For - As a ground for repentance and perseverance, he goes through Pagan nations, upon whom God’s wrath should come. Jerome: “As Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, after visions concerning Judah, turn to other nations round about, and according to the character of each, announce what shall come upon them, and dwell at length upon it, so doth this prophet, though more briefly” And thus under five nations, who lay west, east, south and north, he includes all mankind on all sides, and, again, according to their respective characters toward Israel, as they are alien from, or hostile to the Church; the Philistines Zephaniah 2:4-7, as a near, malicious, infesting enemy; Moab and Ammon Isaiah 2:8-10, people akin to her (as heretics) yet ever rejoicing at her troubles and sufferings; Etheopians Isaiah 5:12, distant nations at peace with her, and which are, for the most part, spoken of as to be brought unto her; Assyria Isa. 13-15, as the great oppressive power of the world, and so upon it the full desolation rests.
In the first fulfillment, because Moab and Ammon aiding Nebuchadnezzar, (and all, in various ways wronging God’s people Isaiah 16:4; Amos 1:13-15; Amos 2:1-3; Jeremiah 48:27-30, Jeremiah 48:42; Jeremiah 49:1; Ezekiel 20:3, Ezekiel 20:6, Ezekiel 20:8), trampled on His sanctuary, overthrew His temple and blasphemed the Lord, the prophecy is turned against them. So then, before the captivity came, while Josiah was yet king, and Jerusalem and the temple were, as yet, not overthrown, the prophecy is directed against those who mocked at them. “Gaza shall be forsaken.” Out of the five cities of the Philistines, the prophet pronounces woe upon the same four as Amos Amos 1:6-8 before, Jeremiah Jeremiah 25:20 soon after, and Zechariah Zechariah 9:5-6 later. Gath, then, the fifth had probably remained with Judah since Uzziah 2 Chronicles 26:6 and Hezekiah 2 Kings 18:8. In the sentence of the rest, regard is had (as is so frequent in the Old Testament) to the names of the places themselves, that, henceforth, the name of the place might suggest the thought of the doom pronounced upon it.
The names expressed boastfulness, and so, in the divine judgment, carried their own sentence with them, and this sentence is pronounced by a slight change in the word. Thus ‘Azzah’ (Gaza,) ‘strong’ shall be ‘Azoobah, desolated;’ “Ekron, deep-rooting” , shall “Teaker, be uprooted;” the “Cherethites” (cutters off) shall become (Cheroth) “diggings;” “Chebel, the band” of the sea coast, shall be in another sense “Chebel,” an “inheritance” Zephaniah 2:5, Zephaniah 2:7, divided by line to the remnant of Judah; and “Ashdod” (the waster shall be taken in their might, not by craft, nor in the way of robbers, but “driven forth” violently and openly in the “noon-day.”
For Gaza shall be forsaken - Some vicissitudes of these towns have been noted already . The fulfillment of the prophecy is not tied down to time; the one marked contrast is, that the old pagan enemies of Judah should be destroyed, the house of Judah should be restored, and should re-enter upon the possession of the land, promised to them of old. The Philistine towns had, it seems, nothing to fear from Babylon or Persia, to whom they remained faithful subjects. The Ashdodites (who probably, as the most important, stand for the whole ) combined with Sanballat, “the Ammonites and the Arabians” Nehemiah 4:7, to hinder the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Even an army was gathered, headed by Samaria Nehemiah 2.
They gave themselves out as loyal, Jerusalem as rebellious Nehemiah 2:19; Nehemiah 6:6. The old sin remaining, Zechariah renewed the sentence by Zephaniah against the four cities Zechariah 9; a prophecy, which an unbeliever also has recognized as picturing the march of Alexander . : “All the other cities of Palestine having submitted,” Gaza alone resisted the conqueror for two or five months. It had come into the hands of the Persians in the expedition of Cambyses against Egypt . The Gazaeans having all perished fighting at their posts, Alexander sold the women and children, and re-populated the city from the neighborhood . Palestine lay between the two rival successors of Alexander, the Ptolemies and Seleucidae, and felt their wars .
