Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash
The Threat of the Philistine Giant
The armies of Israel and the Philistines gathered for battle in the Valley of Elah. The Philistines held one mountain, while King Saul and the Israelites held the opposite mountain, leaving a deep valley between them.
Every morning and evening for forty days, a massive Philistine champion stepped forward from his camp to mock Israel. His name was Goliath of Gath. He stood over nine feet tall and wore a heavy bronze helmet with a coat of scale armor weighing over one hundred and twenty pounds. He carried a massive bronze javelin on his back, and the iron spearhead of his spear weighed fifteen pounds. A shield-bearer walked ahead of him.
Goliath stood and shouted across the valley to the Israelite ranks: “Choose a man and have him come down to me! If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us!”
Hearing this challenge, King Saul and all his soldiers were terrified. No one dared to step forward to fight the giant.
A Shepherd Boy Arrives
Meanwhile, in Bethlehem, an elderly man named Jesse had eight sons. His three oldest sons—Eliab, Abinadab, and Shammah—were serving in Saul’s army. His youngest son, David, was a young boy who stayed behind to tend his father’s sheep.
Jesse called David and said, “Take this basket of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread to your brothers at the camp. Take also these ten cheeses to their commander. See how your brothers are doing and bring back some assurance.”
David woke early the next morning, left the flock with a shepherd, and ran to the battle lines. Just as he reached the camp, the army was going out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry. David left his things with the keeper of supplies and ran to the front lines to greet his brothers.
As he was talking with them, Goliath stepped out from the Philistine lines and shouted his usual defiance. David heard it. When the Israelites saw the giant, they all fled in great fear. The soldiers whispered among themselves, “Have you seen this man? The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and exempt his family from taxes.”
David asked the men standing near him, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
His oldest brother, Eliab, heard David talking and burned with anger. “Why have you come down here?” Eliab demanded. “With whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.”
David replied, “Now what have I done? Can’t I even speak?” He turned to others to ask the same question, and his words were eventually reported to King Saul, who sent for him.
David Volunteers Before King Saul
David stood before King Saul and declared, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”
Saul looked at the young boy and shook his head. “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”
But David persisted, sharing his experience as a protector of his father’s flock. “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep,” David explained. “When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul was moved by the boy’s faith. “Go,” Saul said, “and the Lord be with you.”
Saul dressed David in his own tunic, placed a bronze helmet on his head, and fastened a coat of armor on him. David strapped on a sword over the armor and tried to walk, but he stumbled because he was not used to them.
“I cannot go in these,” David told Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So David took off the heavy royal armor.
The Confrontation in the Valley
David picked up his wooden shepherd’s staff. He walked down to a nearby stream, chose five smooth stones from the water, and put them into the pouch of his shepherd’s bag. With his leather sling ready in his hand, he began walking across the valley toward the giant Philistine.
Goliath walked out from his camp, his shield-bearer leading the way, and watched the figure approaching him. When he saw that David was just a healthy, ruddy boy, he looked down on him with deep contempt.
“Am I a dog,” Goliath bellowed, “that you come at me with sticks?” The giant cursed David by his gods. “Come here,” he yelled, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”
David did not flinch. He shouted back across the field: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied! This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel! All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”
The Fall of the Giant
As Goliath closed the distance to attack, David did not retreat. He ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him.
Reaching into his shepherd’s bag, David pulled out a single smooth stone. He placed it into the leather pouch of his sling, whirled it above his head, and released it.
The stone flew through the air and struck Goliath squarely in the forehead. The stone sank deep into his brow, and the massive giant collapsed face down onto the dirt.
David ran over and stood over the fallen champion. He looked down, but he had no sword of his own. David reached down, grabbed Goliath’s own massive sword, drew it from its sheath, and used it to cut off the giant’s head.
When the Philistines saw that their greatest hero was dead, panic seized their camp, and they turned and fled. The men of Israel and Judah stood up with a great shout, surged across the valley, and pursued the retreating Philistines all the way to the gates of Gath and Ekron. David took the head of Goliath back to Jerusalem, and he placed the giant’s weapons in his own tent.
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