1 Samuel 17:31

THE KING ACCEPTS DAVID'S OFFER TO FIGHT GOLIATH

"When the words which David spoke were heard, they repeated them before Saul; and he sent for him. And David said to Saul, "Let no man's heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine." And Saul said to David, "You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth." But David said to Saul, "Your servant used to keep sheep for his father, and when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and smote him and delivered it out of his mouth; and if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and killed him. Your servant has killed both lions and bears; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God." 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." And Saul said to David, "Go, and the Lord be with you." Then Saul clothed David with his armor; he put a helmet of bronze on his head, and clothed him with a coat of mail. And David girded his sword over his armor, and he tried in vain to go, for he was not used to them. Then David said to Saul, "I cannot go with these, for I am not used to them." And David put them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in his shepherd's bag, or wallet; his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistine."

"You are but a youth ... this man a man of war from his youth" (1 Samuel 17:33). The providence of God was surely operative in the news of David's willingness to fight Goliath reaching the king. The soldiers began talking about what David said; the news spread far and wide; some of them might possibly have been intrigued with the possibility of seeing `that young smart-aleck from the country' humiliated by his cowardice when confronted with the prospect of actual combat. However it happened, the news reached Saul, and Israel's champion in the person of the youthful David stood before him.

Notice that in Saul's reluctance to approve David as his champion, he did not mention David's physical stature, his strength or his height, but only his age. The notion that David was a "mere lad" or an "immature stripling" at this time is contradicted by the fact of his being able to put on the king's armor. Saul was head and shoulders above all the people; and this passage states that David also was a man of immense physical power and every whit as tall as the king himself. It is amazing to this writer how few commentators even notice this fact. "The fact that David tried on the armor of Saul indicates that he approximated the height of Saul."[17]

If David had worn the armor of Saul, the king could have claimed a vital share of the glory of the victory; but the essential common sense of David frustrated that maneuver on Saul's part.

Note that the armor of the king included a sword; but David elected to fight without sword, and, as we shall see, below, this was probably an essential element in his triumph.

"He took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the brook" (1 Samuel 17:40). All of the Bethlehemites were skillful in the use of the sling; and, "In the exercise of David's calling as a shepherd, he may have become as skillful in the use of it as those fellow-Benjamites of his, who could sling at a hair's breadth and not miss (Judges 2:16)."[18]

Regarding those five smooth stones which David put in his shepherd's bag, it is rather amazing that one writer spoke of those stones as the size of a man's fist. Such an idea could have come only from that remarkable statue of David which stands in front of the Uffizi Gallery in Italy and exhibits a rock the size of a man's fist in David's sling! That was only the artist's way of emphasizing the stone. No rock of that size could possibly have "sunk into the forehead of Goliath."