Gaza fell through mischance into the hands of Ptolemy , 11 years after the death of Alexander , and soon after, was destroyed by Antiochus (198 b.c.), “preserving its faith to Ptolemy” as before to the Persians, in a way admired by a pagan historian. In the Maccabee wars, Judas Maccabaeus chiefly destroyed the idols of Ashdod, but also “spoiled their cities” (1 Macc. 5:68); Jonathan set it on fire, with its idol-temple, which was a sort of citadel to it (1 Macc. 10:84); Ascalon submitted to him (1 Macc. 10:86); Ekron with its borders were given to him by Alexander Balas (1 Macc. 10:89); he burned the suburbs of Gaza (1 Macc. 11:61); Simon took it, expelled its inhabitants, filled it with believing Jews and fortified it more strongly than before (1 Macc. 13:43-48); but, after a year’s siege, it was betrayed to Alexander Jannaeus, who killed its senate of 500 and razed the city to the ground .
Gabinius restored it and Ashdod . After Herod’s death, Ashdod was given to Salome ; Gaza, as being a Greek city , was detached from the realm of Archelaus and annexed to Syria. It was destroyed by the Jews in their revolt when Florus was “procurator,” 55 A.D . Ascalon and Gaza must still have been strong, and were probably a distinct population in the early times of Antipater, father of Herod, when Alexander and Alexandra set him over all Idumaea, since “he is said” then “to have made friendship with the Arabs, Gazites and Ascalonites, likeminded with himself, and to have attached them by many and large presents.”
Yet though the inhabitants were changed, the hereditary hatred remained. Philo in his Embassy to Caius, 40 a.d., used the strong language , “The Ascalonites have an implacable and irreconcilable enmity to the Jews, their neighbors, who inhabit the holy land.” This continued toward Christians. Some horrible atrocities, of almost inconceivable savagery, by these of Gaza and Ascalon 361 a.d., are related by Theodoret and Sozomen . : “Who is ignorant of the madness of the Gazaeans?” asks Gregory of Nazianzus, of the times of Julian. This was previous to the conversion of the great Gazite temple of Marna into a Christian Church by Eudoxia . On occasion of Constantine’s exemption of the Maiumas Gazae from their control, it is alleged, that they were “extreme heathen.” In the time of the Crusades the Ascalonites are described by Christians as their “most savage enemies.”
It may be, that a likeness of sin may have continued on a likeness of punishment. But the primary prediction was against the people, not against the walls. The sentence, “Gaza shall be forsaken,” would have been fulfilled by the removal or captivity of its inhabitants, even if they had not been replaced by others. A prediction against any ancient British town would have been fulfilled, if the Britons in it had been replaced or exterminated by Danes, and these by Saxons, and these subdued by the Normans, though their displacers became wealthy and powerful in their place. Even on the same site it would not be the same Gaza, when the Philistine Gaza became Edomite, and the Edomite Greek, and the Greek Arabian . Ashdod (as well as Gaza) is spoken of as a city of the Greeks ; New Gaza is spoken of as a mixture of Turks, Arabians, Fellahs, Bedouins out of Egypt, Syria, Petraea . Felix Faber says, “there is a wonderful com-mixture of divers nations in it, Ethiopians, Arabs, Egyptians, Syrians, Indians and eastern Christians; no Latins .” Its Jewish inhabitants fled from it in the time of Napoleon: now, with few exceptions it is inhabited by Arabs .
But these, Ghuzzeh, Eskalon, Akir, Sedud, are at most successors of the Philistine cities, of which there is no trace above the surface of the earth. It is common to speak of “remnants of antiquity,” as being or not being to be found in any of them; but this means, that, where these exist, there are remains of a Greek or Roman, not of a Philistine city.
Of the four cities, “Akkaron,” Ekron, (“the firm-rooting”) has not left a vestage. It is mentioned by name only, after the times of the Bible, by some who passed by it . There was “a large village of Jews” so called in the time of Eusebius and Jerome , “between Azotus and Jamnia.” Now a village of “about 50 mud houses without a single remnant of antiquity except 2 large finely built wells” bears the name of Akir. Jerome adds, “Some think that Accaron is the tower of Strato, afterward called Caesarea.” This was perhaps derived from misunderstanding his Jewish instructor . But it shows how entirely all knowledge of Ekron was then lost.
Ashdod - Or Azotus which, at the time when Zephaniah prophesied, held out a twenty-nine years’ siege against Psammetichus, is replaced by “a moderate sized village of mud houses, situated on the eastern declivity of a little flattish hill,” “entirely modern, not containing a vestige of antiquity.” “A beautiful sculptured sarcophagus with some fragments of small marble shafts,” “near the Khan on the southwest.” belong of course to later times. “The whole south side of the hill appears also, as if it had been once covered with buildings, the stones of which are now thrown together in the rude fences.” Its Bishops are mentioned from the Council of Nice to 536 a.d. , and so probably continued until the Muslim devastation. It is not mentioned in the Talmud . Benjamin of Tudela calls it Palmis, and says, “it is desolate, and there are no Jews in it .” : “Neither Ibn Haukal (Yacut), Edrisi, Abulfeda, nor William of Tyre mention it.”
