Bible Synapse
Were the Philistines held back “all the days of Samuel”?
Hard question · Israel’s history: Joshua to Esther · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
After the victory at Ebenezer “the Philistines were subdued, and they came no more into the coast of Israel”; the Lord’s hand was against them “all the days of Samuel”.
So the Philistines were subdued, and they came no more into the coast of Israel: and the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel.
Early in Saul’s reign the Philistines gathered a great army “to fight with Israel” and camped at Michmash.
And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea shore in multitude: and they came up, and pitched in Michmash, eastward from Beth–aven.
The objection
1 Samuel 7:13 says that after Samuel’s victory the Philistines “came no more into the coast of Israel”, and that the Lord’s hand was against them all the days of Samuel. Yet when Saul became king the Philistines had garrisons in Israel (10:5; 13:3), and while Samuel was still alive they gathered a huge army at Michmash (13:5).
The answer
1 Samuel 7:13 describes the result of the battle at Ebenezer: the Philistine invasion was broken, and they stopped invading Israel. The Hebrew says that they ‘did not again come’ (lo yasfu od lavo), describing what followed that defeat, not promising that they would never return. The second half of the verse explains how long Israel was protected and why: “the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel”. That does not say that the Philistines never fought Israel again. It says that whenever they did, God’s hand was against them.
The later chapters bear this out. Philistine outposts appear in the land (10:5; 13:3), and the Philistines gathered at Michmash to fight Saul (13:5). But while Samuel lived they were beaten again and again: by Jonathan and Saul at Michmash (14:23, 31) and after David killed Goliath (17:52). Keil and Delitzsch point out that Saul’s victories also fell within Samuel’s days, since Samuel died only a few years before Saul. The Philistines won their great victory only at Gilboa (31:1), after Samuel’s death (25:1). Gill and Poole read ‘all the days of Samuel’ more narrowly, as the years when Samuel alone governed Israel, before there was a king; on either reading the passages agree.
Still open
The text does not say how long the Philistines stayed quiet after Ebenezer. The Pulpit Commentary thinks that fifteen or twenty years passed before the Philistines were again in the ascendant (13:19–23).
From the classic commentators
Through this victory which was obtained by the miraculous help of God, the Philistines were so humbled, that they no more invaded the territory of Israel, i.e., with lasting success, as they had done before.Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on 1 Samuel 7