Was it Samson,
Joshua, Caleb,
Gideon, Deborah,
Jael, Ahab,
Barak, David?
Or was it one of David’s Mighty Men;
the Gibborim; הַגִּבֹּרִ֛ים hagGībōrīm,
“The Mighty Ones”
who were a group of 37 men who fought with King David?
To answer this question we must journey back to a confrontation recorded in:
1 Samuel 4:6
On hearing the noise of the shout, the Philistines asked, “What is this loud shouting in the camp of the Hebrews?” And when they realized that the ark of the LORD had entered the camp,
I Samuel 4:7: And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp and they said Woe unto us
And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp. And they said, Woe to us! for there has not been such a thing heretofore.
JPS Tanakh 1917
And the Philistines were afraid, for they said: ‘God is come into the camp.’ And they said: ‘Woe unto us! for there was not such a thing yesterday and the day before.
What the Philistines knew but the Hebrew Israelites didn’t realize was that the Hebrews had with them
a Shaleshim, שלשים
Sheloshim is a Hebrew term for thirty.
spelled Shin Lamed Shin Yod Mem
In Jewish law, a shaliaḥ,
in Hebrew: שָלִיחַ, [ʃaˈliaχ];
pl. שְלִיחִים ,
sheliḥim [ʃliˈχim] or sheliah,
literally emissary or
messenger is a legal agent.
Strong’s Hebrew: 7969.
שָׁלוֹשׁ
shalosh: a three, triad, third
Original Word: שָׁלוֹשׁ
Part of Speech: Noun
Transliteration: shalosh
Phonetic Spelling: shaw-loshe’
Definition: a three, triad, third
Or shalosh {shaw-loshe’};
masculine shlowshah {shel-o-shaw’};
or shloshah {shel-o-shaw’};
a primitive number; three;
occasionally (ordinal) THIRD,
or (multipl.) Thrice — + fork, + often (-times),
noun masculine and feminine a three, triad
Hebrew id.; שלשSI2; שלשן30MI2;
Strong’s Hebrew: 7970. שְׁלוֹשִׁים
sheloshim — thirty.
It is the word
shaleshim
that is used in extra-Biblical literature for
The Third Warrior
or
the Ultimate Warrior.
A Third or Ultimate Warrior
joined the ranks of the Israelites and the Philistines recognized when He did and they cried out in terror!
The Philistines were in fact saying that:
They were standing before the Third/Ultimate Warrior.
The use of the feminine pronoun, SHE, gives a picture of a mother fighting to protect her young.
This is a picture of an
ultimate warrior,
one who will fight to the death for someone or something,
and was the same in ancient times as it is today.
This is how the Philistines saw the Hebrew God; as a mother protectively wrapping her young in her arms and glaring at them and threatening that, if you touched her little ones you will have to deal with her, and the Philistines did not want to deal with “Her.”
This account is more than just the Philistines fear of the Israelites Hebrew God; it is about taking the physical ark they could see and touch in the natural to give them victory and not trusting in God and His spiritual power to intervene.
They were relying on
the power of an object,
instead of Who and Whom it represented.
Here it is interesting to note that it was the Philistines who recognized the difference; they said
GOD has come into the camp
not
the ark has come into our camp!!
The fact that the Philistines declared that God had come into the camp is profound because in verse 3, the children of Israel declared that “it”, referring to the ark, would save them.
And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp. And they said, {c} Woe unto us! for there hath not been such a thing heretofore.
(c) Before we fought against men, and now God has come to fight against us.
Israel was defeated before the Philistines.
Why?
Because sin, was in the camp, and it gave their enemies all the advantage they could desire.
The hand of God was there for them but, instead of submitting, they spoke in anger, as if they were not aware of any action they had done to provoke Him.
The foolishness of man perverts his way, and then his heart frets against the Lord, Proverbs 19:3, and finds fault with him.
They supposed that they could compel God to appear and help them, by bringing the ark into the camp.
Those who have gone back into a life of religious doctrine and men’s traditions, sometimes end up loving and preferring all the outward observances, thinking these things will save them.
The Israelites thought that by bringing the Ark, God’s throne, into the camp, it would bring heavens help to them.
Whatever we place our trust in, whether it’s our Heavenly Father or the world and the flesh, this is what is really on the throne of the heart. This is what we have faith in.
The people of Israel said
the ark would save them
and the enemy, the Philistines, their godless, pagan enemies, said
“God” would save Israel!
There are occasions when the people of the world have greater clarity and can see things that we just don’t see.
The Parable of the Unjust Steward in
Luke 16:1–13 is referring to this.
Israel represented a strong and notable faith, one that was feared and respected by the Philistines, yet as events unfolded, it was shown that they may have represented a true faith, but in action, they had no faith at all.
They did not walk the walk, or talk the talk, and were defeated. Their failing was a lack of trust in the Lord which was caused by a lack of knowledge of Who He is, usually as a result of having no intimate relationship with the One they said they represented.
That last phrase: “Woe to us for there has not been such a thing heretofore” is a very strange statement. Most translations will render this phrase in a similar fashion, however, in Hebrew, it says literally:
“Woe to us for she has not come as this yesterday three days.” and it doesn’t seem to make sense.
Possibly what we are reading is a combination of the thoughts and feelings of all the Philistines? There is no single translation to this phrase.
The word yesterday is really an adverb which means before or heretofore.
The word thing is also very interesting.
As already noted, it’s the word
shaleshim
used in extra-Biblical literature for the
third warrior or the ultimate warrior.
The Philistines are saying that
they stand before the ultimate warrior.
The next time we are challenged or confronted by a spiritual Philistine, as they stand there laughing at us, they will see something behind us that we may not really be paying attention to, and they will run in terror because our Heavenly Father is right behind us; just like the mother bear, ready to rip that Philistine to shreds if they try to touch a hair on our heads.
Each translation renders this phrase a little differently but with much the same meaning, this is because its a difficult passage to translate and there aren’t appropriate words in the English language suitable to insert in here.
However it could read:
nothing like this has happened before.
But something like that had happened before… because in the Hebrew it literally says:
“Woe to us for she has not come as this yesterday three days.”
Yesterday is an adverb and is correctly translated as
Heretofore …this three days.
Ancient Jewish literature provides insight into this phrase, as this is an ancient Semitic expression/ an idiom.
This Semitic idiom has its roots in the picture of picking up a chick/baby bird /equivalent to the first warrior; and then facing the wrath of the male/father bird /equivalent to the second warrior.
It is easy to deal with a baby bird, and the male father bird may show some increased resistance, but is not overwhelming. It is the reaction of the female mother bird that will be the problem, because she will fight to the death to protect her little chick/equivalent to the third warrior.
As already noted as an interesting point, that the Philistines used she, a feminine pronoun, to represent God and maybe the use of the feminine pronoun would be appropriate because this idiomatic expression pictures this ultimate warrior as a mother fighting to protect her young.
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