The story of David and Goliath is one of the best known Bible stories in the English-speaking world. We love hearing about the underdog who, against all odds, conquered the intimidating, unconquerable giant. However, the main point that is made in the text is that the victory was possible because it was actually a spiritual battle. It wasn’t young David against a battle-hardened giant. It was an arrogant, profane giant against…the maker and ruler of the universe. David won, not because he was brave or skilled, not because of anything within himself, but because he aligned himself with the Lord, and allowed the Lord to use him as his instrument.

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1 SAMUEL #18. 1 SAMUEL 17:1-57

1 Samuel chapter 17 contains one of the most familiar incidents in the whole bible: the fight between David and Goliath. Now, most of us know the story outline pretty well: a young man (almost certainly a teenager) defeats a hardened warrior twice his size. Before we get to the good stuff, let’s deal with a few historical facts and questions. Goliath was about nine feet, six inches tall – almost three meters. He was huge. If you browse the internet, however, you might find out that other sources suggest he was considerably smaller. The Greek version of the Old Testament (called the Septuagint) gives Goliath’s height as something like 6 feet, maybe six feet five inches. One of the Dead Sea scrolls, and the historian Josephus also record Goliath as around six feet, but it is likely that both of those documents got their information originally from the Greek Old Testament, so it really boils down to just that source. Six foot five would be about a foot taller than most men in that era of history, a very large person by comparison for sure. However, I think the smaller size is unlikely, and I think it is the result of a translation or copying error when the Jews were creating the Greek Translation of the Old Testament (remember, the original language of the Old Testament was Hebrew).

You see, in addition to Goliath’s height, we are given the weight of some of his armaments, and the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) agrees with those measurements. But the weight of those things matches a nine foot man much better than one who is only six feet tall. His mail coat (a kind of body armor) weighed 125 pounds. This means that it was extremely large. That amount of weight would not be necessary on a man who was 6’5” – the mail should be smaller, and therefore weigh less. Even a man who was six foot five would find it difficult to run and use a sword and spear while carrying an extra 125 pounds. But that isn’t all of the extra weight he carried. The text says his spear was as thick as a weaver’s beam, and just the iron tip weighed about sixteen pounds. If you put 16 pounds at the end of a long pole, say four inches in diameter, even someone who is 6’5” would have a hard time using it effectively as a spear. Maybe a big strong guy that height could use it with two hands, but it would be unnecessarily difficult to use, much harder than one better matched to his size. Also, Goliath wore bronze leg protectors and carried a bronze javelin, and a sword, adding significantly to the weight he carried. By the way, I suspect that the sword was probably a normal-sized blade. It’s size is not described anywhere, and David, still a teenager, was able to use it to cut off Goliath’s head after the battle, and he used it again a few years later.

Anyway the point is, we’re probably talking close to two hundred pounds of gear. Not even a six foot five man would have had armor and weapons that weighed that much, especially not in those days, when those things were rare and expensive. So we’re going to stick with the nine foot height.

This is my friend, Barry. He says he is 6’3″, but I think he’s closer to 6’4″. The replica of Goliath behind him is 9 feet, to scale.

There is another puzzling thing about the text. After the whole thing is over, Saul asks his military commander a strange question about David: “Whose son is this youth?”

The question is strange because at the end of chapter sixteen, prior to the fight with Goliath, David was brought to court to play the lyre/harp and sing for Saul. The text even says that Saul loved him. And David’s father, Jesse, is mentioned by Saul’s courtiers in those same verses. This is one of those places where some people claim that the Bible contradicts itself. I want to point out to begin with that there is no theological or spiritual significance to this “contradiction” even if it exists. There is no doctrine or principle at stake here.

Some scholars speculate that chapter 16 and chapter 17 came from two different sources, and the source for chapter 17 was unaware of the account of how David came to court as a singer. In fact we do know that the author potentially had three different sources:

29 Now the acts of King David, from first to last, are written in the Chronicles of Samuel the seer, and in the Chronicles of Nathan the prophet, and in the Chronicles of Gad the seer, 30 with accounts of all his rule and his might and of the circumstances that came upon him and upon Israel and upon all the kingdoms of the countries. 1 Chronicles 29:29-30, CSB)

So it is possible that the end of chapter 16 came from one of these sources, and chapter 17 from another. However, whoever actually wrote down the book of Samuel put these two stories right next to each other, and he must surely have seen the apparent contradictions – but he made no attempt to explain it. Therefore it is safe to assume that whoever wrote the history that we call “1 Samuel” saw no necessary contradiction between these two chapters, and in fact, assumed that readers would be able to understand the apparent contradictions. And, as it turns out, there are several possible non-contradictory explanations.

