מעמדה של גת בקינת מיכה על ערי יהודה

This paper, presented in honor of Professor S. Vargon, deals with the inclusion of Gath in Micah's lament for the destroyed towns of Judah in Micah 1:10, in a way that seems to evoke David's lament for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Sam. 1:20. The paper deals with the literary composition of the oracle, and assumes that it was composed in connection with Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in 701 BCE. The eleven towns listed with Jerusalem in verses 10y15 all seem to be in the Shephelah of Judah, which makes the inclusion of Gath, presumably the well-known Philistine city, surprising. After reviewing the solutions suggested by various scholars, we turn to the archaeological evidence available from the ongoing excavations at Tell es-Safi, identified as the Philistine Gath. Excavations have shown that, during the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, Gath was one of the largest cities in the Land of Israel, certainly the most important of the Philistine cities. However, the city was destroyed at the end of the ninth century, and excavations have revealed a massive siege moat from that time. The excavator has identified this as evidence that the city was conquered by Hazael, king of Aram, as mentioned in 2 Kings 12:18, and referred to in Amos 6:2. Most biblical listings of the Philistine cities after this time no longer mention Gath, and archaeological evidence, including several “lmlk” stamp impressions found at the site, seems to show that Gath was taken over by the kings of Judah during the eighth century. This is also indicated by 2 Chron. 26:6. In 712 BCE, a town called Gath was captured by Sargon II of Assyria together with Ashdod, but not all scholars agree on the identity of this town. The well-known “Azekah Inscription” also mentions a “royal city of the Philistines that Hezekiah king of Judah had fortified” as being conquered by an Assyrian king; we accept Na'aman's attribution of this inscription to Sennacherib, and his original identification of the city as Gath. This, together with the “lmlk” stamp impressions, and the fact that settlement at the site seems to have ended at the end of the eighth century, all serve to show that eighth-century Gath, the city conquered and destroyed by Sennacherib, was indeed controlled by the kingdom of Judah. In our view, it is possible that Micah actually intended Gath to be included in his lament, although Vargon's suggestion — that the order not to tell or to weep in Gath was aimed at the remaining Philistine population, now under Judahite rule — seems to better fit the text