The Coast Left to Shepherds
4 For Gaza will be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation. They will drive out Ashdod at noonday, and Ekron will be rooted up. 5 Woe to the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the Cherethites! Yahweh’s word is against you, Canaan, the land of the Philistines. I will destroy you until there is no inhabitant. 6 The sea coast will be pastures, with cottages for shepherds and folds for flocks. 7 The coast will be for the remnant of the house of Judah. They will find pasture. In the houses of Ashkelon, they will lie down in the evening, for Yahweh, their God, will visit them and restore them.
The oracle against the Philistine cities ends not in ruin but in pasture — the land changes hands rather than merely emptying.
Four cities are named in a line: Gaza forsaken, Ashkelon a desolation, Ashdod driven out at noonday, Ekron rooted up. Gaza and Ashdod had been Judah's western pressure for centuries, and the fifth city of the Philistine pentapolis, Gath, is missing — as it is in other prophetic lists, the text simply not naming it.
Verse 5 addresses the coast as Canaan, land of the Philistia, and the sentence is destruction until no inhabitant remains.
But verses 6 and 7 do something the oracles against Nineveh will not do. The coast becomes pasture with shepherds' cottages and sheepfolds, and then it is given: the coast will be for the remnant of the house of Judah. The word remnant arrives here for the first time in the book, and it arrives holding property. Judgment on the nations is not only subtraction; it clears ground for people who had none.
settled What this mark means