Lord

The umbrella collects a narrow political use of "lord" — the title borne by the rulers of the Philistine pentapolis. Set apart from the wider biblical vocabulary for divine and royal lordship, this entry tracks the term as it names a specific office among Israel's western neighbors. For divine and christological lordship, see God and Jesus.

The Five Lords of the Philistines

The Philistine confederacy is structured around five lords presiding over five cities. The conquest summary reckons their territory "from the Shihor, which is before Egypt, even to the border of Ekron northward, [which] is reckoned to the Canaanites; the five lords of the Philistines; the Gazites, and the Ashdodites, the Ashkelonites, the Gittites, and the Ekronites; also the Avvim" (Jos 13:3). The pentapolis appears again as the unconquered remnant left to test Israel: "[namely], the five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites who dwelt in mount Lebanon, from mount Baal-hermon to the entrance of Hamath" (Judg 3:3).

Council and Decision

The lords act as a council. When the captured ark of Yahweh brings affliction on Ashdod, the response is collective: "They sent therefore and gathered all the lords of the Philistines to them, and said, What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel? And they answered, Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried about to Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel [there]" (1Sam 5:8). The decision belongs to the assembled lords, not to a single king, and the ark moves at their direction.

Trespass-Offering by the Lords' Number

When the ark is finally returned, the diviners frame the restitution by the same fivefold structure. The trespass-offering is to be "Five golden tumors, and five golden mice, [according to] the number of the lords of the Philistines; for the same plague was on all of you⁺, and on your⁺ lords" (1Sam 6:4). The lords are both the political body that disposed of the ark and the body whose number sets the shape of the offering — the plague struck "your⁺ lords" and the restitution is calibrated to them.