Hebrew Voices #177 – Palestine Prophecy: Part 2

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this new episode of Hebrew Voices #177, Palestine Prophecy: Part 2, Nehemia and Lynell continue their Bible study about the prophecy of Zechariah 9:1-8 and its potential relevance to today. They discuss the locations mentioned in the prophecies, the far-reaching influence of ancient Canaanite colonialism, and the origin & identity of the Philistines.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Transcript

Hebrew Voices #177 – Palestine Prophecy: Part 2

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Now Rabbi Yose, who was sitting in the academy and hears Rabbi Judah saying this, he responds. It says, “Rabbi Yose the son of a Damascus woman said, “Judah, my rabbi, why do you twist the Scriptures upon us? Heaven and Earth testify for me that I am from Damascus, and there is a geographical location named Hadrach.” He’s like, “I’m from there, you idiot! There's just a town called Hadrach somewhere.”

Nehemia: Shalom, I’m Dr. Nehemia Gordon.

Lynell: Shalom, I’m Lynell Gordon.

Nehemia: Welcome to…

Lynell: The Palestine Prophecy.

Nehemia: So, we do these Bible studies in the mornings, and we were going through the Book of Zechariah, the Book of Zechariah, and we got to chapter 9, verses 1 through 8.

Lynell: And I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is happening today! For real! Could that be?”

Nehemia: We had to stop and realized that we need to share this with people, because this is something that very well may be relevant to what's going on in the news today.

Lynell: It’s phenomenal.

Nehemia: As we're recording this.

Is Zechariah 9 a prophecy that happened in the past that was already fulfilled in the time of Zechariah? Or is something that was in his reality of those days? Is it something that was the future for his time? Or is it a future for our time? Let's read the whole prophecy and let's figure it out!

Lynell: Alright. You'll stop me when it's wrong, right?

Nehemia: Maybe. I don’t know. Let's read the whole thing, 1 through 8, and then we’ll go back. Okay?

Lynell: “A pronouncement: The word of Yehovah.”

Nehemia: So, tell us what translation are you reading?

Lynell: I'm reading the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh.

Nehemia: Okay. And that's the 1985 Jewish Publication Society version. So, you read that 1 through 8, and I'll go back and tell you what it really says.

Lynell: That’s usually how it goes! That’s how our table talks go.

Nehemia: And by the way, yours doesn't say "Yehovah." It actually says "LORD", right?

Lynell: It says LORD in capital letters. But it does say Yehovah right here.

Nehemia: In the Hebrew it says it, not in the English. So read the English just how it is, and we’ll go back.

Lynell: You got it. “A pronouncement: The word of the LORD. He will reside in the land of Hadrach and Damascus; For all men’s eyes will turn to the LORD, like all the tribes of Israel. Including Hamath, which borders on it, and Tyre and Sidon, though they are very wise. Tyre has built herself a fortress; she has amassed silver like dust, and gold like the mud in the streets. But my LORD will impoverish her; He will defeat her forces at sea, and she herself shall be consumed by fire. Ashkelon shall see it and be frightened, Gaza shall tremble violently, and Ekron, at the collapse of her hopes. Kingship shall vanish from Gaza, Ashkelon shall be without inhabitants, and a mongrel people shall settle in Ashdod. I will uproot the grandeur of Philistia. But I will clean out the blood from its mouth, and the detestable things from between its teeth. Its survivors, too, shall belong to our God: They shall become like a clan in Judah, and Ekron shall be like the Jebusites. And I will encamp in My House against armies, against any that come and go, and no oppressor shall ever overrun them again; for I have now taken note with My own eyes.”

Nehemia: Okay. Let’s read what it says here. So, it starts off, “masa”, “a burden”. A masa is a certain type of prophecy, and the word masa, written with the Sin, not a Samech, literally means “something that you carry on your shoulders”. Now, what does that mean in the context of prophecy? It's not entirely clear, but it's a type of prophecy. So, they say “a pronouncement”, but it's “a masa prophecy”.

“The word of Yehovah in the land of Hadrach and Damascus his rest.” And we’ll go back to what this means. “For to Yehovah is the eye of man and all the tribes of Israel. And also, Hamath will have a border for her, and Tyre and Sidon, for she is very wise. And Tyre will build a fortress for her and amass silver like dust, and fine gold like mud in the streets. Behold Adonai,” that is Lord, “Behold Adonai will disinherit her, and He shall strike her wealth in the sea, and she shall be consumed by fire. Ashkelon will see and be afraid and Gaza,” or Azah in Hebrew, “will be very frightened. And Ekron, her look will be ashamed," meaning she'll look down in shame. “Kingship will be lost from Azah, and Ashkelon will no longer be inhabited. A mamzer,” which we’ll get to what that means later, “A mamzer will dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the glory of the Philistines. And I will remove the blood from its mouth and the abomination from between his teeth, and its remnant, he also will be for our God, and he will be like a clan in Judah, and Ekron shall be like the Jebusite. And I will encamp from My house against an army from those that pass and return. And no more, never again,” I love those words, “and never again will an oppressor pass over them, for now I have seen it with My eyes.” That's what it says.

Lynell: So, you've told me this, that before we do any prophecy, you said we need context.

Nehemia: Yeah, so, we gave the context.

Lynell: Then we need, like you said, language...

Nehemia: History, language, and context. Yeah.

Lynell: Okay, so, you've given the history, you started. You've given the context, and the language is?

Nehemia: And I want to go back to the end of chapter 8. So, what was the purpose of the end of 8? Why is God giving this prophecy at the end of 8? It's encouraging Israel that's surrounded by nations who want to destroy us.

Lynell: Yeah.

Nehemia: And that continues here in chapter 9. So, there are these nations who want to destroy us, and he's telling you there'll be a time… And this is really shocking. I mean it shocked me to my core. After what happened on October 7th, when Israel was attacked by... I mean, it’s the worst terrorist attack in the history of Israel. I would argue it’s the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world.

Lynell: I would agree.

Nehemia: And people have pointed out, imagine if on 9/11 Al-Qaeda actually occupied large swaths of the United States and held onto them for 72 hours. And proportionately killed tens of thousands of people based on the proportions of the population. So, Israel had over 1,400 people killed.

Lynell: It wasn't just that.

Nehemia: In a country that only has 9 million people.

Lynell: It was the method that it was done.

Nehemia: Oh, horrific things. Things that are monstrous. Things that I can't talk about because this will be pulled down from some internet outlets.

