I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 16-17.
When Samuel is led by God to anoint one of Jesse’s sons to succeed Saul as king over Israel, Samuel immediately concludes that Jesse’s eldest son, Eliab, must be the one God has chosen. Eliab was tall, handsome, and carried himself like a leader. By the way people judge things, Eliab had all of the traits of a leader. The passage does not say so explicitly, but every time I read this passage I feel like the writer tries to contrast David’s appearance to that of his older brother. Unlike his eldest brother, David was not the type that people just look at and think, “There’s a leader.”
The story of how David came to play his harp to soothe Saul’s moods is placed here even though the account of Saul’s reaction to David after he defeats Goliath tells us that it must have come sometime later. Its placement here suggests that the Book of 1 Samuel was oral history before it was written down. The rest of the book just flows from the description of Goliath to the end with no place where explaining why David played his harp for Saul fits in without disrupting that flow, but we need to know this in order to understand the context when Saul first tries to kill David.
Ordinarily I might stop at this point, but I took the day off today and the snow is preventing me from doing what I had planned, so I have time (reminder: I write these blogs the day before the date on them). I am glad I have the time because the story of David’s encounter with Goliath tells us a lot about David’s personality and character. When David’s father gave him supplies to take to his brothers with the army, David was hoping to see some excitement. However, the situation was kind of boring with the two armies camped facing each other and neither commander willing to move first. When Goliath came out to challenge the Israelites to send a champion to meet him, David saw his opportunity for excitement. He tried to egg one of the Israelite soldiers into going out to face Goliath. It might seem like David was being callous, trying to get someone to go out and get themselves killed for his entertainment. Certainly, his oldest brother Eliab saw it that way. The problem here was that the soldiers, including Eliab, had gotten locked into viewing Goliath’s challenge as soldiers. They looked at Goliath and thought of going out to fight him as soldiers, fighting him the way they would fight if the whole army went into battle. If they fought Goliath in that way, they did not stand a chance. If they fought Goliath that way, he would kill them before they could get close enough to hit him. David did not look at fighting Goliath that way.
When David could not goad any of the soldiers into challenging Goliath, he volunteered to do it himself. We quickly see that Saul viewed Goliath’s challenge the same way that his men did. Saul did not see how David could possibly defeat Goliath, but Goliath’s daily challenge was bad for the morale of his troops, so he accepted David’s offer. Saul dressed David in his armor and gave him his sword. However, David already knew his strategy and quickly realized that he could not execute it dressed like that. David took the weapons he knew, his sling and his shepherd’s staff, and went out to fight Goliath. Goliath could no more imagine how David could defeat him than could the soldiers of Saul’s army. David realized two things that no one else there did.
- Goliath was not just challenging the men of the Israelite army, he was also challenging God
- Goliath was big and strong, but also, slow and lumbering
David was confident and sure that God was on his side, but he was not foolhardy. David had seen something which no one else had noticed. Goliath was the perfect killing machine by the technology of war for his day. But, as is often the case with cutting edge military technology, he had taken no thought to defending against low-tech weapons. Against spears, javelins, or bows, there were really only a few places where you could land a decisive shot, and those would require a good deal of luck. Further, an opponent would be unlikely to be able to get off more than one shot. However, David was not heavily armored, so he could easily stay out of Goliath’s reach, and a sling did not require as long to deliver a shot as a bow. Further, unlike a bow, a sling could deliver a decisive shot to the forehead. David was not foolhardy. While he believed that God was on his side and would make the difference in the fight, David did not count an being successful with his first shot. He chose five stone for his sling, even though, in the event, he only needed one.