David & Goliath 2 - 1st Samuel 17:12-37

The Israelites are being constantly taunted by Goliath and time is running out for them because the Philistines have a professional army and have the resources to sit around for weeks or months but the Israelites do not. They are citizen soldiers, as TB pointed out they aren’t being paid to be there, and they don’t have the infrastructure in place to support a sustained engagement or for their men to be away from their work in the fields. Here we circle back to David. David’s three oldest brothers are in the army at this point and with the rest of the Israelite soldiers. It’s been at least 6 weeks and David’s father Jesse is getting concerned about their well-being and tells David to take a bunch of goods to his brothers out on the battle encampment. Just a couple of notes here, first is that it notes that David is the youngest of his father’s sons, which I’m pretty sure that we learned in the last chapter. Second note is that verse 15 says that “David went and returned from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Beth-lehem.” We know from the last chapter that David has been playing music to sooth Saul when he was being vexed by this “evil spirit.” But apparently this wasn’t a full time gig because David left Saul and came back to feed his father’s sheep, so there was some leeway when it came to where David went and when. This is also an important note for the end of the chapter as well, this acknowledgment that David was working for Saul prior to this engagement with Goliath.

Jesse sends David to take his brothers a whole bunch of corn, ten loaves of bread, and ten cheeses. I think that this is also an indicator that a lot of the support for the army was coming from families back home which would have been a huge strain and also would have lost Saul a lot of support for the war effort. David leaves his sheep with a “keeper” and goes right to the battlefield like his father told him to. David runs up to “salute” his brothers and then he hears Goliath come out with his challenge, and not only does he see Goliath offer the challenge, but he sees his countrymen, these brave soldiers, as they “fled from him, and were sore afraid.” One of the soldiers tells David that apparently Saul has offered that whoever kills this man, “the king will enrich him with great riches, and will give him his daughter, and make his father’s house free in Israel.” TB notes that to be “free in Israel” means that that household wouldn’t have to pay taxes or serve in the military ever again. David is surprised that no one has taken Saul up on his offer, and what’s interesting is that David is encouraged by the monetary promises but the main motivation is “who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

In all actuality, Saul, as God’s chosen king over Israel should have gone out to face Goliath himself and beat him because he should have recognized that God would have delivered Goliath and all the Philistines into his hands. But Saul didn’t have the faith sufficient to face Goliath in the name of his God. The only reason that David was able to defeat Goliath was because he had the faith necessary that God would deliver him and that faith wasn’t unique to David, well I mean it was in the sense that no other Israelite had it at the time. But it wasn’t unique to David in that no other Israelite COULD have had it. Anyone could have had that type of faith to defeat Goliath, it’s just that the Israelites were so spiritual corrupted that they didn’t have it. Look at what it took for David to be prepared to face Goliath: he had to have the Spirit of God poured out on him and quite sometime before hand in order to gain the faith necessary to take on that task. I always wonder about why and how the Spirit was among the people on earth before the crucifixion, but apparently David had the Spirit in an abnormally abundant manner that the others did not. David did not know that he was anointed to be king yet, he didn’t even know that he had the Spirit, but yet he did have it and he did need it, otherwise he too would have looked at Goliath and said “no thanks.”

David wonders this out loud to the soldier he was talking to and his oldest brothers, like oldest brothers do I guess, got mad at him and basically said, “why are you here and not tending the sheep like you’re supposed to. You are just here to watch the battle and not fight it, it’s different when you fight it.” I don’t think that David’s oldest brother has ever fought in a battle yet either, so I’m not sure what he’s talking about, but maybe he has I guess Saul had fought a few battles since he was crowned king, so maybe this brother fought, but either way he’s irritated with David. David keeps verifying with people that Saul did indeed make that deal for the reward for the man who defeats Goliath and all the information that he’s getting back is that yes indeed that is the deal. Saul hears that David is asking around about fighting Goliath and so he sends for him.

David tells Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him; they servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” Saul replies that David is a young kid and Goliath is “a man of war from his youth.” Goliath has been a trained, professional soldier since childhood, this is going to be a major problem. David responds to Saul, “thy servant kept his father’s sheep and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock: And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him. Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of the, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God. David said moreover, The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” I included all that in there because I think one of the important facets to this whole story is that David had a whole slew of personal experiences to draw on when it came to trusting God to deliver him. David was prepared in the wilderness while keeping the sheep, he fought all types of animals that should have easily killed him. Importantly, David developed skills to kill a large predator despite his small size. Surely he learned to become an expert slinger while protecting the sheep, and that’s where he learned to recognize God’s hand in his life protecting him. David was alone in these fields probably, he was isolated, he probably felt very less than because he was relegated there as the youngest. He probably felt unimportant, he probably felt invisible, unappreciated, but it was during that time that God developed him into the man he needed to be for what was coming. I think that this is an important stage that many people are in and they don’t recognize it, I think that I certainly am. Isolated, alone, vulnerable, broken, this is where God can teach us the most important lessons that we need for the future. We not only learn to see God’s hand in our lives, but we also develop skills that we need for later. I don’t think enough emphasis is put on to David’s preparatory time with the sheep. There also must have been some preparatory aspect to David being Saul’s soothing musician before hand as well. I always thought that David met Saul here at this moment, but that established relationship and proximity must have played a part in this whole scenario playing out the way that it did.

Saul hears David profess his faith that God will deliver him, and responds, “Go, and the Lord be with thee.” Why did Saul agree to this? Probably for several reasons. It’s possible that Saul remembers God intervention in his own battle victories against the Ammonites and others and has a twinge of faith that God will deliver them here because remember that David was not only trusting God to deliver himself from Goliath but he’s also trusting God to deliver all of Israel from Philistine bondage if he loses. Perhaps there’s a part of Saul that remembers and has a small amount of faith here. TB says, “There in the language of youthful naivety was a kind of reminder of another time. A voice of strength was coming from that shepherd who stood before the King of Israel; a voice that was based on simple faith and not the bitter pragmatism that has come with the disappointments of life and form the sadness of a failed leadership and from being abandoned by the God of Israel. Hope; it was hope that Saul was hearing (and feeling) and he had not experienced that emotion in a very long time.”

A second reason is because Saul was running short on options. TB also explains, “Saul was caught in a vise. Things were not going well. At his calling the militia had been mustered to this spot to face the Philistines, yet not an arrow had been shot in anger in the month and a half or more since the men had arrived. It was a deadlock. And while the professional and well-supplied Philistine army could be forced to remain there indefinitely, Saul’s militia could not. Soon the men would grow weary of this and leave. The Hebrews had herds to maintain, fields and crops to attend. They had trades to ply and grapevines to prune. To simply sin there (day without end) in the hills above the valley plain and listen to Goliath yelling insults at them had its limits. Saul knew this.” Eventually at some point, the Philistines would attack, whether that was after the army left, Saul didn’t know, but whether they fought then or later, either way the odds were not on the side of the Hebrews and Saul knew that too. The chances of the Philistines winning either a challenge or an actual battle, were high, meaning that the end result of bondage to the Philistines was almost inevitable, so maybe Saul figured, may as well let David try.