So, when that happened, I did not expect to then read this prophecy shortly thereafter. And you'll find out at the end, maybe you've already heard it, but when you read what it really says it’s very surprising.

Lynell: It’s very apropos. I think it is. Now that’s just me.

Nehemia: It’s apropos, but it’s also shocking that this is going to be the final outcome. But let's go step by step. So, we have a burden, a certain type of prophecy, and it says, “The word of Yehovah in the land of Hadrach,” or Hadrach.

Lynell: Where is Hadrach?

Nehemia: Ah!

Lynell: Well, wait a minute. It says, “Hadrach and Damascus”. We know where Damascus is.

Nehemia: “And Damascus his rest.” And then it also mentions in the next verse Hamat, and then Tzur and Tzidon, Tyre and Sidon. So, we have four cities, and then we have Hadrach, which maybe is a fifth city. Although not necessarily; some people have interpreted Hadrach, or Hadrach, to be the name of a deity. And so, the land of Hadrach would be like saying the land of Chemosh, which would be the Land of Moab. Or the land of Yehovah, which should be the Land of Israel.

Lynell: So Nehemia…

Nehemia: Or Hadrach is the name of a city, possibly.

Lynell: When Nehemia goes through this with me, and obviously now, he goes through all the possibilities that exist. He’s not telling you what he thinks it is. He might tell you what he thinks it is, but he's telling you what it could be in the context of everything that he knows and everything he's read and everything we've studied. Here are all your possibilities.

Nehemia: And maybe not all, because we don't have time for that. But I'm going to give you the highlights because there are too many possibilities! There’s too much information, sometimes, that we don't have time to bring it all.

Lynell: Would you talk to them real quick before you do that, as we go through this? You taught me something; one is the plain meaning, and the other is a literal meaning.

Nehemia: Right. So, I know Christians will talk a lot about literal meaning. They'll say, “Well, I don’t interpret the Bible. I just read it.” And Jews hear that, and they literally laugh because any reading of it requires an interpretation.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: Now, what you really mean is, you want to interpret it based on what we call in Hebrew, the peshat, the “plain meaning”. Peshat literally means “simple” or “plain meaning”, and the peshat is in contrast to a different method of interpretation, derash. Derash is where you ignore the plain meaning very deliberately. The definition of peshat, the technical definition…

Lynell: The peshat, and it’s Peh…

Nehemia: Peh-Shin-Tet, or P-E-S-H-A-T. You don’t really need the “E” because there’s a Shva there. And derash is D-E-R-A-S-H. So, derash is to seek, and it means to seek a deeper meaning which isn't the plain meaning. And deeper meaning means it's actually not a meaning that anybody would ever arrive at, or could ever arrive at, just by reading it. They have to read meaning into it rather than deriving meaning from it.

So, the peshat, the “plain meaning”, is defined as the interpretation based on the language and the context using reason or common sense.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: So that's four things; interpretation based on language and the context using reason. If you invalidate any of those four, and you can't really invalidate interpretation, because everything is interpretation, but if you invalidate language, context, or common sense, you're now in the field of derash. Now, why do I say peshat is not the same thing as literal meeting? Because sometimes the peshat is an allegory.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: There's a famous example where Rashi, who was this Jewish commentator of the Middle Ages, Rabbi Shlomo, the son of Isaac. He's in France. And he's one of the great commentators of Medieval Judaism, and he's talking about the Song of Songs. And he says, “Peshuto hu mashal”, “its plain meaning is an allegory”. So, what does that mean?

Lynell: There you go. Okay.

Nehemia: So, it's a man talking about his lover, and then the woman talking about her lover. Meaning it's this man and woman who love each other. And in some situations, he's describing different body parts. And so, why are we being told this? That seems very strange to be in the Bible. So, going back to the earliest times that we know of, this was interpreted as an allegory. Now, an allegory for what? That depends who's interpreting it. Jews interpreted it usually as an allegory of God talking about Israel. Christians interpreted it as God or Jesus talking about the church. And even those are varied in how you implement it. So, there's this incredible translation from the ArtScroll. ArtScroll is this company that makes Bible translations.

Lynell: Oh, yeah!

Nehemia: Or prints all kinds of books. And in their translation of the woman… I forget if it's the man talking about the woman, but we'll put it up here on the screen. Oh yeah, I think it's the man talking about some of the… how do I put this? The physical aspects of the woman's body, which come in a pair. And they translate it in ArtScroll, in the text, “Oh, how I love your Oral Law and your Written Law.”

Lynell: Did they really?

Nehemia: They really do. Something to that effect. I’m paraphrasing. We'll put it up here on the screen. So how did they do that? Because according to them, yes, he's talking about her bodily parts. But the plain meaning of that, according to them, is that it's an allegory for something else.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: And a better example, because maybe it is about a man and his lover, we don’t know. Song of Songs. So, an example which you really couldn't interpret literally is where it says, “Circumcise the foreskin of your heart.” But that would mean we'd have to cut open your heart… a foreskin is a little flap, a little extra piece, that if you remove it makes it perfect. So, imagine if you had to take off…

Lynell: I just couldn't stop that one, sorry!

Nehemia: Imagine if you said, “Oh, that means to have open heart surgery," and you take off a little extra piece of your heart. And until the 20th century, we didn't have the technology to do open heart surgery. And now we can finally fulfill the commandment in its literal sense!

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: But no, that is the literal sense. But that’s not the peshat. The plain meaning is, “don’t be stubborn”.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: And how do I know that? Because the other half of the verse says, “And no longer stiffen your neck.” And they didn't have open heart surgery, so the historical context tells me it couldn't possibly mean that you need to have open heart surgery.

So, the question we have here for this prophecy is, what is the peshat? And the peshat could be an allegory in some cases, we don't know. We're going to bring the different possibilities. Maybe not all of them, but many of them.

Now, when it comes to Hadrach, or the land of Hadrach, we know where Damascus is. It's still called today, Damascus.

Lynell: Right. It’s in Syria.

Nehemia: It’s the capital of Syria. Back then it was a kingdom called Aram Damesek, Aramea of Damascus. And there was a second kingdom that today is in Syria which was called Aram Tzova, Aramea, of what is today, Aleppo. And then you had Hamat, which was a city in between them on the northern border of the Kingdom of Damascus.

Lynell: And Hamat today is still around.

Nehemia: Hamat today is called Homs.

Lynell: It's in Northern Syria, right?

