1 Samuel 17:1

THE GIANT GOLIATH CHALLENGES ISRAEL; DAVID KILLS GOLIATH; THE PHILISTINE OF GATH

"Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle; and they were gathered at Socoh, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Socoh and Azekah in Ephes-dammim. And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered, and encamped in the valley of Elah, and drew up in line of battle against the Philistines. And the Philistines stood on the mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side, with a valley between them. And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. And he had greaves of bronze upon his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. And the shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and his spear's head weighed five hundred shekels of iron; and his shield-bearer went before him. He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, "Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants; but if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us." And the Philistine said, "I defy the ranks of Israel this day; give me a man that we may fight together." When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid."

"Some twenty-seven years had passed since the defeat of the Philistines at Michmash";[1] and now that they had recovered their strength, they sought an opportunity to wipe out the disgrace of that disastrous rout and regain their ascendancy over Israel.

This paragraph relates chiefly the appearance of Goliath of Gath, giving a description of him, his arrogant challenge and the dismay and fear that fell upon all Israel as a result. The scene of this confrontation was, "The valley of Elah, one of the major passes from the Philistine plain up to the highlands of Judah."[2]

The description of the giant's armor stresses the weight of it. Scholarly estimates of what the weight was in our own terminology vary considerably; but John Willis gives what must be considered as an approximation of the actual weight.[3] The coat of mail alone weighed 125 pounds; and the shaft of his spear weighed 17 pounds. This takes no account of the weight of the bronze helmet, the bronze javelin, and the greaves (shin-guards) of brass. In all, his armour probably weighed in the neighborhood of 200 pounds!

His height, allowing about 18 inches for a cubit, would have been over nine feet. The cubit was a common measurement, usually figured as the distance between a man's elbow and the tip of his extended middle finger; the span was a handbreadth, measured in two different ways, one across the palm, and the other between the tips of the thumb and little finger with the hand spread out.

"He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel" (1 Samuel 17:8). This insulting procedure went on for forty days; and it is certain that the taunts and insults hurled at Israel varied from day to day. Young found an interesting variation of these in the Jewish Targum. "Goliath boasted that he was the one who killed Hophni and Phinehas and carried the ark away to the house of Dagon, and also that he had killed many Israelites."[4] That these boastful insults were most certainly falsehoods was no problem whatever for a Philistine.

There is a shrill chorus of allegations from unbelieving critics who find nothing in these chapters except, "unhistorical material," "interpolations," "variable accounts" and "conflicting sources," but this writer rejects that kind of commentary as absolutely worthless. All of the alleged difficulties here are described by Keil as "trivial."[5] John Willis also has shown in his remarkable analysis that there is nothing whatever in these chapters that is not capable of being harmonized with all that is written.

One of the so-called problems regards the fact that in 2 Samuel 21:19, the Bible states that "Elhanan killed Goliath." There were whole generations of giants in those days, and the fact of two (or half a dozen) of them being named "Goliath" is no more unlikely than the fact that one may find two or three "Smith's" on the obituary page in a big city daily newspaper. "That Goliath killed by Elhanan was Lahmi, the brother of the Goliath of Gath (1 Chronicles 20:4-8); four different giants are mentioned as being born to the giant of Gath (Deuteronomy 2:10,11,20,21, and Deuteronomy 3:11-13)."[6]

The importance of this explanation is seen in the fact that the false identification of the two "Goliath's" as the same person is, "One of the main arguments"[7] relied upon by critics who reject the passage as `unhistorical.'

"All Israel ... were dismayed and greatly afraid" (1 Samuel 17:11). "Here the Israelites were guilty of the same sin that has plagued God's people through the centuries ... They did not really trust in God's power. David's faith stands out in bold contrast to that cowardice"[8]

"1 Samuel 17:12-31 are omitted in the Vatican copy of the LXX,"[9] but the reason for this omission was solely due to the failure of translators to appreciate the proleptic nature of the preceding chapter. As Willis pointed out, "The events recorded here took place before David entered Saul's service as an armor-bearer, but after he had been brought to Saul's court to play the lyre, as indicated in 1 Samuel 17:15."[10]