Chapter sixteen records how Saul was afflicted with an evil spirit. The manifestation of this was apparently some kind of mental illness. In fact, continuing on through 1 Samuel, Saul exhibits some of the classic symptoms of paranoid-schizophrenia. So Saul’s question may have been partly a result of the confusion he experienced because of that affliction.

Notice also that verse 15 tells us that David was now going back and forth between his own home, where he tended the sheep, and the place where Saul’s army was encamped. So apparently, when the Philistines came out to fight, David’s status changed. Saul released David to go back and help out at home. Verse 16 tells us that Goliath issued his challenge every day for forty days. But when David arrived, it appeared that he had not yet heard Goliath’s challenge. This means he was gone from Saul for at least forty days. The last time Saul saw him might have been even longer than that, because apparently, when David came to visit the army, it was not to play music for Saul, but rather to bring supplies to his brothers. So it’s likely that Saul hadn’t seen David in several months, possibly longer. Since David was still a teenager, he had probably grown and changed a great deal in a short amount of time, as teenagers tend to do. That alone could account for Saul’s confusion.

On the other hand, it might not have been confusion at all. Saul promised a reward to the person who killed Goliath. He said the person who did it would be married to his daughter. He also said that the whole family of the victor would be exempt from taxes. In order to keep these promises, he needed to officially verify the identity of David’s father, since the father was the key figure in both the marriage arrangements and tax exemption. Remember, Saul does not ask, “who is that young man?” – he asks, “who is his father?”

It is true that in chapter sixteen, someone mentioned that David was the son of Jesse, but that may have been the only time it was mentioned to Saul, and he might not have paid a lot of attention at the time. I know I easily forget the names of people I have never met, and who are mentioned to me only once. So it is possible that Saul knows the victor is David, but he can’t remember David’s father’s name.

It’s also possible that Saul was confused, because he did not think of David as a warrior, but rather as a minstrel. So when he saw him accomplish a great feat of war, he thinks, “Is that really David? Can’t be. It must be one of the soldiers.” So he asked Abner, who as the commander of the army, would know who the soldier is.

All this is to point out once more that there is no necessary contradiction between this and chapter sixteen. There are several reasonable explanations, and obviously, the person who put together the book of Samuel expected that his readers would not read it as a contradiction. Once again, I say that even if there was a contradiction it wouldn’t mean anything, anyway. It would have no significance to any part of the Christian faith.

All right, now let’s turn to the story. The tribes of Israel are faced with a giant. Remember, though, that Israel had a very large man on their side also – King Saul was likely around six foot five, since he was described as roughly a head and shoulders taller than any other person in Israel. Certainly, that was smaller than Goliath, but he was bigger than anyone else in the Israeli army. He should have been the natural choice to face Goliath. But Saul was afraid just like everyone else. By this point, he had already rejected his role as God’s chosen instrument.

Everyone else looked at the external situation. Here was a man almost twice as big as anyone else. He was well armored, with potent modern weapons that others would have a hard time even lifting. It was like fighting an intelligent, well armored grizzly bear. To send a boy with a sling against a giant with armor was crazy. The odds were completely in favor of the giant.

But David saw it primarily as a spiritual battle. What it looked like on the outside made no difference to him. In David’s eyes, Goliath wasn’t challenging him, or Israel – he was challenging God. When he first saw the situation, he said:

For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” (1 Samuel 17:26, ESV)

You can almost picture the men around David staring at him, and then at each other, and then thinking: “Is David blind? Does he not see the nine foot guy with the giant spear?”

I already mentioned Goliath’s armor. Leaving aside the difference in the size of the armor, only two people in the Israeli army had equipment like it: Saul and Jonathan. The armor and weaponry was iron age technology. The rest of the Israelis were using bronze age weapons. The difference, and the advantage it gave the Philistines was a little bit like the difference between muskets and modern semi-automatic rifles. Both can kill you, in roughly the same way, but the more modern weapon is far more deadly.