Nehemia: I am going to pull it up here. Homs.

Lynell: You've got to put a map up.

Nehemia: Homs.

Lynell: We need a map so we can show people where these are.

Nehemia: Homs… so here. I’m showing you on my map, and we’ll put it up on the screen. There's Damascus. And here's Homs, and here's Aleppo.

Lynell: Where’s Homs?

Nehemia: Homs is just in the middle, which is Hamat.

Lynell: Oh, I see.

Nehemia: So, it's about halfway, roughly, between Damascus and Aleppo.

Lynell: So, it’s about an hour from… the border of Israel?

Nehemia: Yeah, I don't know how far it is. No, no, it’s much more than an hour from the border of Israel. Now, Tyre and Sidon, in Hebrew Tzur and Tzidon, those are still cities today on the coast of Lebanon. And then we'll get back to Tyre later on.

So, these are four cities that we know about, and then there's Hadrach. What is Hadrach? So, there's this really interesting discussion about what Hadrach is in the Sifrei, which is an early Midrash from the 2nd and 3rd century. Sifrei Deuteronomy section 1, on the Torah portion of Devarim.

So, before we get to that, we have what's called a methodological problem. And what do I mean by that? So, you'll see people, they'll come up with a hypothesis, a theory about what Hadrach is. And then the other people come along and say, “Well, we know Hadrach is X, Y, Z.” Well, no, whoever said it was X, Y, Z was basing it on Zechariah 9:1. You can't then read that back into Zechariah 9:1, and say, “This is how we know what Hadrach is.”

Lynell: How many times is Hadrach in the Bible?

Nehemia: Once.

Lynell: And where is it at?

Nehemia: Here.

Lynell: This is it.

Nehemia: This is it.

Lynell: So, we don't have any other places in the Bible which talks about Hadrach.

Nehemia: And not just in the Bible. We don't, for sure, with great certainty… We can't go today to a map and say where's Hadrach? We don't have that. It's nowhere. Now, there's a place mentioned in Assyrian sources which is Chataracha. It’s mentioned in the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, also known as HALOT, so it’s mentioned in the dictionary. Is that the Hadrach that we have? Maybe, maybe not. We don’t know for sure.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: So, because we don't know where Hadrach is, and certainly in ancient times the rabbis didn’t know it. Now, at the time of Zechariah, I’m sure they knew where Hadrach was.

Lynell: Probably.

Nehemia: But a thousand years, 600, 700, 800 years later, when the rabbis discussed this, they didn’t know where it was. So, here’s the discussion that takes place. It's a debate between Rabbi Yehudah, Rabbi Judah, and Rabbi Yose.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: And these are rabbis who are around in the year 150 CE or AD. Rabbi Judah interpreted this verse, he says “Hadrach refers to the Messiah, who is sharp to the nations and soft to Israel.” And so, what he does is he takes the word Hadrach and says this is a word made up of two other words, just like Nechemiah means “Yah comforts.” Hadrach means had, “sharp”, and rach, “soft”. Is that what it means? It seems very farfetched to me. The land of Hadrach, meaning he understands… Let’s read it his way, “A burden, the word of Yehovah in the land of the Messiah, and Damascus his rest.” Who's "his"? The Messiah, according to Rabbi Yehudah.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: Now Rabbi Yose, who was sitting in the academy and hears Rabbi Judah saying this, he responds. It says, “Rabbi Yose the son of a Damascus woman said, “Judah, my rabbi, why do you twist the Scriptures upon us? Heaven and Earth testify for me that I am from Damascus, and there is a geographical location named Hadrach.” He’s like, “I’m from there, you idiot! There's just a town called Hadrach somewhere,” or a region, or a district, or something. Rabbi Yehudah responds, “But how do you then interpret 'and Damascus his rest'?” That’s strange. What’s the problem with “Damascus his rest?” Why does that require it to be referring to the Messiah? And the answer is… let's read Rabbi Yose’s answer and we'll find out.

Rabbi Yose responded, “From where do we know that Jerusalem in the future will reach Damascus, as it is written, ‘and Damascus his rest'? And there is no rest other than Jerusalem, as it is written.” And then he quotes Psalm 132:14, “For Yehovah chose Zion. I will dwell here, for I desire it, this is My rest for all eternity.” So menucha, “rest”, in Hebrew, Rabbi Yose understands to be a technical term that refers to Jerusalem.

And so, the way Rabbi Yose reads it is, “In the land of Hadrach and Damascus, his rest,” meaning Hadrach and Damascus are now part of Jerusalem. And Rabbi Yehudah doesn't seem to really dispute that, that “his rest” refers to Jerusalem. I don’t want to go into the whole thing, but basically the way they understood it was that that prophecy can only take place in the land in Israel. That's an idea the ancient rabbis had.

And so, one way of reading this is “the word of Yehovah is in the land of Hadrach and Damascus, his rest.” Who's his? The word of Yehovah, meaning “its rest”. And so, "it reaches to Damascus", is what they're saying, or how they're interpreting it. And if the word of Yehovah is in Damascus, that means Damascus is a part of the Land of Israel.

Lynell: So perhaps it means that Yehovah will conquer Syria, that part.

Nehemia: I think it definitely means that Damascus will be part of Israel. We don't need to take it in the direction…

Lynell: Or Israel, under Yehovah’s rule, will rule Syria. That could be a part of it.

Nehemia: For sure. There's almost no question that, as we'll see, as we go later in the prophecy, Damascus, Tyre, Sidon, and Hadrach, wherever that is, will be part of the Land of Israel when all of mankind, including Israel, look towards Yehovah. Let's talk about that for a minute. It says, “For to Yehovah is the eye of man and all the tribes of Israel.”

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: So, the word “and” is the Hebrew letter Vav, and the Hebrew word letter, Vav is very dynamic.

Lynell: Veh.

Nehemia: It's not that it's vague, it has lots of different meanings.

Lynell: No, I said veh.

Nehemia: Veh? Oh, “V,” okay. So, the letter Vav is very dynamic. It has lots of different meanings, and one of those is, “and especially”.

Lynell: Ah!

Nehemia: And the example of that is, “Solomon loved many wives and the daughter of Pharaoh.” Isn't that included in “many wives”, the daughter of Pharaoh?