Ascalon and Gaza had each a port, Maiuma Gazae, Maiuma Ascalon; literally, “a place on the sea” (an Egyptian name ) belonging to Ascalon or Gaza. The name involves that Ascalon and Gaza themselves, the old Philistine towns, were not on the sea. They were, like Athens, built inland, perhaps (as has been conjectured) from fear of the raids of pirates, or of inroads from those who (like the Philistines themselves probably, or some tribe of them) might come from the sea. The port probably of both was built in much later times; the Egyptian name implies that they were built by Egyptians, after the time when its kings Necos and Apries, (Pharaoh-Necho and Pharaoh-Hophra, who took Gaza Jeremiah 47:1) made Egypt a naval power . This became a characteristic of these Philistine cities. They themselves lay more or less inland, and had a city connected with them of the same name, on the shore. Thus there was an , “Azotus by the sea,” and an “Azotus Ispinus.” There were “two Iamniae, one inland.” But Ashdod lay further from the sea than Gaza; Yamnia, (the Yabneel of Joshua Joshua 15:11, in Uzziah’s time, Yabneh 2 Chronicles 26:6) further than Ashdod. The port of Yamnia was burned by Judas (2 Macc. 12:9).
The “name,” Maiumas, does not appear until Christian times, though “the port of Gaza” is mentioned by Strabo : to it, Alexander brought from Tyre the machines, with which he took Gaza itself . That port then must have been at some distance from Gaza. Each port became a town, large enough to have, in Christian times, a Bishop of its own. The Epistle of John of Jerusalem, inserted in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople, 536 a.d., written in the name of Palestine i., ii., and iii., is signed by a Bishop of Maiumen of Ascalon, as well as by a Bishop of Ascalon, as it is by a Bishop of Maiumas of Gaza as well as by a Bishop of Gaza. . Yabne, or Yamnia, was on a small eminence , 6 12 hours from the sea .
The Maiumas Gazae became the more known. To it, as being Christian, Constantine gave the right of citizenship, and called it Constantia from his son, making it a city independent of Gaza. Julian the Apostate gave to Gaza (which, though it had Bishops and Martyrs, had a pagan temple at the beginning of the 5th century) its former jurisdiction over it, and though about 20 furlongs off, it was called “the maritime portion of Gaza” . It had thenceforth the same municipal officers; but, “as regards the Church alone,” Sozomen adds, “they still appear to be two cities; each has its own Bishop and clergy, and festivals and martyrs, and commemorations of those who had been their Bishops, and ‘boundaries of the fields around,’ whereby the altars which belong to each Episcopate are parted.” The provincial Synod decided against the desire of a Bishop of Gaza, in Sozomen’s time, who wished to bring the Clergy of the Maiumites under himself ruling that “although deprived of their civil privileges by a pagan king, they should not be deprived of those of the Church.”
In 400 a.d., then, the two cities were distinct, not joined or running into one another.
Jerome mentions it as “Maiumas, the emporium of Gaza, 7 miles from the desert on the way to Egypt by the sea;” Sozomen speaks of “Gaza by the sea, which they also call Maiumas;” Evagrius , “that which they also call Maiumas, which is over against the city Gaza” , “a little city.” Mark the deacon, 421 a.d., says , “We sailed to the maritime portion of Gaza, which they call Maiumas,” and Antoninus Martyr, about the close of the 6th century , “we came from Ascalon to Mazomates, and came thence, after a mile, to Gaza - that magnificent and lovely city.” This perhaps explains how an anonymous Geographer, enumerating the places from Egypt to Tyre, says so distinctly , “after Rinocorura lies the new Gaza, being itself also a city; then the desert Gaza,” (writing, we must suppose, after some of the destructions of Gaza); and Jerome could say equally positively ; “The site of the ancient city scarce yields the traces of foundations; but the city now seen was built in another place in lieu of that which fell.”
Keith, who in 1844 explored the spot, found widespread traces of some extinct city.
