Our Ancient Israelite Soldiers Fighting Standards

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

               Deborah (1150 BCE) wife of Lapidoth,  was a Judge   capable of rousing the Israelite tribes to revolt under Barak, son of Abinoam,  against the Canaanite king, Jabin of Hazor, and Sisera, his ally and commander (Judg.4). How she did it:  She told Barak that the glory of defeating Sisera would not go to him, but to a woman—a prophecy fulfilled when Jael killed Sisera. Jael (Judges 4): In the exact same story as Deborah, the defeated Canaanite general, Sisera, fled the battlefield and hid in the tent of a woman named Jael. While he was asleep, Jael killed him by driving a tent peg through his temple. Some translations or poetic     descriptions (like the Song of Deborah in Judges 5) figuratively describe her crushing or "smiting off" his head, but it was done with a hammer and a tent peg, not a sword. The Israelites had a song of victory, and claimed she was the originator of that.  Barak defeated the league, then Hazor was rebuilt by King Solomon.  Defeating Canaanite Oppression: She summoned the Israelite general Barak and directed a successful military campaign that liberated Israel from King Jabin and his commander Sisera after 20 years of subjugation

When Joshua had been their national leader and died, Israelis or Hebrews were left without a leader and every man did what was proper in his own eyes (Judges 17:6)

 Early Israelite combatants (soldiers) frequently utilized basic or repurposed agricultural implements (such as ox-goads or sickles) alongside slings and wooden staves due to limited access to metalworking.

Elders of the community acted, leading their own people.  Afterwards, the soldier-leader, priest or prophet assumed in  addition to his chief function, that of Judge.

Ancient Israelite fighting standards combined tribal militia obligations, evolving weaponry, and strict religious and hygienic codes of conduct. They followed the Mosaic Code laid down by Moses himself.  

When at war with your enemies; and feel lust,  and see  beautiful woman, and desire her, you my take her to yourself for a wife.  You shall bring her to the middle of your house, she shall shave her head and let her nails grow, she shall remove her clothing and sit in your house and she shall cry for her parents for one month.  After that you may come to her and live with her.  But if you do not desire her, then you shall send her on her own, but cannot sell her for money. You shall not enslave her because you have afflicted her.  (Deut.21) This law enabled the lustful soldier of age 20  to cool down and not sin.  This can also show us how our DNA became mixed with other neighboring peoples.  Wartime, as it still goes on from WWII.  

Localized Mobilization: A judge, people who were leaders before kings were invented, such as Deborah or Othniel, Ehud,  Joshua, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, ,  rarely commanded the entire nation. Instead, they summoned coalitions of nearby tribes. For example, Deborah and Barak called upon the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun to face the Canaanites, while Gideon rallied Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali against the Midianites.

Spiritual Purity: According to biblical tradition, armies were required to maintain ritual cleanliness and moral obedience, viewing victory as dependent on divine favor.

Rules of Engagement: Armies were instructed to offer terms of peace before a siege. During sieges of distant cities, enemy combatants were targeted, while non-combatants who surrendered or fled were generally spared under specific Deuteronomic guidelines.

 Soldiers maintained sanitary field camps by carrying a small spike or paddle to bury human waste. Laws also restricted the wanton destruction of food sources, such as fruit-bearing trees, during a siege. 

Early organization relied on general levies of able-bodied men aged 20 and older, structured by tribal affiliations and led by tribal or religious figures. 

Exemptions: Mosaic law provided exemptions from military service for practical and morale reasons, such as men who had recently built a house, planted a vineyard, or betrothed a wife, as well as the fearful.          

              King Saul the 1st king of the Israelites

                                    Jonathan taking out an arrow for his bow

Jonathan: Saul’s son who launched a surprise attack on a Philistine garrison at Geba and routed their forces at Michmash with his armor-bearer.

              David,  an armor-bearer to Saul at age 25, friend of Saul's son Jonathan, displayed his military prowess in war with the Philistines;  a one-man army against Goliath when just a kid, able to use a sling-shot to his advantage and hit the enemy in the head. He became the leader we still admire and sing about, our KING !.  

 During the United Monarchy (11th–10th centuries BCE), leaders like King Saul and King David shifted reliance from decentralized militias to more centralized, professional core units, royal guards, and institutionalized chariotry. 

     Tactical Evolution: Over time, access to iron expanded, and tactics evolved to incorporate coordinated infantry, archers, and eventually royal chariot divisions under centralized royal command. 

Technological Disadvantage: Neighboring groups like the Philistines held early monopolies on iron metallurgy, leaving Israelites reliant on bronze, stone, wood, and improvised weapons during the early periods.  They had to use their brains, instead.