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: It means “and especially the daughter of Pharaoh”. So here it says, “for the eyes of man and all Israel are to Yehovah.” It means, “the eye of man, and especially all the tribes of Israel, are to Yehovah,” that's what that means. So, all mankind in the future will look to Yehovah, including the nations, and at that time, Damascus will be part of Israel. Now, does it mean Damascus is conquered? Let's leave that, okay? We haven't decided that yet.

Let's go on to verse 2. Can we go on to verse 2? Or do you have more questions?

Lynell: No, I think that’s fine.

Nehemia: Oh, I want to finish up the first one. So, what's the takeaway from this strange discussion about how he interpreted Hadrach as the Messiah, as the kind of title of the Messiah or something? Meaning Rabbi Judah would interpret Hadrach as the one who is sharp to the nations and soft to Israel, the one who comes to judge the nations and maybe punish them, and smite them, and to Israel, he’s soft. I don't know if that's what Messiah is going to do or not. We'll find out. And Rabbi Yose responds, “This is a ridiculous interpretation. You're twisting Scripture upon us,” he says.

My takeaway from this debate is, according to both interpretations this is a Messianic prophecy. Whether Hadrach is a cipher, a title for the Messiah, or whether we just understand it as a literal place, we're talking about these places will become part of Israel. And more importantly, all mankind will look to Yehovah.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: “And all of Israel and the eye of man will look to Yehovah. And Damascus will be the place of the rest.” And I guess we do need to talk about that. Who's his rest? So, it could be the word of Yehovah, we talked about that. “His rest” could be Yehovah Himself. In the Middle Ages, there was a rabbi named Yosef Kara, in 11th to 12th century France, and he says it's the shechinah. Now what's the shechinah? That's what Christians call “Shekinah glory.”

Lynell: Shekinah glory.

Nehemia: Now really, what is the shechinah? Shechinah means “the dwelling”, and it comes from the Tanakh where it says that Yehovah will choose a place where He will cause His name to dwell. And that later becomes Jerusalem, in 2 Samuel 24. So, the place where Yehovah causes His name to dwell, the word “dwelling” is shachen. And so shechinah is the “indwelling of the name”.

In the Tanakh, it doesn't use the word shechinah. It’s a verb, “it causes his name to dwell.” It's not a noun. The noun in the Tanakh is kavod Yehovah, “the glory of Yehovah”. And that's where Christians put the two together and get Shekinah glory. But in Hebrew as well you’d say shechinat kavod. In Christianity, I think, that's the Holy Spirit.

Lynell: That's what I was thinking.

Nehemia: Meaning, what is the shechinah really? What do Jews mean? We mean that it's some way we can sense Yehovah in a tangible way. He’s infinite, so He’s not actually in Jerusalem. He’s everywhere. Solomon prays the prayer, “The heavens can’t hold You, and the heavens beyond the heavens can’t hold You, let alone this house.” So, what does it mean “He causes His name to dwell there"? We sense Yehovah in a way in Jerusalem that we don’t anywhere else in the world.

Lynell: And there’s one more way to look at this. Could this “he” be a bad guy? That his rest is in Damascus?

Nehemia: Yeah, it could be that the enemy that God is going to fight is in Damascus. It could be that what Christians call the Antichrist will be in Damascus. And at that time all mankind will look to Yehovah, who will then defeat this figure who’s in Damascus. That’s totally a possibility.

I want to finish up this shechinah thing. So, the explanation of, how do you get Damascus as where the shechinah is? The shechinah is in Jerusalem, not in Damascus.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: So, this goes back to this idea, it’s from Deuteronomy 12:9, where it says, “Until now you have not come to the rest and the inherited portion.” And “rest” there, if you see how that plays out from Deuteronomy 12:9 later in Joshua through Kings, what you see is that when they “come to the rest”, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. And that’s when the Temple is built.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: And so, the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 12:9, where it says, “Until now you have not come to the rest and the inherited portion,” isn’t just you go into the land, but that you have rest when Jerusalem is finally the capital of Israel. That’s how they interpret it. I think that’s definitely how it's understood, like I said, in Samuel and Kings, or how it’s presented. And in that place, you have Jerusalem as a megacity.

Lynell: A megacity?

Nehemia: It’s a megacity. In other words, Jerusalem reaches all the way to Damascus.

Lynell: If you know, you know.

Nehemia: Yeah. And look, we have in the Book of Ezekiel a description of Jerusalem as being much bigger than it is today, or having different borders than it did in ancient times. Another possibility is that the “burden prophecy” that starts off with “masa” will apply to Damascus. And that’s what it means “will rest upon Damascus”.

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: So, these are a bunch of different possibilities that have been suggested over the centuries.

Lynell: There's one more we were talking about when we talked about the bad guy. There’s one more thing we need to talk about.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Lynell: You were talking about, maybe it's bad guys in the area of Syria. Well, I'm just going to talk about right now is, are there bad guys of the area of the city right now?

Nehemia: Well, Syria is ruled by the Assad family, who treat it as their personal fiefdom. The father died and the son took over. He inherited the country from his father. And when there was a rebellion against him in this civil war, something like 600,000 people so far have been killed. And of course, there are protests all over the world for all the innocent civilian Arabs who were killed...

No there’s not, nobody cares.

Lynell: I know. I was just going to say… nobody cares.

Nehemia: They only care when Jews kill Arabs or Muslims, not when Muslims kill Muslims. But there’s a civil war right now in Syria, and they’re pretty evil, the people in Syria.

Lynell: You wanted me to remind you when we went through here about that sneaky story about ISIS in the civil war with the Syrian government.

Nehemia: Oh, so my nephew; a number of years back… right now he’s in the reserve duty. Well, I won’t say where he is, but on the frontlines. But years back when he was doing his regular army service, his three-year stint, he was on a fortification facing Syria in the Golan Heights. And to their right from the Israeli base, if you look to the right, that was where ISIS was based. And if you look to the left, that was ISIS’s arch enemy who was at the time called the Al Nusra Front, which was Al Qaeda.

Lynell: Oh, okay.

Nehemia: And we think of these as fundamentalist Islamists who want to destroy Western civilization. Well, that's true, but they're also arch enemies against each other, which is hard to fathom. For me, it's hard to fathom that ISIS’s worst enemy isn't America, its worst enemy is actually Al Qaeda, or the Al Qaeda affiliate that was in Syria called the Al Nusra Front.

So, what the terrorists on both sides would do is, they would sneak out of their base and come between… let's say Al Qaeda would come between ISIS and Israel and start firing at Israel. So then Israel would fire back and hit ISIS.

