David & Goliath 3 - 1st Samuel 17:38-47

I hurt my knee at the gym last night and work was busy so my time here is limited and I’m in some pain so I’m not sure how this is going to go which is a bummer because I wanted to spend some time on this part of the story. Saul has agreed to let David be the one to fight Goliath which is probably has a lot of reservations about, David is small, young, and inexperienced, he probably sees this as a suicide mission for David and inevitable defeat for Israel. But he was kind of looking at that right now anyway because no one else would fight him and time was ticking away before the army abandoned him and the Philistines attacked anyway, so it was probably a lose/lose situation here. Thinking he was going to at least give David SOME advantage, Saul puts his own armor on David, because as TB says Saul surely wasn’t using it. The armor is too big and unfamiliar to David so he takes it off, picks up his staff “and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put the in a shepherd’s bad which he had, even in a scrip; and his sling was in his hand: and he drew near to the Philistine.” One thing I saw somewhere, and I don’t know how true this is, but David drew five stones out of the brook because Goliath had four brothers so David was preparing to kill Goliath with the sling, then have each of his four brothers come to get revenge and he was going to kill them too. Again, I only saw this in one place one time, so I’m sure it’s not true but it was an interesting concept, plus that wasn’t the terms of the agreement “come fight and kill me and my four brothers.”

Assuming that wasn’t true about the brothers, David taking 5 stones was probably him preparing to sling multiple stones at Goliath depending on what hit where. He wasn’t being presumptuous that it was going to be a one shot one kill type of situation so he was prepared. It’s interesting too that it doesn’t say that he took a sword or knife or anything maybe because he knew he wasn’t skilled enough in those weapons to fight and win against Goliath hand to hand. He knew that God was either going to make the weapons that he had be good enough to get the job done or he was going to lose. I also think it’s interesting that it seems like David already knew how he was going to handle this, what he was good at and what he wasn’t. He was good at the sling because he had spent so much time in the field with the sheep using it to defend them. Imagine how good David would have been with the sling if he hadn’t had those experiences teaching him how to use it. This begs the question, if David hadn’t had the experiences to get good at the sling, could God have used some other weapon to defeat Goliath? Of course, honestly God could have just struck him down right there or swept him away with a flood or some other supernatural means to defeat Goliath at any point in this narrative, so why didn’t He?

My thoughts on this are that the people of Israel didn’t have the faith required to fight the Philistines using God’s means and power, that’s obvious by the fact that they were just standing in the field waiting to be defeated. So God sending some supernatural means to defeat the Philistines wouldn’t have made the people repent or be obedient or destroy their other idol worship because they could have referenced any of God’s other victories as proof that He could have done it and they could have leaned into that. I guess another way to say that would be that God providing a supernatural victory at that moment wouldn’t have ignited repentance in the people of Israel because if it would have then God would have done it. I saw another thing today that said “God used Goliath to give David the crown,” so there was a whole process that needed to happen because David could be the legitimately accepted king of Israel, and the miraculous defeat of Goliath was a part of that. This scenario had the maximum effectiveness for the repentance of the people of Israel and I guess that that’s how it works in all of our lives, whatever happens happens to effect the maximum amount of repentance in each and every individual person but the plans are complex because human psychology is complex and I think there are some other factors involved in the plan that have to do with the efficacy of the atonement and what that requires, if that makes sense. The other question was why did God have to spend so much time preparing David to be an expert slinger if God could have had David be successful with literally any substance available? I think that it had to do with confidence, building the confidence, not just in himself that he can do hard things, but building confidence in his relationship with God that God will deliver him. When Saul says David is too young David answers that he’s slew lions and bears while tending the sheep, and even though I he says later that God will deliver him, David’s initial “yes I can do it” is a reference to the times when God also delivered him out of the hands of the lion bear. God arranged those events as well and delivered David perhaps to build David’s confidence so that when the time came, David could say “I’ve defeated worse than this.” If he hadn’t have had those experiences, he probably wouldn’t have thought “I’ve done worse for less” and let the fear talk too.

It's a pattern that I’ve recently been noticing, and that I’ve seen some videos about, about God building you confidence in Him so that when the time comes, you can say just like David, “I’ve done worse than this, God will deliver me.” I had an experience a couple of months ago where I was able to do something at the gym under my own power and strength and I left feeling very empowered and a thought came to me that basically said something like, “how are you going to be able to do what I need you to do, if you don’t think that you can do it?” It was a very interesting thought process and I’ve had a couple other thoughts like that, but basically asking myself, “what has happened in my life that I can point to and say with confidence that God will deliver me?” And it’s been an interesting thought experiment of not just ways that He’s provided but also ways that He’s prepared me, ways that he’s supported me through terrible trials that I had to go through. It’s been very interesting.

David walks down to the designated fighting spot and Goliath is not amused. It makes sense, Goliath is a giant warrior who had probably fought and defeated so many mighty men, he has a reputation to uphold and honestly, fighting someone so weak and small would have probably been seen as dishonorable to Goliath. I’ve found that most warrior types of men want to fairly fight someone their own size. But Goliath says “fine if this is who you sent” he calls out his insults and general threats, “I’ll feed your body to the animals” etc. David is not intimidated at all and responds quite boldly, ‘You comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hands; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee… that all the earth my know that there is a God in Israel. And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle if the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hands.”

I just want to point out the “this day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hands” which this exactly phrase is mentioned in the Book of Mormon multiple times, so I just like the references that are both Biblical and Book of Mormon that show the continuity of both being a form of the Hebrew language and phraseology. Another thing that David mentioned that I hadn’t considered before is that he openly says “I’m not going to fight you with conventional weapon, God is the only weapon that I need.” I hadn’t considered that the use of a sling to defeat Goliath might have been just as supernatural to all the soldiers on both sides as a random flash flood that killed everyone. A small, young, inexperienced boy defeating a mighty warrior with a sling is probably just as unlikely as an earthquake swallowing Goliath up by God. So God’s using supernatural means to win this battle, but with enough of the human element so that those who want to dismiss it as a fluke can. I guess anyone can do that with anything but this is another example.

Finally David says who this victory is supposed to signal the power of Israel’s God to: the entire earth will know that Israel’s God defeated Goliath and the Philistines. Additionally, this is to be a testimony to the Israelite people themselves, and to these soldiers specifically, that their own God, the God they did not trust or believe in enough to fight Goliath themselves, delivered them. The God that they are actively rebelling against by worshipping other gods and not keeping their God’s commandments, is going to rescue them from the Philistines in a miraculous way using a completely unqualified boy simply because he has faith and they don’t.