The Sword Against Philistia
1 Yahweh’s word that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the Philistines, before Pharaoh struck Gaza. 2 Yahweh says: “Behold, waters rise up out of the north, and will become an overflowing stream, and will overflow the land and all that is therein, the city and those who dwell therein. The men will cry, and all the inhabitants of the land will wail. 3 At the noise of the stamping of the hoofs of his strong ones, at the rushing of his chariots, at the rumbling of his wheels, the fathers don’t look back for their children because their hands are so feeble, 4 because of the day that comes to destroy all the Philistines, to cut off from Tyre and Sidon every helper who remains; for Yahweh will destroy the Philistines, the remnant of the isle of Caphtor. 5 Baldness has come on Gaza; Ashkelon is brought to nothing. You remnant of their valley, how long will you cut yourself? 6 “‘You sword of Yahweh, how long will it be before you are quiet? Put yourself back into your scabbard; rest, and be still.’ 7 “How can you be quiet, since Yahweh has given you a command? Against Ashkelon, and against the seashore, there he has appointed it.”
The panic is measured by one detail — fathers who do not turn round for their children — and the sword is told it cannot rest because it was given orders.
The invasion arrives as water. Waters rise out of the north, become an overflowing stream, and cover the land, the city and everyone in it. For a coastal plain whose settlements sat on low ground the picture is literal enough to be frightening, and it says what an army from Mesopotamia was: not an enemy to be met but a level that keeps rising.
The sound comes next — stamping hooves, rushing chariots, rumbling wheels — and then the detail that fixes the degree of the panic: the fathers don't look back for their children because their hands are so feeble. Not because they do not love them. Because there is nothing left in the arms to carry anyone. One clause does more than any casualty figure could.
The cities are named as they fall, Gaza shaved bald in mourning and Ashkelon brought to nothing, and the mourners are asked how long they will go on cutting themselves. The Philistines' origin is given as well, the remnant of the isle of Caphtor, which places them as immigrants from across the sea — a people with a homeland behind them, now being cut off from the coastal cities that had been their strength for six centuries.
The close is a short exchange, and it carries the theology of the whole section on the nations. Someone addresses the weapon itself: You sword of Yahweh, how long will it be before you are quiet? Put yourself back into your scabbard; rest, and be still. It is a prayer, and it is refused in the form of a question: how can it be quiet, when Yahweh has given it a command and appointed it against Ashkelon and the seashore? Judgment in this book is never a temper that will pass. It is a commission, and it stops when the commission is finished.
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