Lynell: At the wrong people. Oh, they hit their enemies.

Nehemia: And then ISIS would go between Al Qaeda and Israel, fire at Israel, so Israel would then hit Al Qaeda. And so, you have all these evil people in Syria. Sometimes in the West they present it as the rulers of Syria are evil… I mean, they do horrible things, they really do.

They took literal barrels that they filled with explosives and tossed them into civilian populations because it was a neighborhood that was not accepting the authority of the government of Syria. So, let's just kill a bunch of people until they surrender or die.

Lynell: Where was that?

Nehemia: That’s going on; that's the Syrian civil war. That's been going on for something like over ten years.

Lynell: How many people have died?

Nehemia: Over 600,000. And there's nobody… let's say nobody in the Muslim war world cares, apparently.

Lynell: Are they Muslim? Are they Palestinian? What are they?

Nehemia: Well, Palestinians as well, but there are all kinds of different Muslims. There are Palestinians, there are Shiite Muslims, there are Sunni Muslims, there’s something called Alawites…

Lynell: And those 600,000; are they Muslims that are dying?

Nehemia: Mostly Muslims, yeah. There’s also Druze. Some Druze have died as well, probably lots. But they’re all fighting each other. There are no good guys in Syria, they're all bad guys. Could this prophecy apply to one of the groups in Syria who will… like tomorrow we wake up and find out they took over Damascus? Absolutely, that could be the case.

Lynell: So, when we talk about this, it could be a bad guy when we say “he”.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: Okay, so that's a possibility.

Nehemia: So, we actually don't know. All of these are possibilities of what “his rest” is. This is one of the parts of Hebrew, and in many languages, where you have a pronoun, where you say “he” or “him”, and it's inherently ambiguous.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: Alright, let’s go onto 9:2. We have, “Ve’gam-hamat tigbal-bah.” “And also, Homs,” or Hamat, “will be bordered in her.” What does that mean? What that literally means is that Hamat will be part of the border of Israel.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: That seems to be what it means.

Lynell: And how far is it right now from the border of Israel?

Nehemia: Oh, boy. I don't know. I could go look on Google Maps.

Lynell: I thought we looked…

Nehemia: No, that was something else. That was Tyre. We didn't look at Homs. So, here's what we'd have to do; I’m pulling this up on Google Maps. Now, you can't actually drive from Israel to Syria because there’s a lot of landmines there. But if we go from Homs to the border of Israel… let’s see.

No, no. That’s not Syria… let’s see where Syria is. Okay, if you wanted to get as close as you could to the border, you would go to Quneitra…

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: Which is inside Syria. And it’s 230 kilometers, a three hour and 13 minute drive from Homs to Quneitra, which is in Syria outside the Golan Heights.

Lynell: How many miles is 230 kilometers?

Nehemia: Let’s convert from miles to kilometers… so it is 143 miles from Hamat to the current border of Israel.

Lynell: Wow, that's less than from here if we were going!

Nehemia: That’s less than Dallas to San Antonio. That’s closer.

Lynell: That's what I was thinking.

Nehemia: Yeah! That's like driving to the supermarket in Texas, three and a half hours. Not exactly, but it’s close. Well yeah, because you’re not going 70 miles an hour.

Lynell: So, what does it say about Homs?

Nehemia: “And Homs will be bordered in her.” Now, what does that mean? It seems like that will be part of Israel. Or maybe it will be part of the state of the Antichrist if we go in that direction of the interpretation.

But in any event, there’s also a play on words here, because “tigbal”, “she will be bordered”, or “she will become part of the border”, sounds like the word “geval”, and Geval which is another city on the coast of Lebanon. Why do I say another city? Because we have Tzur and Tzidon, Tyre and Sidon. And two words before Tyre is “geval” or “tigbal”, so there's a play on words here referring to “geval" which is a city on the coast of… So, there are three major cities on the coast of Lebanon; one is being alluded to and the other two are being mentioned explicitly. And Geval is an interesting city because the ancient city of Geval… I’m looking for it here on the map.

Lynell: Where’s Geval?

Nehemia: Well, it’s mentioned throughout the Tanakh. Okay, so it's 40 kilometers, so like 32 miles north of Beirut, they call it today, Jebeil. But it was a major Phoenician city on the border of Lebanon.

Lynell: Oh, okay.

Nehemia: And so, we have three Phoenician cities, two are mentioned explicitly, Tzur and Tzidon, Tzur is called Tyre, and that's actually the Greek name in modern times. The Arabs still call it Tzur, which I'm sure I’m mispronouncing. And then Sidon is, in Arabic… I think it’s just Sidon, oh, it’s called Saida. Saida is Sidon.

Lynell: And it’s a real place today?

Nehemia: Yeah, Tzur and Tzidon. Tyre and Sidon are major cities in Lebanon.

Lynell: On the coast.

Nehemia: On the coast, right. And they were major merchant powers in ancient times. So, Tyre, possibly up until early modern times, would have been the greatest trading empire the world had ever seen.

Lynell: So, it was a superpower?

Nehemia: It was a trading superpower, Tyre in particular. Tyre was known for their merchant vessels that went as far as Ireland.

Lynell: Wow!

Nehemia: Now imagine that. These are merchant vessels that are being rowed by hand by hundreds of people, who are rowing by hand because they didn't have the technology. If the wind was against you, you were kind of out of luck. So that's it, you go with rowing. And they had merchant vessels that reached all the way to Ireland. The Greeks called them the Phoenicians. You've heard of the Phoenicians.

Lynell: Yes.

Nehemia: The Phoenicians didn't call themselves Phoenicians. The Phoenicians called themselves Canaanites. The Greeks called them Phoenicians.

Lynell: I see.

Nehemia: And so, the Canaanites…

Lynell: We’ve heard of those.

Nehemia: We've heard of the Canaanites.

Lynell: We have.

Nehemia: And we usually think about the Canaanites who lived in what's today Israel, that we fought against when we came into the land in 3500 BCE. So, if you say that Israel is an imperialist conquering power, well, maybe not imperialist. If you say we're foreign conquerors, “Okay. Show me another country where the inhabitants were there 3,500 years ago, and we could have a conversation.” I mean, think about it. There’s not that many countries in the world.

Lynell: Yeah, that’s a long time.