: “At seven furlongs from the sea the manifold but minute remains of an ancient city are yet in many places to be found - Innumerable fragments of broken pottery, pieces of glass, (some beautifully stained) and of polished marble, lie thickly spread in every level and hollow, at a considerable elevation and various distances, on a space of several square miles. In fifty different places they profusely lie, in a level space far firmer than the surrounding sands,” “from small patches to more open spaces of twelve or twenty thousand square yards.” “The oblong sand-hill, greatly varied in its elevation and of an undulated surface, throughout which they recur, extends to the west and west-southwest. from the sea nearly to the environs of the modern Gaza.” “In attempts to cultivate the sand (in 1832) hewn stones were found, near the old port. Remains of an old wall reached to the sea. - Ten large fragments of wall were embedded in the sand. About 2 miles off are fragments of another wall. Four intermediate fountains still exist, nearly entire in a line along the coast, doubtless pertaining to the ancient port of Gaza. For a short distance inland, the debris is less frequent, as if marking the space between it and the ancient city, but it again becomes plentiful in every hollow. About half a mile from the sea we saw three pedestals of beautiful marble. Holes are still to be seen from which hewn stones had been taken.”
On the other hand, since the old Ashkelon had, like Gaza, Jamnia, Ashdod, a sea-port town, belonging to it but distinct from itself, (the city itself lying distinct and inland), and since there is no space for two towns distinct from one another, within the circuit of the Ashkelon of the crusades, which is limited by the nature of the ground, there seems to be no choice but that the city of the crusades, and the present skeleton, should have been the Maiumas Ascalon, the sea-port. The change might the more readily take place, since the title “port” was often omitted. The new town obliterated the memory of the old, as Neapelis, Naples, on the shore, has taken place of the inland city (whatever its name was), or Utrecht, it is said, has displaced the old Roman town, the remains of which are three miles off at Vechten , or Sichem is called Neapolis, Nablous, which yet was 3 miles off (Jerome).
Erriha is, probably, at least the second representative of the ancient Jericho; the Jericho of the New Testament, built by Herod, not being the Jericho of the prophets. The Corcyra of Greek history gave its name to the island; it is replaced by a Corfu in a different but near locality, which equally gives its name to the island now. The name of Venetia migrated with the inhabitants of the province, who fled from Attila, some 23 miles, to a few of the islands on the coast, to become again the name of a great republic . In our own country, “old Windsor” is said to have been the residence of the Saxon monarchs; the present Windsor, was originally “new Windsor: old Sarum was the Cathedral city, until the reign of Henry iii: but, as the old towns decayed, the new towns came to be called Windsor, Sarum, though not the towns which first had the name. What is now called Shoreham, not many years ago, was called “new Shoreham,” in distinction from the neighboring village .
William of Tyre describes Ashkelon as “situated on the sea-shore, in the form of a semi-circle, whose chord or diameter lies on the sea-shore; but its circumference or arc on the land, looking east. The whole city lies as in a trench, all declining toward the sea, surrounded on all sides by raised mounds, on which are walls with numerous towers of solid masonry, the cement being harder than the stone, with walls of due thickness and of height proportionate; it is surmounted also with outer walls of the same solidity.” He then describes its four gates, east-north-south toward Jerusalem, Gaza, Joppa, and the west, called the sea-gate, because “by it the inhabitants have an egress to the sea.”
A modern traveler, whose description of the ruins exactly agrees with this, says , “the walls are built on a ridge of rocks that winds round the town in a semicircular direction and terminates at each end in the sea; the ground falls within the walls in the same manner, that it does without, so that no part of it could be seen from the outside of the walls. There is no bay nor shelter for shipping, but a small harbor advancing a little way into the town toward its eastern extremity seems to have been formed for the accommodation of such small craft as were used in the better days of the city.” The harbor, moreover, was larger during the crusades, and enabled Ascalon to receive supplies of corn from Egypt and thereby to protract its siege. Sultan Bibars filled up the port and cast stones into the sea, 1270 a.d., and destroyed the remains of the fortifications, for fear that the Franks, after their treaty with the king of Tunis, should bring back their forces against Islamism and establish themselves there . Yet Abulfeda, who wrote a few years later, calls it “one of the Syrian ports of Islam” .
This city, so placed on the sea, and in which too the sea enters, cannot be the Ashkelon, which had a port, which was a town distinct from it. The Ascalon of the Philistines, which existed down into Christian times, must have been inland.
Benjamin of Tudela in the 12th century who had been on the spot, and who is an accurate eyewitness , says, “From Ashdod are two parasangs to Ashkelonah ; this is new Ashkelon which Ezra the priest built on the sea-shore, and they at first called it Benibra . Jerome has another Benamerium, north of Zoar, now N’mairah. Tristram land of Moab p. 57.