Edited:  9:07am, 9/25/26 

Resource:

AI

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Times When Ancient Israel Ruled

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                   

        Ancient Israel and Judah originated as related Iron Age kingdoms in the Southern Levant. Following is a  period of united rule under 3 fantastic kings; Saul, David and Solomon. This history is like having gold  to have of people who lived over 3,000 years ago.  We have their history.  It's recorded right in the Tankah (Old Testament).  It's backed up by present day archaeology finds and clay tablets, many things;  even pictures on the walls of Egyptian tombs and Ur's excavations and so many other finds with writing. This is the bare bones of our ancestors literally  and the grounding of our Jewish religion.  We do not take this lightly.  

Life in 1000 BC was defined by the dawn of the Iron Age. Across a global population of roughly 50 million, most people were subsistence farmers. Society was increasingly dominated by powerful kings, religious temples, and expanding regional empires that were replacing earlier Bronze Age civilizations. 

 We know the best and the worst of these people who lived so long ago, and can see what we have inherited.  Kings are our best source.  They cannot live without everyone knowing their business in any era.                                          

A. 1st king Saul, son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin (  1047 BCE  to 1007 BCE  ) had son, Jonathan, David's  best friend. He fought Philistines and Ammonites.  Prophet Samuel selected him to be king for the people.  Then he fought Moabites, Arameans.  Saul eliminated witchcraft;  Samuel later chose David to be king, who was very popular with the people.  Philistines won temporarily, but his work on national unity established a strong and independent Israelite monarchy.  

B. (David, son of Jesse of the tribe of Judah,  born in Bethlehem (1000-970 BCE) , armor bearer to Saul at 25, wrote psalms, successful soldier against Philistines,  married Saul's daughter, Michal.  Saul was jealous of David would do harm to him, David hid out with Achish, King of Gath.  Battle of Mt. Gilboa took Saul and his 3 sons.  David returned to Hebron as King-declared himself. We still admire David and sing his praises.         

                  Solomon the Wise

 C. Solomon, son of David (961--920 BCE) , the region split around 931 BCE into the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judah. Had Temple built at expense of forced labor, his mistake causing division of Israel-Judah, weakening country. We know him for his wisdom, but he was in a panic mode to finish the Temple before his death and that was not wise for the people..    

1.  Jeroboam I, son of Solomon (933-912) (930-910) inherited Israel, divided from Judah. of Ephraim, did superintendent of forced labor job, but led the revolt against it; became king in Shechem, then in Transjordan, then in Tirzah.  Egyptians invaded 5 years later.  He set up shrines in Bethel and Dan.  worshipping golden calves.  He sinned.  

2. Nadab, son of Jerobom,  only ruled from 913-911 BCE  assassinated by fighting Philistines by rival Baasha. 

3. Baasha, son of Ahijh,   of the Tribe of Issachar  ruled from 908-885 BCE,  killed all of Jeroboam's family; made war on Asa of Judah in alliance with Ben-Hadad of Aram(Syria)  who changed sides so Baasha was defeated and ceded territory.  

4. Elah, son of Baasha,  only ruled from 866-885 BCE,  murdered by captain of chariots, Zimri when Israel fought Philistinian city Gibbethon.  

5. Zimri only ruled in the year 887 BCE for 7 days, General for Elah, Israel declared Omri king instead.  after 7 day reign, Zimri set his palace on fire and himself with it.

6. Omri ruled from 887-876 BCE, Elah's General, foraged Sidonian alliance ,subdued Moab, Assyrians called Israel  by his name; who besieged Tirah, capital, founder of a dynasty;

        Ahab and Jezebel     

7. Ahab, son  of Omri,  ruled from 876-853 BCE, wife was Jezebel, daughter of king of Sidon who introduced Baal worship, defeated Ben-Hadad of Damascus in battle;  killed fighting Damascus.  Palace excavated at Samaria.  

8. Ahaziah, son of Ahab, an Elijah said he was an idolator only ruled in 853 BCE

9. Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat,  ruled from 850-843 BCE, put brothers to death; wife was Athaliah who got him into Baal cult, then he spread it into Judah.  Edomites revolted, invasions of Philistines and Arabs came who plundered Jerusalem.  Died after long illness.  

10. Jehu ruled from 842-814.BCE, Commander-in-chief of Jehoram, then killed him and his family. Lost battles with Aram, paid tribute to Shalmaneser III of Assyria to get his protection, lost territory, his dynasty ruled for a century.     

11. Jehoahaz, son of Jehu,  ruled from 815-800 BCE, Aram reduced Israel  to a tributary restricting her army, controlled large tracts of land.  

12. Jehoash/Joash  ruled from 800-785 BCE, exploited weakness of Aram (Syria),captured Jerusalem, plundered the Temple, paid tribute to king of Assyria, reduced land to a vassaldom.    

