Ezekiel 25:15

"Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Because the Philistines have dealt by revenge, and have taken vengeance with despite of soul to destroy with perpetual enmity; therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will stretch out my hand upon the Philistine, and I will cut off the Cherothites, and destroy the remnant of the sea coast. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with wrathful rebukes; and they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them."

PROPHECY AGAINST THE PHILISTINES

It is amazing that these ancient enemies of Israel finally gave their name to the Holy Land itself, Palestine!

"I will cut off the Cherothites ..." (Ezekiel 25:16). These are supposed to be the Cretans, ancient ancestors of the Philistines.

The teaching of the series of oracles here is that God will judge and destroy wicked mankind, a sentence that has been hanging over the head of the human race, like the sword of Damocles, since the sentence in Eden, "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." The tragic judgments prophesied here were far earlier than the Final Judgment, of course, but they were necessitated by the situation in which the pagan nations were deceived into believing that Jehovah was not God of all gods. It is repeated throughout these passages that the reason for God's actions was primarily this: "And thou shalt know that I am Jehovah, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them."