Acts 7:40

40. Azotus The Ashdod of the Old Testament. It stands on the summit of a grassy hill, near the Mediterranean shore, about eighteen miles north of Gaza. It was one of the powerful cities of the old Philistines, made wealthy by being the medium of trade between Asia and Europe across the Mediterranean. This marine town worshipped the fish-god Dagon. It was one of the border towns in the great wars between Syria and Egypt, and hence, being strongly fortified, it was an important objective point. It stood a siege, the longest on record, against Psammetichus. The ancient war between these Philistine coast towns and Judah was in more modern times obliterated, first, by the incoming of Alexander the Great, and, finally, by the overwhelming power of the Romans. Azotus is described as now a small village, with few traces of ancient magnificence.

All the cities The rapid Philip, skirting along the shore, evangelized (such is the Greek word transferred to English) the cities in line; such as Jamnia, Joppa, Apollonia, Antipatris, etc. This beautiful maritime strip of plain, lying between the sea and the Israelite high lands, dotted with towns, and checkered with gardens and grain-fields, was, in the olden time, the land of the PHILISTINES. These were descendants from Ham (as the Israelites were from Shem) through Mizraim, and so related to the Egyptians. From these Philistines, the Greeks and Romans, unacquainted with Israel in the interior, called the whole country, even to the Jordan and Dead Sea, PALESTINA. The Philistines had possession when Israel departed from Egypt, and Israel marched by a roundabout circuit to the Promised Land to avoid fighting with them. (Exodus 13:17.) While the Gospel was limited to Israel, this region is unmentioned in the New Testament. When Christianity began to feel the full force of its Gentile mission, among its earliest incursions, as we here see, was this visit to this beautiful margin of the Mediterranean, followed by numerous others; “as if Christianity,” says Stanley, “already felt its European destiny.”

This Philistine strip extended northward to the Tyrian Ladder; and then commences the similar sea-shore strip of the ancient Canaanites. These were also sons of Ham, through his younger son, Canaan. But the Greeks and Romans called their country PHENICIA, or Palm land, from its plentiful growth of that picturesque tree. Their early cities were Tyre and Sidon. They were celebrated as the inventors of letters, as the boldest of navigators, the richest of manufacturers; but condemned for the grossness of their sensuality and the cruelty of their idolatry, (Moloch worship,) even to human sacrifices. With the Philistines, Israel was ever at war; with the more distant Canaanites or Phenicians, usually at peace.

Cesarea The Roman capital of Palestine. A few years before the birth of Christ, almost the entire coast of Palestine, without the indentations that form good harbours, had a point called Strato’s Tower for an insecure landing place. Herod the Great, who was a prince in architecture, a munificent builder of palaces and a founder of cities, resolved to supply the maritime want by placing a great capital at this point. He laid it out in long rectangular streets, lined with structures of white stone, adorned at intervals with stately palaces, and crowned at its summits with splendid temples and royal statues. Josephus pronounced it “a city of palaces!” But noblest of all the works was the harbour. Herod extended a long semicircular wall, like an arm, into the sea, open at the north, to embrace the commerce of the Mediterranean within its sheltering haven. This marine wall was composed of stone, fifty feet long, into a sea sixty feet deep, and the surface of the wall presented a level two hundred feet broad. In honour of his royal master, the Emperor Augustus Cesar, Herod named this city CESAREA. He made it his own royal residence, and the political capital of his realm. The successive Roman procurators of Judea, Pilate, Felix, and Festus, held their residence and courts in Cesarea, under the authority of the great Prefect of all Syria residing at Antioch. Here Paul was two years imprisoned: and here, some years hence, Philip, with his four prophetic daughters, is found by Paul, still true to the cause of Christ. Cesarea afterward became an episcopate, of which Eusebius, the father of Church History, was, in the fourth century, bishop. The Church, though founded by the humble deacon, became renowned in ages of persecution for its confessors and martyrs. It is now a desolation, inhabited by lizards and jackals.

Near the time that Paul was imprisoned at Cesarea, there occurred the tragical event which opened the fatal war which closed with Jerusalem’s destruction. It was a standing strife Was Cesarea a Jewish or a Greek city? “It is Jewish,” said the Jews, “for it was built by Judaic Herod.” “Those pagan temples,” replied the Greeks, “prove it Gentile.” At length the quarrel grew so fierce that the Greeks, aided by Felix, opened an indiscriminate massacre upon the twenty thousand Jews, and in a few hours not a single Jew remained to question the pure Gentilism of Cesarea.