Nehemia: Were the Turks in Turkey 3,500 years ago? No, the Turks weren't there 2,000 years ago, let alone 3,500 years ago. They conquered it from the Greeks. So, when we came into the land, we dealt with the Canaanites. But there were Canaanites that we never conquered because they were kind of far off; they were in Tyre and Sidon. And they were also separated from Israel by mountains. There are these mountains in southern Lebanon that are pretty hard to conquer, and it's not worth the effort. And it would require being a great naval power, which ancient Israel never really was.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: When they finally did have a naval presence, King Solomon built ships with the help of the Tyrians. So, there was Hiram of Tyre, who helped him build… because he didn't know anything about boats. He didn't have people who were trained on boats, so they had the Phoenicians, or the Canaanites of Tyre help them.

So, Tyre and Sidon are playing a part here in Zechariah 9:2 alongside Hamat, and maybe the city of Geval. Which, when it says Hamat will be bordered in it, it's a play on words with Geval. By the way, Geval, in Greek, was called Byblos, and they were famous in the ancient Greek world for making books. And the ancient Greek word for a book was Biblia.

Lynell: Bible?

Nehemia: Bible literally just originally meant "book".

Lynell: Oh, wow!

Nehemia: But it was part of a phrase that meant "Holy Book". And so, literally, Geval, because they were so famous for making books, is where we get the word Bible from, because it was called Byblos in Greek.

Lynell: So, if we're talking about Tyre...

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: They went as far as Ireland, but didn't they also have colonies?

Nehemia: All over the Mediterranean. The city of Marseille was founded by the Tyrians.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: I mean, we think about that as a French city, but before the French invaders came… no, really! The French are foreign invaders who conquered Gaul from the indigenous population. They were Franks. They actually conquered it from the Romans, not from the indigenous population, who had conquered it from the Gauls. But southern France was colonized originally by the Tyrians, by the people of Tzur, of Tyre, and Marseille in particular was a colony they established. And then, when they came to Spain, they saw rabbits there, and they called Spain, “the land of the rabbits”.

Lynell: What is that word?

Nehemia: Now, here's something we have to know about the Phoenicians, about the Canaanites. The Canaanites spoke a language very similar to Hebrew. In fact, there are words that, if you write them out in Hebrew letters, they're essentially Hebrew.

Lynell: Oh, wow.

Nehemia: You have to put in the vowels, because the way they spelled it was a little bit different, and the way they pronounced it might have been very different. We don't know; we have no idea how they pronounced it. We actually have some Roman sources that transcribe Canaanite-Phoenician words, but those are in a relatively late period. And then when a foreigner hears something he doesn't always write it down correctly, so take those with a grain of salt.

So, if you looked at the names of some of the Phoenician-Canaanite rulers, you would say, “Oh, those are Hebrew names.”

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: So, for example, who's the most famous Phoenician or Canaanite in all of history?

Lynell: Hannibal.

Nehemia: Yeah. That's only because I told you, right?

Lynell: The only reason I know.

Nehemia: Hannibal Barca.

Lynell: It’s somewhere in my notes. I won’t forget that because of the elephants.

Nehemia: Right! So, Hannibal famously invaded Italy with elephants, and they died crossing over the Alps, most of the elephants. Maybe all the elephants, I don't remember, and a lot of his men died as well.

So, the Phoenicians, or the Canaanites, they have this guy named Hannibal, and what is Hannibal in their language? He was called Haniba’al, and Haniba’al is actually just the name Hananiah, but for the religion of the Canaanites. So, Hananiah means “Yehovah has grace", has mercy. And there's a related name in Hebrew, which is Hananel, “God has mercy”, “El has mercy.” But if you worship Baal, then you’re Haniba’al.

Lynell: Like Zerubbabel?

Nehemia: No, no, that’s Zeru-babel, it’s unrelated. Haniba’al means “Baal has mercy”. So why is that a Hebrew name? Because the Phoenicians spoke a language that was very similar to Hebrew. Why is for a different discussion.

Lynell: But you were saying that they had rabbits in Spain?

Nehemia: Right. And so, when they came to Spain, they called it eretz, and they didn't know what rabbits were. But they had an animal similar to rabbits in the land of Canaan, which is called a Hyrax in modern times.

Lynell: Oh! I have videos of those. They’re really cute!

Nehemia: They're really cute little guys, and they kind of chew on stuff like rabbits, like that little chewing. And it's described in the Torah as chewing its cud. But what it’s actually chewing is… can I say it?

Lynell: No!

Nehemia: They poop, and then they eat their poop.

Lynell: I don’t want to know. They’re too cute.

Nehemia: Because the first time the food passes through their digestive system it can't fully be absorbed... it's not exactly poop. It's semi-digested food which they eat again and chew on, and then they digest it a second time. Both rabbits and hyraxes do it, so they called it the land of Hyrax because the rabbits they weren't familiar with reminded them of hyraxes. And the word for hyrax, or rabbit, is shafan.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: And so, they called it Eretz Ha’shafan. In Hebrew it would be Eretz Ha’shafan, in Phoenician it was probably called something like Arad Ha’thathan, or something like that. We don't know exactly. We have guesses of how they pronounced it, like the “sh” was probably something like a “th” maybe. And that's where you get the name Hispania. Hispania is ha’shafan, “the Hyrax” or “the rabbit”, “the land of the rabbits”.

So, the point is, these Tyrians were all over the world. That's important for understanding this prophecy because he's talking about this superpower here. They build a fortress, and they have “silver, like dust and fine gold like mud in the streets.” What are we talking about? They're some economic superpower, which is a trading superpower. It goes all the way to Ireland with their trade and they have colonies as far away as Spain. The most famous colony of the Phoenicians, of the people of Tyre, was Carthage, and Carthage was known as New Tyre.

Lynell: Oh, okay.

Nehemia: And when Tyre was finally conquered by Alexander the Great, they were cut off from… well, actually they were conquered by the Persians before that. When they were finally conquered, the colony of Carthage, New Tyre, was cut off from the motherland. And it became an independent country, an independent city-state, and then Carthage took over a lot of the Phoenician colonies. And that's how Carthage became this great superpower in the western Mediterranean that then later fought the Romans.

And what made the Romans a great empire, what led to them becoming a great empire, was defeating Carthage. When they finally defeated Carthage, they then ruled Spain, and Southern France. And eventually they ruled what today is Tunisia, where Carthage was located.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: And actually, the name for Carthage, the region in which Carthage was called, was Africa. That’s what they called it, Africa; that's what the Romans called it. The Phoenicians didn't call it Africa. And by the way, Africa didn't originally refer to the continent, it only referred to the area around Carthage.

