Geoffrey Stern (04:16.892)
So again, the Philistines are in the Holy Land, but they’re just there. It’s kind of interesting. So Isaac stayed in Gerar, and when the local leaders asked him about his wife, he, following in his dad’s footsteps, said, she is my sister, for he was afraid to say my wife, thinking the local leaders might kill him on account of Rebekah and her beauty.

Then it has Abimelech looking out of the window and you know when I every week I decide what to talk about I was tempted to talk about windows. It’s such a fascinating kind of image of him. Was he he peeping or was he just walking along the street? But in any case he sees Isaac and Rebecca acting as a married couple and he says, why did you say her sister?

And Isaac says well because on account of my life and in verse 10 Abimelech says what have you done to us? One of the men might have lain with your wife and you would have brought guilt upon us He says the hevaita aleinu asham This was clearly a leader who had a very high moral standard

Abi Melech then charged all the people saying, who molests this man or his wife shall be put to death, again doing absolutely the right thing. And then it goes on to say how Isaac lived with them, he became very wealthy, flocks and herds and large household, and then things start to sour a little bit because the Philistines envied him.

So it says that they vika’anu oto Pelishtim. So again, you get these issues, these inter-dynamics, and as a result in verse 15, the Philistines stopped up all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham, filling them with earth. And Abimelech said to Isaac, go away from us, for you have become far too big for us.

Geoffrey Stern (06:33.822)
Again, a neutral term (of seperation), you you’re attracting too much attention, you move away. So Isaac departs, and then it says in verse 18, Isaac dug a new the wells which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death. And speaking of Isaac, he gave them the same names

Adam Mintz (06:39.42)
Right, right.

Geoffrey Stern (07:02.866)
that his father had given them. So in the intro rabbi I made reference to we’ll be learning about the Philistines but we’re also going to be learning about the power of naming things and this is the first moment here where we see how important it was for Isaac to give each of these wells the same name as Abraham in the day had given it. various

bunch of commentaries, the Bechor of Shor says why did he give them the names, so that it is known that which were his father’s wells and his inheritance, for if he were to change their names to that which others told him they would be thought of as not his father’s.

Adam Mintz (07:46.918)
Right, mean, That explanation, just to say for a second, that’s a very practical explanation. know, that, you know, let’s name it because, you know, that makes, this is the Mintz house. So when my children inherit the house, it’ll be clear this is the Mintz house and no one else will get it. That’s not a religious explanation. That’s a practical explanation.

Geoffrey Stern (08:07.006)
Absolutely, and I mean the radak says k’shemot with the same names in order to maintain unbroken continuity of ownership in the Hebrew Chazaka you want to show this continuity what you call things what you call places is very important You know I would say you said a second ago whether it’s religious or biblical

I really do believe it comes up to today and a play on that was I called the Philistines the Philistinians because Palestine, Palestinians, Philistine, it’s all about what you call things and naming things from the get-go in Genesis is showing ownership. The Rashbam says in order to prevent anyone in the future to challenge the ownership of the wells. So it’s

kind of all about the importance of naming. And in this week’s Parsha, we are just full of those types of references. We have the twins fighting in their mother’s womb, and when they’re born, the first one emerged red like a hairy mantle all over, so they named him Esau Esav comes from the word se’ar. Seir is the nationality.

of Esau. So again, they’re trying to put the pieces onto the map, put everything into its intended place. And then his brother emerged holding on to the heel of Esau So they named him Jacob, kind of a heel, not a very, I would say, complimentary name. Ergo, we need a name change later.

Adam Mintz (09:50.729)
Well, I mean, and the but in the next chapter after he steals the blessings, Esav says about him, you fooled me twice because the word Yaakov, you fooled me also. So he plays on the name. So Jacob’s name all of a sudden becomes important also.

Geoffrey Stern (10:08.25)
And again, looking to the future, sometimes you have to change that name. We saw the continuity of a name, the changing of the name. And just to finish, Esav comes in from the field, he’s famished, and he says, give me some of that red stuff to gulp down, for I am famished. And the Torah gives a little commentary here, which is why he was named Edom. Edom is

Adam Mintz (10:13.724)
Right, right, right.

Geoffrey Stern (10:37.278)
word in Hebrew for red. Again, Edom became the great Roman Empire. Edom became a great nation.

Adam Mintz (10:44.042)
Right. Which became Christianity. Right. The Roman Empire became Christianity. So last week, Ishmael is the Muslims. This week, Esav is the Christians. It’s interesting. The rejected son in the two stories are our enemies.

