According to the opening verses of this Old Testament book, these dire words were spoken by Zephaniah, a prophet of the Lord during the reign of King Josiah. Things were going well in Philistia at the time. It was evidently a major money-maker for Assyria, besides being a buffer against and a staging area for Assyrian attacks on Egypt. However, Zephaniah's pronouncement of approaching doom was not aimed at the Philistines alone. Judah would have to face "the day of the Lord" (1:4-18) for its idolatry, and Assyria would also have to face the Lord's wrath (2:13-15).

Zephaniah 1:1 calls the prophet a fourth-generation descendant of King Hezekiah, the king who rebelled against Assyria. Assyria had been the ascending power of the Near East by the end of the eighth century B.C. This power was evident in our discussion of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) and his encounter with Hezekiah. Philistia had been subdued by Sennacherib and did not attempt to break away from Assyria during either the reigns of Esarhaddon (681-669) or of Ashurbanipal (668-627). Assyria's star kept rising through the reign of Esarhaddon and into the first half of Ashurbanipal's reign (Eph'al 1979, 281). One source refers to the first three-fourths of the seventh century as "Pax Assyriaca" (Miller and Hayes 1986, 365). However, to enforce this "pax," the two Assyrian kings made at least five campaigns against Egypt within an eleven-year period, using Philistia as the staging area for the attacks. Around the year 650 B.C., Babylon began to trouble Assyria to the extent that Assyrian forces needed to be on alert on their eastern border. Babylon was to be the power to bring about the destruction of Assyria and Philistia prophesied by Zephaniah.

There is an interesting text from Esarhaddon that names the Philistine kings of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gaza, as well as Manasseh, the king of Judah at this time, and seven additional kings from the seacoast. This particular text of Esarhaddon dates to 677 B.C. and describes how these kings, as well as twenty-two other vassal kings and kingdoms, were required to provide labor and supplies for a palace in Nineveh, the Assyrian capital city.

At this time there were four surviving Philistine city-states. The Bible does not give us the names of their kings, but we have the names of all four from the Assyrian record. According to one source (Tadmor 1966, 98), only Ekron's Ikausu has a name that is possibly Philistine, whereas the other kings have Canaanite/Semitic or Assyrian names. This is not an unusual revelation, since the Philistines were very adaptive. The 1990 season at Tel Miqne-Ekron uncovered a late-seventh-century ostracon with the name Ahimilk on it (Gitin 1991, 7, 15). That is a common Semitic name, so it is not presently known if it refers to the Ahimilki of Ashdod from the Assyrian records, to someone at Ekron, or to a ruler elsewhere. Ahimilk could also have been an assigned throne name of the kings and could, therefore, refer to kings over many decades.

Ten years after the 677 B.C. document of Esarhaddon, these four Philistine kings, Judah's Manasseh, and the other kings were called upon to help the new Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in one of his attacks against Egypt by land and sea (ANET, 294 for the text; Yadin 1963, 2:462 for the relief). Ashurbanipal attacked Egypt a second time in 663, and this attack was very successful, for he was able to sack Thebes, the capital in Upper (that is, southern) Egypt. This may have been the event the biblical prophet Nahum had in mind when he prophesied that Nineveh would fall as Thebes had fallen.

None of the Philistine kings nor King Manasseh are mentioned together again in any other Assyrian document yet recovered, but we know that Philistia was still a money-maker for Assyria during Ashurbanipal's reign, and we also know from legal documents found at Gezer (Tadmor 1966, 101) that Ashurbanipal still had some control over that city. Egypt was able during his reign to shake off Assyrian domination, and as Assyria retreated back toward the land of two rivers to fend off Babylon, Egypt moved into Philistia and the hearts and minds of Judah.

A new Egyptian king, Psamtik I, came to the throne in 664 B.C. He continued the attempt to liberate Egypt from Assyria and finally was successful. After that, he invaded Philistia with the aid of the Greek mercenaries mentioned earlier. Psamtik I was the Egyptian king who besieged Ashdod for twenty-nine years and conquered it about the time that the Assyrian Ashurbanipal died (Herodotus 2.156, Rieu 1954, 165). Egypt and Babylon were now to become the new power brokers in Palestine.

Keeping the activities of Psamtik I in mind, let us look at the actions of Judah's king, Manasseh (687-642 B.C.; 2 Kings 21 and 2 Chron. 33) during the same time frame. Whereas King Hezekiah rebelled against Assyria, his son Manasseh became Assyria's vassal. The account of this in 2 Chronicles links Assyria and Babylon without any accompanying explanation:

Assyria was fighting an exhausting war with Babylon even to the gates of Babylon itself (Reviv 1979, 200; Porten 1981, 48). The Assyrian records do not record that Manasseh was taken to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal there but it is logical to assume that Manasseh had displeased his lord king, who then summoned him to pay a visit and to swear allegiance once again. Manasseh did so, was able to return to Jerusalem, and then did what at first may seem strange:

Manasseh probably was unable to return to Jerusalem until he swore allegiance to the Assyrian king, but after he was released he then rejected the Assyrian and Canaanite gods and found the God of his fathers. He realized that the Assyrians needed him, as well as Philistia, because of the encroachment of the Egyptians. Manasseh might have felt after his appearance in Babylon that he could be more independent and had been given more latitude by Ashurbanipal. It was during Manasseh's reign that Egypt, with the aid of the Greek mercenaries, besieged Ashdod. Manasseh fortified Judah (2 Chron. 33:14), and if he did so as a vassal of Assyria, he was making Judah a factor that Egypt could not ignore in its conflicts with Assyria. A few years later the Egyptian king Psamtik I made an agreement with Assyria (Porten 1981, 48-49) that would later prove to be deadly to Manasseh's grandson Josiah (2 Kings 23:29-30).

The Egyptians controlled Gaza and Ashkelon (Jer. 47:1-7), had conquered Ashdod, and may also have taken over Ekron about the time of Ashurbanipal's death. Some of the artifacts uncovered at Ekron that date approximately to this time include a scarab of the twenty-sixth Egyptian dynasty, from Pharaoh Neco II, the slayer of the Judean king Josiah (2 Chron. 35:20-27). A beautiful Egyptian image of a goddess and a large fragment of an Egyptian sistrum (musical instrument) decorated with hieroglyphics have also been recovered.

In spite of Egypt's increased influence in Philistia, the Judean king Josiah had been able to gain at least a toehold on the Mediterranean coast at Mesad Hashavyahu, the site inhabited by the Greek "mercenaries" that was described earlier. The Egyptians, however, had made an alliance with the Assyrians, and Pharaoh Neco II came to their aid when the events of 2 Kings 23:29-30 took place. Assyria had already lost its capital, Nineveh, to the Babylonians three years earlier, but Pharaoh Neco was rushing north to help Assyria when King Josiah, on the side of the Babylonians, intercepted him.

Josiah died by Egyptian hands, but the Egyptians in turn were not successful in aiding Assyria; Babylon was the victor. Judah became the vassal of Egypt (2 Chron. 36:1-4; Bright 1981, 324-25) for a few years, as Philistia did for a short while. Babylon was the new rising star, and this empire would bring about the destruction of the Philistines, as Zephaniah had foretold.