Lynell: Wow.

Nehemia: And it comes from the Hebrew, which is also a Canaanite word, which is the word afar. Which is “dust”, the land of dust.

Lynell: So much goes back to Hebrew.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: So much goes back to Hebrew.

Nehemia: Yeah. So, Africa comes from the Hebrew word afar, which means “dust,” the land of the soil, the dust.

Lynell: So now we can see why they're talking about Tyre…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Lynell: …amassing this silver like dust.

Nehemia: Yeah, because they're a massive empire. Now, here we have to ask a question. And I don't know the answer, it's a question. So, this is a future prophecy. How do I know it's a future prophecy? Because it ends with what's clearly a Messianic prophecy.

Lynell: Right, that I get. But right here as we're talking…

Nehemia: So, here the question I have for verse 2 and 3, is this talking about Tyre in ancient times? Or is it talking about Tyre in the future? Right now, Tyre is a Third World country.

Lynell: It's an impoverished country right now.

Nehemia: Oh, incredibly impoverished. Here's how bad it is in Lebanon because Tyre’s part of Lebanon. In Lebanon, people rob banks to get their own money out of the bank.

Lynell: You’ve said that before!

Nehemia: And that's not an exaggeration. They literally go to the bank, and they say, “Sorry, we can't give you your money. We can't afford it.” So, people would go rob the bank and say, “I'm not trying to steal money. I want my money.” That's how bad it is in Lebanon.

So, how do we go from that today, to Tyre building up a fortification, amassing silver like dust and fine gold like the mud on the streets? So, was that ancient Tyre? Or was that Tyre of the future, a thousand years from now?

Lynell: Why can't part of this prophecy have already been fulfilled and we're waiting for the rest?

Nehemia: It absolutely could be. It's also possible that the peshat is an allegory. In other words, that it's not literally Tyre. Whenever this prophecy comes to pass, let's say it's five years from now, or next week, or a thousand years from now, I have no idea, but when it's fulfilled maybe it will be the Tyre of that generation.

And what is the Tyre of this generation? Who is the international economic trading superpower? China.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: Go anywhere in the world, they have the Road and Belt initiative. They literally have ships going out all over the world, a large percentage of world shipping trade, because that’s what Tyre was, it was a shipping empire, is China. So maybe this refers to China. Or maybe it refers literally to Tyre, which will have a resurgence a thousand years from now and will be a major economic power. Or it's like you said, maybe that part was fulfilled in ancient times and other parts could be fulfilled in the future. That's possible.

Lynell: You can look at it in any of those ways that you’d like.

Nehemia: And we don't know, so all those are possibilities.

Lynell: We don't, right.

Nehemia: Verse 4, “Behold, Adonai will disinherit it. And He will smite in the sea her wealth. And she,” meaning Tyre, “will be consumed with fire.” So that happened in ancient times. Tyre was eventually conquered, and Carthage was left. The little colony, maybe not a little colony, the distant, backwater colony became the center of an empire because the motherland was conquered. So, that definitely happened in ancient times.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: But maybe it's referring to something that's going to happen in the future to China or to some other country that doesn't even have a name yet, in the future. We don’t know.

Lynell: So, Tyre is what, 18 miles from the border of Israel right now?

Nehemia: It's less than a half hour drive if there weren't people firing rockets at you.

Lynell: I mean, that's what's happening today. That could be today as well. Am I wrong?

Nehemia: Oh, in the Second Lebanon War and the First Lebanon War, Tyre was very badly damaged. In the next war it could be completely flattened. So here it says, “And He struck in the sea, her wealth.” What does that refer to? She doesn't have too much wealth.

Lynell: Well, she doesn't now.

Nehemia: And she certainly doesn't have silver and gold like dust.

Lynell: No. But verse 4 says, “But my Lord," Adonai.

Nehemia: Adonai.

Lynell: “…will disinherit her,” “impoverish her.”

Nehemia: Well, it doesn’t say “disinherit”. “He’ll disinherit her,” right.

Lynell: It does say “disinherit.”

Nehemia: It does say “disinherit”. So, what that means is, somebody is the heir of that land, and they lose the rights to that land, and it's given to somebody else. That's what the word means. So, someone else will inherit the land.

Lynell: Right, someone else will inherit the land. “He will defeat her forces at sea and she herself will be consumed by fire.” Okay.

Nehemia: So, it's either the literal Tyre or the spiritual Tyre, the future metaphorical Tyre, the current metaphorical Tyre, perhaps, some great trading empire.

Lynell: Okay. Are we going to 5?

Nehemia: Let's go to 5. “Ashkelon will see and be afraid.”

Lynell: Wait a minute, Ashkelon. I know where Ashkelon is. I’ve been to Israel. It’s in Israel, right?

Nehemia: In southern Israel, yeah, on the coast.

Lynell: So, tell me about the history of Ashkelon.

Nehemia: So, there were five Canaanite cities, and this brings us to the Palestine prophecy. This part of the prophecy is about the Philistines, but here it only says Ashkelon. It doesn't say anything about the Philistines.

Lynell: Okay. Why do we say Philistines and Palestinians?

Nehemia: Well, let's say that. Let's talk about the historical Philistines…

Lynell: Okay, the historical Philistines.

Nehemia: Before we get to the Palestinians of today. The historical Philistines had what's called a pentapolis. There were five city-states, and each one of those city states was like a little kingdom. And the five city-states were, and they were all in the southwestern area of Israel in the coastal region, Ashkelon, Gaza or Azah, Ekron, Gat, and Ashdod. And the most famous Philistine, of course, is Goliath.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: He was called Goliath Ha’Giti, the Gittite. So, he's from Gat; that's what "he’s a Gittite" means. We have Achish, the King of Gat, who David is living with.

Lynell: Oh, right. When he was pretending to be crazy.

Nehemia: Yeah. So, we have different Philistines who are mentioned in the Tanakh. And then David has this group of Philistines who are his loyal allies, who are his fierce warriors, his two bands of Philistines, who are called the Kreti and the Pleti. And that's really interesting, because Kreti means “the Cretans”, and Pleti is the Pletans. Now what are the Pletens? I don’t know, but the Cretans were from Crete. And that's a bit strange because the Philistines… you have this pentapolis of five cities but some of them are in Crete. And then they have kind of strange names. The Canaanites, remember I told you, spoke a language very similar to Hebrew?

Lynell: Mm-hmm.