Geoffrey Stern (11:02.866)
Yeah, yeah, but again, getting back…

Adam Mintz (11:04.243)
Right? There’s something there’s something about that. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about that.

Geoffrey Stern (11:10.106)
And again, we always save something for another year, but in this week’s conversation, I think it’s just fascinating that you can clearly see, and you don’t know which comes first, does the story of the stolen birthright with the red porridge.

create the name Edom or was there a name Edom and you needed the mythology to catch up so to speak to give a story behind that Edom that wasn’t quite complimentary that kind of you couldn’t now think of Edom without thinking of Esau as a hunter as someone who didn’t value the birthright

Adam Mintz (11:44.852)
Right, right, right.

Geoffrey Stern (11:55.774)
These are the games that we’re playing here. These are the rules of the games I should say that we’re playing here. And at the end, at the very end of the parsha again getting back to the Wells and other things, it seems that Isaac became then so successful that the Pelishtim (Philistines) actually decided it’s in our best interest to make a pact with him.

So they sought him out and they exchanged oaths in chapter 26 it says, that same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug and said to him, we have found water. And he named it Shibah therefore the name of the city is Be’er Sheba, ad hayom hazeh, until this day. And of course, Rabbi, we’re in 2024.

Adam Mintz (12:52.564)
It’s true. It’s true.

Geoffrey Stern (12:56.346)
It does, it makes you question when the Torah was written. Clearly, you could make a case that the Torah was brought down by Moses from Mount Sinai or the finishing T’s and I’s were dotted before Moses’ died. At some point, until this day made sense, but you’re correct also, no matter when, whether it’s modern scholarship or the tradition,

there’s always going to be Ad Hayom Ha’zeh And these names and the baggage and the messaging that are associated with them is with us even till today. And I would argue that the conflict of what things are called and how they got that name is also fortunately or unfortunately with us even till today. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Adam Mintz (13:51.864)
Absolutely fascinating and it’s so interesting about the suggestion of the name that Edom has to be related to a bad story Because Edom is connected to the bad guy

Geoffrey Stern (14:03.986)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you you bring up bad, so let’s take it back to the Philistines. Because I would wager that most people, when they think of the word Philistine, if I was accusing somebody of being gruff, of being uncultured, I would call them a Philistine. I think Philistine doesn’t have a great rep in today’s language. Am I correct? Would you agree with me?

Adam Mintz (14:32.705)
You’re right. I mean, I didn’t check that. What’s the source of the English word to be a Philistine to be uncultured? You know, that’d be interesting if it actually goes back to one of these stories. That’d be fascinating. We need an Oxford English Dictionary.

Geoffrey Stern (14:44.446)
So I think we’ll…

I think we do, but luckily we do have modern scholarship. And what we are going to find, I believe, is that in fact there’s almost universal agreement that these stories about Abimelech and these Philistines, yes, they had a few wrinkles, but for the most part, and I started by saying we were comparing the Philistines favorably to the Egyptians, the Philistines are thought of very highly here.

And I’m going to go back to Abraham’s interaction with them in a second, I think, to buttress my point. But the other thing that we’re going to learn is that there’s a large bunch of scholarship, both academic as well as Midrashic, that the later Philistines that we talk about in a negative way were related by name only. And in fact, they were different. So it just goes to show

Adam Mintz (15:43.346)
fascinating. If that’s interesting. Okay, yeah.

Geoffrey Stern (15:44.412)
We’ll get there. We’ll get there. So let’s go to Abraham. Abraham, as I said before, there is no food in Canaan or where he is. So he takes Sarah and he goes to King Abimelech of Gerar. And in that particular case, and he says that Sarah is his sister, God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him,

you ought to die because of the woman that you have taken. So here he’s not peering through a window. God goes out of his way to actually give the guy a heads up. And at that point he says to God, Lord, will you slay people even though innocent? Sounds a little bit like Abraham to me. Will you slay the innocent with the evil? And again, portraying him just wonderfully. And God said to him in the dream,

I knew that you did this with a blameless heart and so I kept you from sinning against me.” Just a beautiful relationship with this Abimelech. If anybody doesn’t come out really well in this story, I would venture to say it was more Abraham than Abimelech. Abimelech comes to Abraham and he says, what wrong have I done that you should bring so great guilt upon me and my kingdom? Both of the Abimelechs, and by the way, I think the commentaries also agree, we’re not talking about the same character.

