Instruction For The Philistines

‘Tell it not in Gath, do not proclaim it in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice…’ King David’s lament at the death of Saul and the defeat of the Israelites at the hands of the Philistines offers us a biblical insight into the need to manage the distribution of information. David was worried at the impact of such information on the morale of his enemies and his main concern was to control or withhold it from them.

Yet, in our modern age, the aspect of Israel’s defeat which would have received the most attention would not have been the political ramifications against which David was trying to defend at the start of the Second Book of Samuel but rather his revelation that the love of Saul’s son Jonathan for him was ‘more than the love of women.’ Such a revelation would doubtless have been of more interest in Gath and Ashkelon, in a society which then, as now, probably had more interest in the affairs of celebrities than the affairs of the world.

This human fascination with scandal was cleverly exploited by the prophet Hosea, whose world was little different to that of King David, 300 years earlier. Hosea knew what would appeal to the daughters of the Philistines and, more specifically, the Israelites, whom he wished to remind of their relationship with their God. He embarked upon a disastrous relationship with ‘a wife of whoredom’ to symbolise his people’s infidelity and insincerity. Hosea’s relationship with Gomer was, for sure, a source of great fascination to his ancient Israelite audience; whether they saw beyond the spicy details of her abandonment of him and his commitment to her to comprehend the message he was trying to impart is less clear.

Both David and Hosea had understood the power of information; both sought to influence public opinion by management of that information. We can only guess how our modern information-soaked world would view their techniques: David would be attacked for seeking to censor or cover up the truth while Hosea would be dismissed as a sensation-seeking self-publicist. And we, would be fed a critique of their efforts: a ceaseless supply of entertainment masquerading as information which would make us the envy of the Philistines of Ashkelon and Gath.

But David and Hosea had particular motives for apparently wanting to control the flow of information to the public of their day. David was keen to minimise the devastating effect upon the people he would soon rule over of their defeat at the hands of the Philistines. And Hosea was determined to make a point about loyalty and commitment. What guides those who manage today’s distribution of information?

Those who follow David’s example of media control are guilty of holding us in the same contempt with which he regarded the daughters of the Philistines. We are not capable of forming our own opinions, we need to have them managed, manipulated. Someone else will decide what we need to know and will package world events for us in a way which will permit our responses to be managed. While it is unlikely in our supremely self-conscious world that David would have been able to keep Saul’s defeat and death a secret, he would doubtless have found plenty of ways to package the information in a way which would have suited his political purposes.

And it might seem that our world – and our media – is filled with latter-day publicity-seeking Hosea’s. But there is a difference between the celebrity marriage reported in the pages of the Hebrew Bible and those which appear so frequently on the front pages of tabloids. The exploits of our modern ’King’ David are presented to us as ‘information’ because they might entertain us. The disastrous relationship between Hosea and Gomer was, in all probability, received as ‘entertainment’, but its purpose was to inform, instruct and enlighten.

Clearly the responsibility for deriving instruction and enlightenment from the information we are given lies with us as recipients. But those who distribute that information also have a responsibility. We are not Philistines, merely in need of mindless entertainment, for whom the world is a spectacle from which we are detached. We need them to present that information to us as did Hosea, in a way which confronts and challenges us, which forces us to recognise that we are participants in this world, not merely spectators. And it is Hosea’s challenge, the ethical demands of the prophets, not David’s media-manipulation, the politics of power, which should guide today’s information managers.