For this reason, once David volunteered to fight the Giant, Saul tried to get him to wear his own armor, to even out the advantage. David ultimately rejected it for three reasons. First, it didn’t fit him. Saul was a much bigger man. Second, it was not David’s style. David had fought for his life before against lions and bears, and he didn’t use that sort of thing. God used him differently. Third, David did not believe he was at a disadvantage. He rejected the armor for much the same reason as he was willing to fight in the first place: the weaponry didn’t matter. What mattered is that God was on his side. He said to Saul:

36 Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.” 37 And David said, “The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” (1 Samuel 17:36-37, ESV, italic formatting added for emphasis)

 So, in David’s eyes, it wasn’t a boy against a giant. It was an arrogant giant…against the Creator of the Universe. All David had to do was give God a chance to strike Goliath down. It didn’t matter what weapons or armor he had. Using the sling wasn’t a clever surprise tactic. It was just the tool that was most handy and familiar to David. The real weapon, in David’s eyes, was the power of God.

Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. (1Sam 17:45, ESV)

The outcome, of course, made history. David killed Goliath with a stone slung into the skull. He completed the job for certain by cutting off the giant’s head with his own sword. David predicts what will happen, but most importantly, why:

And this whole assembly will know that it is not by sword or by spear that the LORD saves, for the battle is the LORD’s. He will hand you over to us.” (1Sam 17:47, HCSB)

David actually ran toward the giant. I don’t think he was stupid, and though he was brave, it wasn’t primarily bravery. He had the confident faith that the battle was the Lord’s. The Lord used what David had, which was a sling. In his encounters with the bear and lion, most likely he stunned the animal with a stone from his sling, and then finished them off with a club. He felt that the Lord protected him then, and sees no reason not to expect the same protection now. So he whipped a stone at Goliath, and scored a shot right on his forehead, where the helmet did not protect him. He took Goliath’s own sword and made sure he was dead by decapitating him. This created a tremendous uproar among the armies that were witnessing it. The Philistines were filled with dismay, and then terror. The Israelites finally realized that David was right, and the Lord was fighting for them, so they rushed on the disheartened Philistines, slaughtering them, and chasing them all the way to the gates of the nearest Philistine walled city.

I invite you to pause for a moment to consider what the Lord might say to you through this. What are you facing in your life that seems like a giant threat? Is there any place where you feel that the odds are stacked against you doing what God wants you to do? I encourage you to see God’s battles from God’s perspective. Now, sometimes we are fighting battles that are not God’s – that is a whole separate issue. But if we are walking in faith, letting Jesus live his life through us, the battles we encounter in the course of doing what He wants to do in us and through us – those are battles that He will fight. We don’t need any special equipment. All we need to do is grab whatever is most handy and comfortable, and let the Lord do the fighting.

There is a related truth here. God will use you – the unique person that he has made you to be. Others pressed David to take Saul’s armor, to fight the way everyone thought he should fight. David politely but firmly declined. He was just fine  being who God made him to be. So when it comes time to rise to the challenge, I am not saying you should despise advice. But it is OK to approach your challenges as the person that God made you to be. You don’t have to pray in the fashion of “all good prayer warriors.” You don’t have to look or sound exactly like other good Christians as you face your giants. But do listen to the Lord, and do what he tells you.

Do you realize also, like David did, that our battle is not in the arena of flesh and blood, but is actually a spiritual conflict? David actually had to fight a flesh and blood conflict. Even so, he recognized that it was primarily about what was happening spiritually. So, we have to face trials and difficulties of various kinds – and yet it is good to remember the spiritual reality behind it all. Maybe we have to pay bills and it is hard to make ends meet. That is flesh and blood. But there is a battle that goes along with that – the battle of discouragement and hopelessness and the challenge to trust God as provider. Yes, we must deal with the flesh and blood, but the battle is spiritual.

Maybe you have to deal with someone in your life who is difficult, or troublesome or who causes you anguish. Obviously, you encounter that in flesh and blood situations. But the real battle is to trust God, to continually allow God’s power to forgive that person, to recognize that the devil wants you to hold on to rage and bitterness.

This isn’t a blank check to say: “God will do whatever I want him to, as long as I do it in his name.” But it is an invitation to see the spiritual reality behind our physical life, and to trust God to do good things in us and through us.

So where are you intimidated right now? What “giant” are you facing? A relationship? Finances? Health? Career? Does it look like all the advantages are against you? Hear the Lord’s invitation to trust him right now. Although it wasn’t written until a thousand years after David, he knew the truth that is in Romans chapter 8:

28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. 29 For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.
31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. (Romans 8:28-34, NLT)

Trust in the Lord right now. Let him speak to you.