13, Jeroboam II ruled from 785-745 BCE, did better, captured land from Joash, annexed Aramean towns, but was corrupt  with pursuit of pleasure and profit, so said prophets Hosea and Amos.

14. Zechariah, son of Jeroboam II,   died in 744 BCE, last king of house of Jehu, reigned 6 months, assassinated by Shallum.  

15. Shallum only ruled in 743 BCE, after 5 months he was killed by Menahem.  

16. Menahem ruled from 743-736 BCE, treated people brutally when they didn't open gates of Tiphsah, paid tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III invaded Syria and Israel.

17. Pekahiah ruled from 736-735 BCE, army wanted to fight against Assyria but he wouldn't go along with it so Pekah conspired against him.  

18. Pekah ruled from 735-730 BCE, from Giliad,?, Captain of army. Allied with Aram-Dammesek's Rezin, attacked Judah!  Murdered by Hoshea.                         

19. Hoshea ruled from 730-721(732-724) LAST RULER OF ISRAEL BCE. became king with Assyrian help; kingdom only around Mt. Ephraim.  Rebelled, put into prison by Shalmaneser who then captured Samaria.   Hoshea was the last monarch of the northern Kingdom of Israel. He did not have an Israelite successor . After the Assyrian Empire conquered the region and destroyed Samaria in 722 BCE, the territory fell under the direct rule of Assyrian kings like Shalmaneser V and subsequently Sargon II                    

This concluded 323 years of ruling as the country of Israel. Greeks and Romans will take over the land next. I was amazed at the failings of these kings after Solomon.  They just didn't get it right.  Wait till we look at Judah and see how that Tribe did.  

February 1953 with Wes, student at Reed and me, student at Lewis & Clark colleges in Portland, OR.  

   My son taking me hiking a few years ago in about 2021 evidently at Multnomah Falls.  I'm using a cane.  

Here the USA is enjoying their 250 years as a country, a milestone.  We can look back and see how far we've come in every which way.  So can the ancient Israelites, a line of 323 years of rule to celebrate before taken by the Assyrians.   Our line of Israel was 73 years longer than the USA timeline, back to 1953 when my son was born and here I am at age 92-almost by 2 months more.  Times have changed since then, I can verify.  

Our forefathers were obviously thinking of Israel's days of Saul, David and Solomon and what they had tried to teach to their people with the prophets at hand.  The struggles they went through were remembered and Israel II appeared on May 14, 1948 in Jerusalem once more with more understanding of their role in the world.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

                                                              

How Syria's First King Led to Having Presidents

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

Message was sent to Israel's king Ahab who was Israel's 7th king reign of (876-853 BCE) from Ben Hadad, 2nd king of Syria.  

 Ben Hadad:  This name appeared for three different kings of Aram-Dammasek mentioned in the bible.  The first reigned in about 908-886 BCE.  He was an ally of Baasha of Israel, king of Israel (908-885 BCE) who declared himself king after killing Nadab, son of Jeroboam I who was the Ephraimite who acted as a superintendent of forced labor for Solomon to build the Temple,  and killing all his family members. until bribed by Asa of Judah to attack the northern kingdom (I Kings 15:16-21). This was after King Solomon had  died and his son caused Israel to be divided into Israel and Judah. The 2nd Ben Hadad reigned in the middle of the 8th century BCE, and was son or grandson of the 1st Ben Hadad.  He declared war on Israel in 856 BCE but was defeated and captured, then freed by Ahab with whom he allied himself in the war against Shalmaneser III of Assyria (853 BCE).    Hazael of Aram (Syria) (842-808 BCE) was a powerful 9th-century BCE king of Aram-Damascus, known in the Bible for usurping the throne by murdering his predecessor, King Ben-Hadad II, and becoming a formidable enemy of Israel and Judah, expanding his empire and fulfilling prophecies of judgment against them, as detailed in the books of Kings and 2 Kings. In his victorious campaigns he reduced the kingdom of Israel to vassaldom and limited its armed forces.  Joash, king of Judah (836-797 BCE), subsequently saved Jerusalem from attack by paying tribute.   Archaeological evidence confirms his historical existence as a major regional power, but he eventually faced Assyrian dominance, according to Britannica and the Bible Archaeology Report. 

(ܒܪ ܚܕܕ) or Ben-Hadad III (Heb.) (בֶּן-הֲדַד) was king of Aram Damascus, the son and successor of Hazael. His succession is mentioned in 2 Kings (13:3, 13:24). He is thought to have ruled from 796 BCE to 792 BCE, although there are many conflicting opinions among Biblical archaeologists as to the length of his reign.