Abimelech was a term for the Philistines, similar to Pharaoh was a name for the Egyptians. But again, he’s worried just like the later Abimelech of the next generation about Amei Ha’aretz the people of my kingdom. And so it is very, very fascinating. And I think we could only conclude at this point.

Adam Mintz (17:18.011)
That’s correct, that’s for sure.

Geoffrey Stern (17:38.704)
If we throw out our dictionary and if we throw out the way Philistine is thought of in some other circles, that this is a wonderful relationship. That the Philistines are counter-pointed to the Egyptians are thought of highly. The way the Philistine Abimelech king comports himself is visited by God. These people are thought very really highly of. So now the question is who were they? Where did they come from?

And what else does the text say about them? So in Genesis 10, much earlier on when we’re talking about the kind of family tree of all the people, it says that Mizraim we’re in Genesis 10 now, Mizraim begat Ludim, the Anamim, the Lehabim, the Calushim, and the Caphtorim, the Cretans.

whence the Philistines came from. And Canaan begat Sedom. So it’s very clear that the Caphtorim, in this case Cretans, they came from somewhere. And that’s where the Philistines came from. So I took out my great Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel. And there they say,

Adam Mintz (18:53.531)
Mm-hmm.

Geoffrey Stern (19:04.626)
that no later than the end of the 13th century, beginning of the 12th, an intrusive material culture called the Philistines, which was identified as Philistine, was introduced into the land of Israel along the southern coastal plain. This new culture was not homogenous. Elements appear to derive from at least three disparate sources tied together by the Mediterranean Sea, the Aegean, the Artalian, and the Cypriot.

And moreover, this intrusive culture, while significant, did not by any means eradicate the local Canaanite culture itself. And we know that because many of the names, the Semitic names of Azza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, were retained. So what we have, Rabbi, it’s kind of fascinating, is a culture that came, they were not homogeneous in a while, we’re going to be

The next chapters we’re going to be talking about the 12 tribes, we have our own disparate people with different characteristics. Here it was clear this was a catch-all name and they both introduced new customs and they also absorbed customs and they didn’t take over everything. So it is kind of, I think it’s instructive not only in terms of understanding who the Philistines were, but understanding what was going on.

Adam Mintz (20:18.406)
Mm-hmm.

Geoffrey Stern (20:28.222)
in the land of Israel. It was, as I said before, a melting pot of different cultures. Kind of fascinating.

Adam Mintz (20:38.289)
very, very fascinating. I mean, this idea that Abimelech and Pharoah don’t represent a person, but they just represent a title in these countries. And that these countries themselves represent different things. We didn’t talk about it today, but both last week and this week, the son is sent not to Canaan, but back to where the mother came from to get a wife.

because Canaan is cursed. That’s also an example of a place that stands for something. And Canaan’s curse goes back to the story of Noah becoming drunk and Ham avi Canaan the father of Canaan, sees him naked. And he says, Arur Canaan, right? He’s cursed and Ham is his son, and it’s Canaan that’s cursed.

So the Canaanites are cursed, they can’t marry into the family. That’s also kind of a typology of a place.

Geoffrey Stern (21:41.33)
Yeah, and I think the knee-jerk reaction is to think that all the inhabitants of this promised land were negatively characterized and all terrible. You make the correct point that the Canaanites, there was something that was really problematic with them, but we’ve seen the Hittites and this week we’re meeting the Philistines. again, this sounds like, I mean, there were…

there were tensions between the peoples but they patched it up (and partitioned) and they made their oaths. So here’s where in the Koren Tanach it says, interestingly Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 60 records an episode that claims that the Philistines of Genesis were a completely different people from those of the book of Judges and Samuel. And I went ahead and looked it up and if you want to go to the Sefaria notes

I did notice that the translation in Sefaria was incorrect because it took out the punchline because it talks about the much later Israelites coming to these quote unquote Philistines and the Philistines say to them, we don’t think you’re the children of the book because you’re not keeping the laws and they said to Amru Lehem Mekayamim, we do keep them.

And they said, do not observe them, but we are not the Philistines. So here there was a discussion of whether you are the real Jews or the real Philistines. It never gets old, does it? It really just never gets old. If you recall, when we had an episode about God, I think the name of the episode was when God goes into exile.

and we talked about Shechinta Begaluta, I think I brought this verse from Amos 9, where it shows that the Jewish people, the Israelites, were not the only ones that went into exile and were brought back from exile. And in Amos it says, when God says, Israelites, you are just like the Cushiite, declares God, true, I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, but also the Philistines from Kaftor and the Arameans from Kyre.

