David & Goliath - 1st Samuel 17:1-11

Now we come to the most famous story in the Old Testament, that of David and Goliath. This is a really long chapter and the lectures about it from TB are really good, so I will probably take some time with it. We’ve heard about the Philistines encroaching on Hebrew lands quite a bit before and they seem to be doing it again. The option that both the Philistines and the Hebrews seem to have settled on was that of both sides sending out a single fighter to battle to the death and whoever wins, that side is considered the victor and the other side has to admit defeat and surrender that portion of their lands to the winner. The Philistines’ ultimate fighter was a man named Goliath who was about 9 feet 9 inches tall. It makes sense that this guy was the one who they chose because he’s enormous, and clearly he’s an experienced fighter, he’s probably done this challenge thing several times before and won. This isn’t Goliath’s first rodeo. The scriptures are specific that his armor weighed about 150 pounds and his weapons were heavy as well, with the spear head, according to the IM, weighing 12-24 pounds. That’s huge for a spear head, but interesting when you compare how much a Squad Automatic Weapon weighs, about 17-22 pounds depending on the ammo load, and our boys humped that all over Iraq and Afghanistan, just interesting comparison. Goliath definitely would have been in the weapons squad today.

Obviously this story is very well known and over the years I’ve seen different things that talked about possible medical conditions that Goliath probably had that would have made him easier for David to defeat. A lot of these make sense because, kind of like Great Danes, large people, giants, have a specific set of health circumstances that can be problematic. Like all these stories you hear about Andre the Giant drinking like 20 pitchers of beer in one night and stuff like that. I’ve seen it hypothesized that Goliath also had vision problems, that he had musculoskeletal problems, that he limped and had poor movement. All this is possible, TB and the IM both don’t mention any physical problems that Goliath might have had, and they probably would have for context. The IM says, “It is unusual that anyone today is over seven feet tall, but it is commonly believed there were men in ancient times whose height far exceeded seven feet. There are references in the scriptures to giants in the earlier periods of history: in the time of Enoch, in the days of Noah, and in the time of the Israelites. Called Anakim (meaning ‘long0necked’ or ‘tall’ in Hebrew) by the Israelites, this race of giants seems to have been virtually destroyed in the conquest of Canaan under Joshua. In fact, it is recorded that none of the Anakim were left except in Gaza, Ashdod, and Gath, which was goliath’s hometown.” Over all, I think it’s *possible* that Goliath had medical conditions that made his defeat so much easier, but because of his manner of taunting and armor and weaponry, it seems more likely to me that he was a professional soldier who was very large and good at his job. And these medical conditions would only have mattered if the fight went hand to hand, which we all know that it didn’t. The stones throw distance would not have been impacted in any way by any medical conditions that Goliath might have had.

For 40 days, Goliath would go out in between the two armies and yell to the Israelite army the terms of their challenge, “choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me. If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.” That’s a lot of pressure because it’s not like they can just keep sending men one at a time to fight Goliath until they beat him, they have to choose the winner that first time or else surrender to the Philistines. The Israelites were terrified of Goliath and it’s understandable why. He’s a formidable opponent. TB notes, “After all while Goliath is a professional soldier in the professional and experienced Philistine army, he points out that they are just ‘slaves’ of king Saul. In other words, they aren’t trained warriors and they aren’t being paid for their services. They are Hebrew farmers, herdsmen, tradesmen, and merchants for the most part… the bargain was that only one soldier need lost his life and the army of the defeated soldier would voluntarily submit to the winning Champion.” The other part to this is that if no one stepped forward to fight Goliath, eventually the Philistines would attack the Israelite army and without God’s intervention, they would surely win and get their desired result anyway, so either way, the Philistines are in no rush to end this show down because they have the resources of a private, professional army and Israel does not. The longer that Israel took to send their own fighter out, the weaker their army became to fight off the inevitable attack by the Philistines.

There’s another reason why the Israelites were so afraid to fight Goliath, they thought that God had left them. TB says that anciently, like we’ve discussed before, it was believed that gods were territorial, meaning that they were only powerful in their own territory, and like human kingdoms, when one group of people conquered another group of people, the victors took their land, people, and possessions, and the gods of the victor were obviously more powerful than the gods of the loser, and so the victor’s gods also gained power over that territory as well. This matters because currently the Philistines were sitting in the land of Judah trying to engage with the Hebrews in battle. By the ancient standard this meant that the God of Israel had been defeated by the gods of the Philistines because if Israel’s God had been more powerful than the Philistines’ gods, then they wouldn’t be in the borders of their land at that moment. They still had not internalized that Israel’s God was different, they still believed that He was just like all the other gods that surrounded them.

So if the Israelites truly believed that their God was not stronger than the gods of the Philistines, then that would be just another reason why they wouldn’t be willing to risk their own lives to fight this giant. Not to mention all the shame and probable social ostracization that would come with being the family of the person who lost the fight to the opponent and put their people into bondage. That was probably a big factor as well. Lots of reasons why no one was stepping up to fight Goliath here.