Nehemia: So much so that if I wrote it out with vowels and Hebrew letters, a lot of Israelis could read it. I could say 20 years ago that most Israeli high school kids could read it, but I think that's not the case anymore. Their education isn't as classical as it used to be. But it's very similar to Hebrew.

The Philistine language is completely different. When we look at a name like Goi’lath, which is Goliath, that doesn't even sound like a Semitic name. And then you have Achish, that's also not a Semitic name. Both of those names are in what are called Indo-European languages. They have the case endings that you would find in Greek. In Greek, a lot of words end in “us”.

Lynell: Like Zeus?

Nehemia: Like Ze’us. Zeus is Ze’us. And so, it seems, from what we know of the Philistine names, that they were Indo-European people. And some of them apparently came from Crete because they're called the Cretans.

And Ashkelon is an interesting name. Some historians say Ashkelon refers to the place where the people who settled in Ashkelon came from, and that place was called something like Shakala. And they say, “Oh, that's Sicily. Sicilia.”

Lynell: Oh!

Nehemia: So, they were invaders from Sicily. And the word Philistine itself, Pelishtim, are you ready for it? Oh… before we get to what Philistine means. So, there were these five cities, and we can see that in the story of the Ark. Remember they returned the Ark, and they had these plagues that happened?

Lynell: Right, right.

Nehemia: And so, they sent back five golden… what does it say in English? It's like five golden hemorrhoids, I think it says. But they weren't hemorrhoids, they were the boils of the Black Plague. And how do we know that? Because it says there was a plague there, in the different Philistine cities that the Ark went to.

Lynell: Oh, right.

Nehemia: And what kind of plague was it? Well, we can see from the story, they sent five golden mice. So, they saw mice dying and they thought the mice were giving them the plague, and that's the Black Plague. What in the Middle Ages was called the Black Plague, or some form of the Black Plague…

Lynell: That’s right.

Nehemia: …they associate it with mice. Because what happens… we think today, or we know today, I should say, I’m not sure which one, the fleas bite the mice, the mice die, and then the fleas go looking for something else to bite and they bite people. And people see dead mice and they associate the plague, they think the mice gave it to them, or the rats.

So, they sent five golden mice, one for each of the five Philistine cities: Ashkelon, Azah, Ekron, Gat, and Ashdod. And then they have five golden boils of the Black Plague, one for each of the five cities. So, these five cities were called Pelishtim, Philistines, and the Pelishtim come from the Hebrew word, palash, which means “invader”.

So, Philistine literally comes from the word that means invader. Actually, the literal meaning of palash is “to penetrate”. And we looked this up in the dictionary. It's really a beautiful illustration linguistically of what it means. So, it talks about etrog; that's a citron.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: And a citron that is pierced, but not fully penetrated to where the hole reaches the inside of the flesh of the citron. Citron is like a giant lemon.

Lynell: It's a fruit.

Nehemia: Right, it's a type of lemon, sort of. Well, it's related to the lemon.

Lynell: It smells amazing.

Nehemia: Yeah, it doesn't taste too good, but it smells really good.

Lynell: It tastes very good if you candy it.

Nehemia: Yeah, sure. If you candy it. But anyway, so the word for, “to fully penetrate” is palash, and palash means “an invader”. So, the Pelishtim were the invaders. Now, why were they called invaders? Because they invaded from the west, and they're referred to, and also visually presented and shown in Egyptian sources. So, the Egyptians call them “the sea peoples” in the Egyptian sources. And why are they called the sea peoples? Because they invaded Egypt from the sea. And they come into Egypt, and they fight against the Egyptians, and they're shown with a certain type of hat that has these feathers. The feathered hat. And we see those feathered hats when we excavate archeology in the area around Gaza, in the Philistine sites. We see that they have sarcophagi, coffins, made of clay, and the clay coffins, you can see them in the Israel Museum. At least as of recently, they may move them. But you walk into the Israel Museum to the archeology section, and you see these Philistine coffins made of clay. And they have the sea people's hat that we know from the Egyptian drawings.

And so, the conclusion archeologists made is that the Philistines are sea peoples who invaded from the Mediterranean. Some of them apparently came from Sicily, some of them came from the Aegean, like Crete. Crete is part of the Aegean, the Greek area. This is what they believe happened. We don't know for sure exactly why it happened, but the explanation of archeologists is that there was a volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini.

Lynell: Okay.

Nehemia: Also known as Thera, or Tera. And most of the island exploded, and it caused, number one, ash, but also ash in the sky that caused all kinds of…

Lynell: Things to die when it does that.

Nehemia: No, it caused all kinds of climatic problems. So, all of a sudden you would lose summer and you’d have a very cold winter.

Lynell: That’s what I’m saying, a lot of things died.

Nehemia: And crops failed.

Lynell: Right.

Nehemia: And there's a tidal wave, and it causes the collapse of what's known as the Minoan civilization. In archeology it's called the Minoan civilization. And that leads to all these people who are then, “Okay, my island was destroyed, now I'm looking for a place to settle, and I drive out the people from Crete.” And the people from Crete are looking for a place to settle, and they invade Egypt and southern Israel. And that's where the Philistine invaders… the Canaanites apparently called them invaders before the Israelites because they had invaded from the west, from the Mediterranean; the Egyptians called them sea peoples. So, the Philistines are invaders, not native to the Land of Israel. And that's why they have these Indo-European names.

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VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 Evaluating Zechariah 9
09:07 Plain meaning vs. literal meaning
14:26 Where are these places?
31:34 The ships of Tyre & the city of Bibles
45:28 Tyre of old or Tyre today?
49:51 The Philistines

VERSES MENTIONED
Deuteronomy 10:16
Sifrei Devarim 1:19
Psalm 132:14
1 Kings 11:1
Deuteronomy 16:11; 2 Samuel 24:18-25
Deuteronomy 12:9
Ezekiel 48:30-35
2 Chronicles 8:17-18; 9:21
Joshua 13:2-3
1 Samuel 17:5
1 Samuel 21:10-15; 27-29
2 Samuel 15:18-22; 20:23; 1 Kings 1:38
1 Samuel 5-6

RELATED EPISODES
Hebrew Voices #176 – Palestine Prophecy: Part 1
Hebrew Voices #167 – Ancient Idolatry at the Israel Museum
Hebrew Voices #168 – Israelite Archaeology at the Israel Museum

The post Hebrew Voices #177 – Palestine Prophecy: Part 2 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.