Adam Mintz (23:33.63)
Right, right, right.

Geoffrey Stern (24:02.886)
So again, it is important for us to see we can focus so much on the Chosen People, but the Bible itself is focused on other peoples that have similar types of experiences. There’s a gradation, and it respects those gradations, and it certainly, getting back to the story of the two Abimelechs that we just read, speaks about them in high regard.

And I think that is just fascinating. Clearly one of the things that made the Philistines so fascinating is they seem to be on all accounts seafaring people that came from the shores. If you remember, and we’re going to be talking about the Exodus when we get to the book of that name in the future, there’s a whole question of why the Jews didn’t make the quickest, straightest route.

from Egypt back into the promised land. in Exodus 13 it says, well now when Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Peleshtim, of the Philistines, although it was nearer. So these were people who literally were on the coastline. I put up a map and you can see where we’re talking today about the Gaza envelope.

These were people that settled on the coastline and when they expanded they expanded into the heart of Israel but it was all along the coast. Which again, when you’re on the coastline you bring new cultures and new things. Some people say they introduced the pig to the land of Israel. And certainly today when they do archaeological digs

They can tell right away when they’re in a Philistine settlement because they find bones from pigs, which is unique amongst maybe the Hittites and the others too. Really kind of flushing things out.

Adam Mintz (26:11.85)
You say the most advanced cultures live on the coast because that gives them exposure outside. We know that the Greeks when they came lived in Caesarea, lived in Caesarea, which is also on the coast. It’s north, but it’s on the coast. So it’s the same thing. The advanced cultures always choose the cities on the coast to live on.

Geoffrey Stern (26:37.291)
or they came in from the coast. again,

Adam Mintz (26:39.732)
Yeah, well, I’m saying, but they stayed there, right? You know, the countries that were more inland, Moab and Amon, we don’t have the same tradition about them, right? They’re countries, but you know, the Philistines seemed to be special and later on the Greeks seemed to be a especially cultured.

Geoffrey Stern (26:57.238)
And the flip side of that, Rabbi, is if you look in terms of America, and I think sometimes I’ve already talked about melting pots in New York, but I must admit that you start looking at this and you see that when the pilgrims came, they came from the sea, they settled on the seaboard, the East Coast became this melting pot, and it’s very similar here. It’s just another

commonality that we have with the colonies and the federation of tribes and different peoples. Our shared history is so great. let’s just close with the new word that I coined for this podcast, the Philistinians. The word Palestinian,

does come from the word Philistine. In Latin, well it all starts by the Peleshtim, that was the Hebrew word that we used, and in Latin that become Philistai. And what happened was that the area that we know as the promised land or Israel today ultimately became known as Judea because it was one of those tribes that we’ll discuss in the future.

was the prominent tribe. It’s where King David came from and it was in control and when the Edom, we’re coming full-circuit now, when the Romans took over Judea and the Judeans revolted against multiple times culminating in the Bar Kokhba revolt, following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt,

Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony under the name of Adelphi Capitolani and Judea was renamed Syria-Palestinia, a term occasionally used among Greco-Romans for centuries. Ben Sasson, great Jewish historian writes, in an effort to wipe out all memory of the bond between the Jews and the land, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Judea

Geoffrey Stern (29:21.374)
to Syria, Palestine, a name became common in the non-Jewish literature, Jews were forbidden to settle there in the immediate vicinity And tying into what you said a second ago, the capital was moved from Jerusalem to Caesarea, the coastline. So here we kind of come full circle, but it’s a naming game. And so,

Taking the name of the Judeans off of this land was so instrumental in taking their identity, their hazakah, their inheritance, their connection to it. And I think that if there is a chance for peace, and hopefully we’re recording this on Monday, hopefully by the time it airs on Thursday, there will be a new peace agreement.

like there was many thousands of years ago, in Beer Sheba between Israel and those in Lebanon. And the story will continue, the name game will continue, the way of characterizing each other will continue, but hopefully we truly can be a little bit more like the melting pot of the past and figure it all out and get along.

Adam Mintz (30:38.819)
as a perfect Parsha class for this week. Thank you so much, Geoffrey Shabbat shalom, happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Be well, see you next week.

Geoffrey Stern (30:46.46)
Happy Thanksgiving and nesia tova to Israel Rabbi.

Adam Mintz (30:51.331)
Thank you so much. We’ll see you next week with more reports, hopefully good reports from Israel. Be well.

Geoffrey Stern (30:55.486)
We do have a lot to be thankful for. See you all next week.