A well in Ascalon is mentioned by Eusebius. “There are many wells (named) in Scripture and are yet shewn in the country of Gerar, and at Ascalon.” v. φρέαρ phrear. William of Tyre says: “It has no fountains, either within the compass of the walls, or near it; but it abounds in wells, both within and without, which supply palatable water, fit for drinking. For greater caution the inhabitants had built some cisterns within, to receive rain-water. Benj. of T. also says, “There in the midst of the city is a well which they call Beer Ibrahim-al-khalil (the well of Abraham the friend (of God)) which he dug in the days of the Philistines.” Keith mentions “20 fountains of excellent water opened up anew by Ibrahim Pasha.” p. 274), and it is distant from the old Ashkelon, which is desolate, four parasangs. “When the old Ashkelon perished, is unknown. If, as seems probable from some of the antiquities dug up, the Ashkelon, at which Herod was born and which he beautified, was the seaport town, commerce probably attracted to it gradually the inhabitants of the neighboring town of Ascalon, as the population of the Piraeus now exceeds that of Athens.
The present Ashkelon is a ghastly skeleton; all the frame-work of a city, but none there. “The soil is good,” but the “peasants who cultivate it” prefer living outside in a small village of mud-huts, exposed to winds and sand-storms, because they think that God has abandoned it, and that evil spirits (the Jan and the Ghul) dwell there .
Even the remains of antiquity, where they exist, belong to later times. A hundred men excavated in Ashkelon for 14 days in hopes of finding treasure there. They dug 18 feet below the surface, and fouud marble shafts, a Corinthian capital, a colossal statue with a Medusa’s head on its chest, a marble pavement and white-marble pedestal . The excavation reached no Philistine Ashkelon.
“Broken pottery,” “pieces of glass,” “fragments of polished marble,” “of ancient columns, cornices etc.” were the relics of a Greek Gaza.
Though then it is a superfluity of fulfillment, and what can be found belongs to a later city, still what can be seen has an impressive correspondence with the words Gaza is “forsaken;” for there are miles of fragments of some city connected with Gaza. The present Gaza occupies the southern half of a hill built with stone for the Moslem conquerors of Palestine. : “Even the traces of its former existence, its vestiges of antiquity, are very rare; occasional columns of marble or gray granite, scattered in the streets and gardens, or used as thresholds at the gates and doors of houses, or laid upon the front of watering-troughs. One fine Corinthian capital of white marble lies inverted in the middle of the street.” These belong then to times later than Alexander, since whose days the very site of Gaza must have changed its aspect.
Ashkelon shall be a desolation - The site of the port of Ascalon was well chosen, strong, overhanging the sea, fenced from the land, stretching forth its arms toward the Mediterranean, as if to receive in its bosom the wealth of the sea, yet shunned by the poor hinds around it. It lies in such a living death, that it is “one of the most mournful scenes of utter desolation” which a traveler “even in this land of ruins ever beheld.” But this too cannot be the Philistine city. The sands which are pressing hard upon the solid walls of the city, held back by them for the time, yet threatening to overwhelm “the spouse of Syria,” and which accumulated in the plain below, must have buried the old Ashkelon, since in this land, where the old names so cling to the spot, there is no trace of it.
Ekron shall be uprooted - And at Akir and Esdud “celebrated at present, for its scorpions,” the few stones, which remain, even of a later town, are but as gravestones to mark the burial place of departed greatness.
Jerome: “In like way, all who glory in bodily strength and worldly power and say, “By the strength of my hand I have done it,” shall be left desolate and brought to nothing in the day of the Lord’s anger.” And “the waster,” they who by evil words and deeds injure or destroy others and are an offence unto them, these shall be east out shamefully, into outer darkness, Rup.: “when the saints shall receive the fullest brightness” in the ‘mid-day’ of the Sun of Righteousness. The judgment shall not be in darkness, save to them, but in mid-day, so that the justice of God shall be clearly seen, and darkness itself shall be turned into light, as was said to David, “Thou didst this thing secretly, but I will do it before all Israel and before the sun” 2 Samuel 12:12; and our Lord, “Whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops” Luke 12:3; and Paul, “the Lord shall come, Who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart” 1 Corinthians 4:5. And “they who by seducing words in life or in doctrine uprooted others, shall be themselves rooted up” Matthew 15:13.