The title King of Syria appeared in the second century BCE in referring to the Seleucid kings who ruled the entirety of the region of Syria. It was a Macedonian Greek royal family, which ruled the Seleucid Empire based in West Asia during the Hellenistic period. It was founded by Seleucus I Nicator, a general and successor of Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia (356-323 BCE) after the division of the Macedonian Empire as a result of the Wars of the Successors (Diadochi).

At this time, Antiochus III the Great was the sixth ruler of the Seleucid Empire, reigning from 223 BCE to 187 BCE. He ruled over the region of Syria and large parts of the rest of West Asia towards the end of the 3rd century BCE. He settled Babylonian Jews in cities of Phrygia and Lydia and he then conquered Palestine (named by Romans). Through its history, the Seleucid dominion included large parts of the Near East, as well as of the Asian territory of the earlier Achaemenid Persian Empire. A major center of Hellenistic culture, it attracted a large number of immigrants from Greece who, encouraged by the Seleucids, formed a dominant political elite under the ruling dynasty.

It was also used to refer to Aramean kings in the Greek translations of the Old Testament, mainly indicating the kings of Aram-Damascus. Aramean kings ruled various city-states in ancient Syria, notably Aram-Damascus, with prominent rulers including Tabrimmon, Ben-Hadad I, Hadadezer (Ben-Hadad II), Hazael, Ben-Hadad III, and Rezin,** leading powerful kingdoms that often clashed with Israel and Assyria, as detailed in the Bible and Assyrian records from the 9th and 8th centuries BCE. 

Faysal I was the first king of Syria.  Faisal I bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi was a Hejazi statesman who served as the King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 until his death in 1933.  A member of the Hashemite family, he was a leader of the Great Arab Revolt during the First World War, and ruled as the unrecognized King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria from March to July 1920 when he was expelled by the French. In 1919 he met Chaim Weizmann and signed an agreement in Paris.  The Agreement: On January 3, 1919, at the Carlton Hotel in London—shortly before the main proceedings of the Paris Peace Conference began—Emir Faisal, representing the Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representing the Zionist Organization, signed the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement.  

                              Weizmann and Faisal

 In August 1921, in accordance with the decision made at the Cairo Conference, the British arranged for Faisal to become king of a new Kingdom of Iraq under British administration.

 During his reign, Faisal fostered unity between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims to encourage common loyalty and promote pan-Arabism in the goal of creating an Arab state that would include Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Fertile Crescent.  He did not live long enough to think or have PEACE with the new state of Israel, however, and I think he may have done it.  

Here lies Syria problems:  There wasn't a direct successor as King of Syria after Faisal I because the French quickly dismantled his short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria in 1920; instead, France established the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon, and Faisal later became King of Iraq, succeeded there by his son, Ghazi I, after his death in 1933. 

After 1933, Syria was ruled by a series of leaders during the end of the French Mandate, followed by a period of instability and military coups after independence in 1946, and finally by the Ba'ath Party and the Assad family from 1963 to 2024. 

• 1932–1936: Muhammad Ali al-Abid (First president under the constitution of the First Syrian Republic)
• 1936–1939: Hashim al-Atassi (National Bloc)
• 1939–1943: French Administration (Suspension of the constitution, including rule by Bahij al-Khatib and Taj al-Din al-Hasani)
• 1943–1949: Shukri al-Quwatli (First president of independent Syria, 1946)
• 1949: Husni al-Za'im (Staged the first military coup)
• 1949–1951: Hashim al-Atassi (Returned to power)
• 1951–1954: Adib Shishakli (Military dictator)
• 1954–1955: Hashim al-Atassi (Third term)
• 1955–1958: Shukri al-Quwatli (Second term)
• 1958–1961: United Arab Republic (Union with Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser)
• 1961–1963: Nazim al-Kudsi
• 1963–1966: Amin al-Hafiz (Ba'ath Party)
• 1966–1970: Nureddin al-Atassi (Ba'ath Party, with effective power held by Salah Jadid)
• 1971–2000: Hafez al-Assad (Seized power in 1970; solidified Ba'ath Party rule)
• 2000–2024: Bashar al-Assad (Son of Hafez, inherited power)
• December 2024–Present: Rebel/Transition Government (Following the collapse of the Assad regime, Ahmed al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammad al-Golani) emerged as a key figure in the interim) He was appointed by the terrorist groups as the #1 terrorist ruler.
• I suppose you have to seize power but holding it is another matter, especially if someone like Trump is around.  By the way, Trump used the old Democratic recipe, money and voting which must be validated.  Watch out for money donations like who and why and how much. Israel uses a very complicated Democratic method borrowed from England.     

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_monarchs

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203816776-18/faysal-muhannad-salhi