The latter prophetical books from Amos through Zechariah are rife with similar condemnations of the Philistines. This preponderance of negative pronouncements is explained by the events in the earlier prophetical books of Joshua through Kings, where the details of biblical history are found.

In large part due to the current excavations at Tel Miqne-Ekron thirty miles west of Jerusalem, a more complete picture of who these Philistines were is becoming available. The excavations at Tel Miqne-Ekron, along with the information from other recent excavations, not only can help us understand why these people were nearly always seen in a negative light in the Old Testament but also can provide us clearer insight into their cultural and physical world. Thus, we can better understand their social and religious life in contrast to the social and religious life of God’s chosen people, the Israelites. To understand this difference is to see what set the Israelites apart from the Philistines and see why the latter biblical prophets were so adamant in their pronouncements.

Prior to the excavations at Tel Miqne-Ekron, which began in 1981, material data on the Philistines were sparse at best. Of the five major Philistine cities mentioned in the Bible (Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza) only one, Ashdod, had been extensively excavated. The Ashdod dig has yielded excellent material finds from the Philistines, though its Philistine phase is only one of several strata being excavated. Gaza, part of the Gaza Strip, is so densely populated today that excavation there is all but impossible. Gath (Tell es-Safi) has not been excavated since late in the nineteenth century. Ashkelon is presently being excavated, but it has so many occupational strata besides the Philistine ones that it will be some time before a workable mass of data is available for interpretative work. (Occupational strata, in contrast to strata containing only soil and rocks from erosion, are permeated with the debris and artifacts of human activity.)

Tel Miqne-Ekron, a fifty-acre site, is one of the largest archaeological sites from the biblical era. It is today quickly becoming the richest field of all the biblical-era Philistine excavations. The soil there is filled with Philistine pottery. Stub your toe, and chances are you will uncover a piece of that pottery. What makes Tel Miqne-Ekron particularly exciting is that its occupational strata are primarily those of the Philistine period. The more than one hundred olive oil presses that the current excavation has already uncovered are all presses from the Philistines. No other site in the Near East has presented archaeologists with such a plethora of oil presses. Philistine Ekron in the seventh century b.c. must have been one of the largest centers of olive oil production in its day. But more importantly, in that same stratum, in conjunction with the oil presses and sometimes in the same room, four-horned "Israelite" altars have also been found.

Finding these two kinds of artifacts together, one totally secular and the other always thought of as religious in nature, sheds light on the ancient Near Eastern process of oil production. It also helps us understand Amos’s indictment of God’s people in chapter 6:4–7 where he refers to a pagan ritual and condemns the impious luxury of self-anointing and using "the finest oils."

Clearly, the Tel Miqne-Ekron excavations and others of the recent past have yielded the best insights to date into the world of the biblical Philistines. But even more compelling is the realization that these insights also give us a better understanding of the social and religious life of God’s people as presented to us in Amos and elsewhere in the Old Testament. The aim of this book is to acquaint the armchair archaeologist with the archaeological evidence to date on Israel’s neighbors, the Philistines, and to illustrate how this evidence illuminates the biblical world of Joshua and those who followed him.