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328 and invisible God." In fact the victory hymnal song did more than that: It referred to the celestial nature of Yahweh, as- serting that the victory was made possible because Yahweh, whose appearance "makes the Earth tremble, the heavens quake and the mountains melt," caused the "planets, in their orbits," to fight the enemy. Such a celestial aspect of Yahweh, as we shall see, was to become highly significant in the prophetic utterances of the great Prophets of the Bible. Chronologically the term Nabih and its holder come into play again in the Books of Samuel, the boy who grew to be a combination prophet-priest-judge of his people. We have already described the series of dream-encounters by which he had been called to Yahweh's embassy; "and the boy Sam- uel grew up and Yahweh was with him, and none of his words went unfulfilled; from Dan to Beersheba did the whole of Israel know that Samuel was confirmed as a Nabih of Yahweh. And Yahweh continued to appear in Shiloh, for it was in Shiloh that Yahweh revealed himself there to Samuel, when Yahweh hath spoken." Samuel's ministry coincided with the rise of a new and powerful enemy of Israel, the Philistines, who commanded the coastal plain of Canaan from five strongholds. The con- flict, or when-push-comes-to-shove relationship, had flared up earlier in the time of Samson, and in another incident when the Philistines even captured the Ark of the Covenant and brought it into the temple of their god Dagon (whose statue, the Bible relates, kept falling down before the Ark). It was thereafter that leaders of the twelve tribes assembled before Samuel and asked that he choose a king for them—a system of government "akin to that of all the nations." It was thus that Saul the son of Kish was anointed the first king of the Children of Israel. After a troubled reign, the monarchy passed to David, the son of Jesse, who had come into promi- nence after he slew the giant Goliath. And after he was anointed by Samuel, "the spirit of Yahweh was upon him, from that time on." Both Saul and David, the Bible states, "inquired of Yah- weh," seeking oracles to guide their actions by. After Samuel had died, Saul sought an oracle from Yahweh but received DIVINE ENCOUNTERS